Atheists must appeal to an absolute moral standard when complaining about wrongs.

If, as atheists claim, morality is relative, then by definition there is no absolute standard of right and wrong. Thus, atheists have no basis for complaining about moral wrongs, because they cannot appeal to anything to prove that it is wrong. All they can do is appeal to their own feelings, but without an absolute standard their feelings don't matter, because only an absolute standard can say that the feelings of humans beings ought to matter to every other human being. When the morals of one human contradict the morals of another human, which human is right, since there is no absolute standard? If they both are offended, whose feelings do we base our morals on?Edited by Guido Arbia, : No reason given.Edited by Guido Arbia, : No reason given.Edited by Guido Arbia, : No reason given.Edited by Guido Arbia, : No reason given.

Thread copied here from the Atheists must appeal to an absolute moral standard when complaining about wrongs. thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

In the same way that since there is no absolute standard of language, nobody can complain of misuse ? You can use any word to mean anything you want and nobody can complain ?And if you do have a standard of morality that can be shown to be absolute, let’s see it. Because if you don’t all you are doing is denying that there is any valid basis for complaining about wrongs.

How would you set about proving which morals are based on absolutes and which are based on fallible human feewings?Murder (unlawful killing) is pretty unanimously deemed as immoral. Probably the closest thing you're going to ever get to in terms of absolute morality. Where things get tricky is determining what constitutes murder. One man's murder is another man's righteous execution.So even with moral absolutes nothing gets resolved. If morality was so obviously absolute then no one would ever violate them now would they? Edited by Hyroglyphx, : No reason given.

There obviously is no moral absolute so whatever point you're trying to make is moot. But if you think there is, let's have a look at an example.

Penn Jillette of the Penn and Teller magic act had the perfect answer to your problem, but I cannot find it readily on YouTube. He once described the following.Basically, religionists seem to love to present a scenario in which an atheist family suffers a home invasion attack where the atheist male head of the family is tied up and has to suffer seeing each and every member of his family being extremely brutally mistreated and then most brutally murdered in front of his eyes and at every single unimaginable act being told that since he is an atheist then there is nothing whatsoever wrong with what he is witnessing.Well FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING PERVERTED PIECE OF SHIT!!!!The point that Penn Jillette was making is that there are things that are obviously wrong, such as harming other people that everybody would agree was wrong to do regardless of any stupid god ideas and the like.So then your entire attempt at a point to make is just ... nothing.Edited by dwise1, : Late at night, hit wrong button and posted prematurely

Everyone else was much more polite in responding to this entitled, (probably) white, christian. The argument is crap. I will be very surprised if the poster attempts an actual defense of the argument.That the poster has posted under an multitude of ID's shows me that I really shouldn't waste much time with the posts. I understand occasional changing of ID's but a constant change seems to me to be a bit dishonest. A lack of faith in ones own arguments.Destroy away folks. I may just get some popcorn, sit back, and enjoy this one.

Come on Guido; at least try to make an intelligent argument.Of course there is no need to appeal to any absolute moral standard regardless of whether someone is an atheist or theist. That's as completely silly as trying to argue there is some absolute moral standard in the Bible.Really kid, you can do much better than this absurdity.

We can appeal to societal standards.

How does it work between two people who believe in different "absolute standards"? I bet they have no better basis for convincing the other person to agree with their version of "right" and "wrong" than people who accept the subjectivity of morality.Come to think of it, how do people who believe in an absolute morality figure out what those standards are and how to apply them to difficult real life situations? I bet it comes back down to "feelings".

The problem is that the argument seems to be about our response to "real life situations", and I agree that there is no absolute moral response to our actions in response to situations. It might be different for different people in different times and cultures.If our real life situations require any kind of moral response, the moral decision should simply be based on it whether it is loving or unloving. Any absolute standard is simply about whether the response is loving, lovingly neutral or unloving.I suggest that this standard is something that can be part of a Christian belief as well as for anyone of any religious faith or of no religious faith.

But again that is simply far too subjective; there is no standard based on loving. The Inquisitors loved their victims enough to torture then until the victims reached a state of grace where they recanted their transgressions and so were saved and died.

Benefit or harm. That's it.

Yeah, we do. The whole body of law exists just for this purpose. And that body of law is determined by the secular society by experiencing, discussing, deciding and changing what morality is today.Relative morality has been, is, and will always be alive and well in humanity. Your absolutes, which you cannot follow even within/among your own cults, was rejected many millennia ago.

Good point. Of course the same could be said for belief. Despite lack of evidence, (the only basic sound argument) Belief is determined by a body of society (currently still the majority) by experiencing, discussing, deciding, and slowly changing what belief is today.