Atheism Cannot Rationally Explain Morals.

That isn't about morality. It's a social contract: Eat others as you would have others eat you.

Well yes, morality does change to suit the purposes and circumstances of the society involved. No absolute morality, no. In fact, it's people who believe in absolute morality who have no actual morality. All you're doing is following orders. There's a reason why that isn't an excuse for flouting actual morality.

Then it isn't rational.

There would be no absolute value. I agree.But you're assuming that absolute values exist - i.e. that your conclusion is true. That isn't rational. Present a rational argument and we'll see. I'm not following orders. I'm abiding by my side of the social contract. It's like paying your bills or agreeing which side of the road to drive on. It would be ridiculous to pretend that there's an absolutely correct side of the road to drive on, wouldn't it?

By his fruit ye shall know him.

Are you following your wife's orders? Is she following yours? It's a social contract. Compliance is voluntary. I'm saying that ALL morals are subjective, including yours. You subjectively believe in a subjective God who tells you what to do. And you subjectively decide what He means. There are thousands of brands of theism, all thoroughly subjective. Ever hear of democracy? WE set up the social contract. We're not taking orders from an alien overlord like you are.

Only the beginning of wisdom. Back up a verse: Don't park your brain at the door. Don't dwell on "absolute" truths. Wisdom is a journey, not a destination.

There's nothing ambiguous about it. The relationship begins before any formal contracts are signed. The state doesn't enter into it at all until after the deal is done. The state is only a backstop for negotiations between signatories of the social contract. Morality changed, even IN the Bible:

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Leviticus 20:10 And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.

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John 8:7 So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

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Of course YOU have found something better than blind adherence to "absolute morality" too.Take "Thou shalt not kill". Is that "absolute" or are there exceptions? My guess is that you have more exceptions than I do.

You're looking at it backwards. It isn't that the social contract "is moral". It's that morality is a social contract. It's something that you comply with voluntarily in your day-to-day life, not just an edict from an alien overlord that you must obey. You comply because it makes your interactions with your fellow humans easier. Again, you're assuming that there is an absolute right and wrong. There isn't. Somebody else can disagree with you until the cows come home but that doesn't make either of you "right" or "wrong".Morality is more about what works or doesn't work than about "right" or "wrong". And He didn't. So how is stoning "right"? Indeed. And if it can be set aside, how is it absolute? On the contrary, forgiveness is about the forgiver, not the forgiven. It is often about letting go of imagined offenses. Forgiveness is about getting past the idea that somebody wronged you. See above. Jesus was pointing out that the man's "sins" were in the imaginations of the people whom he had supposedly "wronged", that if God could forgive, so could they. That shows that God's standards are relative too.You didn't answer my question: Is "Thou shalt not kill" absolute? Or are there exceptions?

That's a false dichotomy based on your unfounded assumption about absolute truth. So you're saying that only God knows right from wrong. That would explain the high rate of incarceration among believers. They have no moral compass of their own.You're shooting yourself in the foot. You're admitting that your own morality is not rational.

Since you're not omniscient, how can you know with absolute certainty what God's morality is? At best, you can guess at an approximation. Not at all. From my position, people have signed on to a social contract which makes their lives easier if they comply.From your position, it's a one-way street with your alien overlord telling you what to do and it's the Eternal Frying Pan if you don't comply. The catch is that you're not omniscient so you don't know exactly what your alien overlord is thinking so it's impossible to avoid every pitfall. The real judges - that is the other members of the community - understand that it IS all relative. You're the one who doesn't.Relative goes hand-in-hand with rational. If the premises change, the conclusion changes. If the circumstances change, the behaviour changes.On the other hand, absolute goes hand-in-hand with irrational. Absolute conclusions don't need premises at all. The conclusions never change so there's no scope for reasoning.

The point is that it might "be" correct - absolutely correct and inviolable in any way - but YOU have know way of knowing exactly what is correct because YOU don't have all of the information. See above. God might know exactly what is right or wrong but YOU don't because you're not God. I did. Relative conclusions from real-world observations require reasoning. They require new reasoning as new circumstances are observed.You, on the other hand, haven't shown that any reasoning is required for absolute morals.

Of course that's my position: There IS NO "correct" in any absolute sense. Even if something was "absolutely correct", neither you nor I could know because we're not omniscient. I've repeated that numerous times in this thread. Don't you get it yet? It isn't "absolutely rational" because rationality has nothing to do with the absolute. Rational conclusions are made using real-life observations as premises. If we observe that all horses are white, the conclusions we derive from that observation are rational even if they are not "absolutely correct". But you would have to know everything to know everything that does exist - and that includes all of the possible exceptions to your "absolute morality". As long as there's anything you don't know, that something could pertain to morality and your understanding of morality would be incomplete. Therefore, even if there "is" an absolute morality, you can't know for sure what it is. Yes. Yes. I already asked you about killing people. If there are exceptions to "Thou shalt not kill", it's relative. If somebody else doesn't see it as moral, then it definitely is relative. Of course I'm right back where I started. I started by saying that morality is subjective and you keep agreeing with me. No.First, I have not said that absolute morality can not exist. I have said that if it did exist, nobody could know what it is because we're not omniscient. We can't know anything absolutely. Therefore, for all intents and purposes, in every day life, the morality we live is not absolute.Second, I have not stated anything absolutely. If anything is absolutely true, you can't know unless you're omniscient. It's like shooting blindfolded. You might hit the bullseye by sheer coincidence or you might hit the target near enough for practical purposes or you might miss the target entirely and shoot yourself in the foot. When it comes to morality, practical purposes are the best we can hope for. You haven't shown that your process is objective.

Yes, that's what I've been saying all along. Morals don't have to "exist" like a banana. But that's practically the definition of a subjective moral; one that is not based on concrete facts but on abstract thoughts. What do you think subjective means? Yours, of course. Incorrect.According to my worldview, morals are subjective - i.e. they vary from society to society and from situation to situation.That applies to your morals as well as mine. But how do you know what to obey? You can't read the instructions with 100% accuracy because you're not omniscient. (If you were omniscient, you wouldn't even need the instructions.)So answer the question: When God tells you, "Thou shalt not kill," how do you obey? Do you oppose capital punishment? Do you oppose war? What specific instructions do you have that apply to every possible situation? I don't know why you think you're disagreeing with me. That's my position exactly.Rational thinking is all about matter in motion. Unless your reasoning relates somehow to matter in motion, it's just meaningless mumbo-jumbo.Edited by ringo, : Fixed quotes.

There is nothing that is absolutely good or bad, moral or immoral. What we think is good or bad, moral or immoral is made up in our heads. Different people in different situations have different ideas of what is good or bad, moral or immoral.As I have mentioned before, doing unto others as we would have them do unto us is easy enough to explain - it's good for the group and good for the individual. Exactly. Musical notes have no "meaning" outside our brains and neither do ideas of morality. Absolute meaning doesn't exist (or if it did, you would have no way of knowing what it was). That's not an instruction at all. It's just a vague empty statement that isn't even in the Bible. Since you're not omniscient, how do you know the source is accurate?You keep demonstrating that you DON'T know what absolutely is right or wrong. You can't tell us when it is right to kill another person and when it is wrong. Deciding whether a person had malicious or deceitful intent requires just as much finite wisdom from you as it does from anybody else.