Absolute Morality...again.

First, I've acknowledged that it is possible that there could be a God who did not give an absolute morality.The God of the Bible, however, did, so that if He exists, His morality is absolute.The reason it is absolute is that He is absolute and the moral law expresses His own mind, and He made us in His image so we reflect His own mind -- or did before the Fall. God's writing the Ten Commandments in stone has the meaning that the Law is absolute. Written in stone =absolute. It means that He made His universe to run by them, He made human nature to operate by them, so that violations of them are resistance or opposition to the natural operations of things, which has inevitable repercussions. There is no way to avoid the repercussions of the Law. It affects everyone equally and exactly. It is a universal Law. That's how God made it. When Jesus said that not one jot or tittle of the Law would go unfulfilled, He was referring to the absoluteness and precision of the Law down to minute details. Inexorability.{Edit: But of course, again, this is all true ONLY IF the God of the Bible is real and the Bible is reliable.}Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Jesus was not abrogating the law of the Sabbath with the story of an animal being unable to get out of a hole in the ground. The Sabbath was always for doing good, for performing acts of mercy, for moral necessities. Work is what one does for a living, or as part of the daily routine of life, and the Sabbath is meant to be a day of rest from all that in which God Himself is to be worshiped. Worshippig God includes acts of mercy.I'm glad to see that others here agree that whether we understand it or not has nothing to do with whether there is an absolute morality. Many things we don't understand in both the physical and spiritual worlds but that doesn't make them any the less absolutely real.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

How can we know if it is or is not?Since our communication with God is admittedly imperfect, how can we know that anything we think we hear from Him is "absolute"? Speaking of "absolute morality" makes no more sense than speaking of "yellow morality" or "large morality". Quite possibly. Short attention span, you know. "It has no basis in reality" is not the same as "Its just not applicable to real life". I'm saying, "There's no such thing as a pink unicorn." You're saying, "It's impossible to ride a pink unicorn."

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No one ever said he was. What was said that the Commandment must be interpreted based on the conditions of a particular incident. Even what you post show that it is subjective and relative.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Here's a question I've thought about some but am not sure about.Might there not be a difference between relativity and circumstantiality?Say our rule is, "Thou shalt not murder," and we define murder as an unjustified killing. The problem, of course, is, what is meant by "unjustified"?One might claim that whether a killing is justified or not is to be decided on a case-by-case basis (whether it was self-defense, etc.). A "case-by-case basis" means circumstantiality. Whether a killing is murder or not depends on the circumstances of a given case. But is this the same as "relativity"?It might not be quite the same thing if we equate relativity with subjectivity.Edited by robinrohan, : No reason given.

We can't. We can't. It makes more sense to me Look, if god set up a system for an sbsolute morality and it exists, then it doesn't matter what we know or not, the system is there and it is absolute. Now, down here in the real world, we can't claim any of our moralities to be absolute but that doesn't negate the one that god set up or make it impossible. Yup, my statements are better. They don't make claims that are too strong to make.There's a basis in reality for absolute morality if you are religious, its just not applicable to everyday situations. Also, pink unicorns just might exist,just not in a way that you could ride one.

As far as I can tell, the OP is only talking about the real world. It asks for:

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... some sort of working definition of what Absolute Morality is. As well as possibly an example of it such ....

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To summarize: a working definition and an example.If your only argument is that there might possibly be some hypothetical version of "absolute morality" somewhere on the third moon of Saturn, you're probably off-topic. We seem to agree that there is no "absolute morality" on earth.

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Yes, we have morals, but we cannot say, for sure, that something is morally wrong or not, we, collectively or personally, just deem them as immoral.

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Sure we can say for sure that something is morally wrong or right. Morals or morality deals with conformity to established sanctioned codes or accepted notions of right and wrong. These codes are determined by the individual and their culture. That doesn't mean that people haven't argued to change the codes.

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I think NJ was saying that without an absolute morality then, in reality, nothing can truly be deemed immoral, just "I think that is immoral".

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Sure actions can be deemed immoral. Go against a cultures code and one will be deemed immoral.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

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What do you mean when you say "is"?

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But which meaning does it hold when used as an adjective for morality?

For the sake of the argument, can we for once drop the semantics and get down to the actual argument. I'm not neccesarily speaking about you, but alot of people keep bringing up asinine statements to detract from the actual argument, as if to ask me what my definition of "is", is.Absolute----> Definite------> Certain-------> Nothing can circumvent or supplant its authority.Does that work for everyone? Are we clear on what an absolute is?

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“Always be ready to give a defense to
everyone who asks you a reason for the
hope that is in you.” -1st Peter 3:15

Since the objection to absolut morality exists, the better question to precede it should entail whether or not anyone here believes in Absolutes at all.Does anyone here believe that absolutes exist in nature or does everything relate in relativity?

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“Always be ready to give a defense to
everyone who asks you a reason for the
hope that is in you.” -1st Peter 3:15

Let's see if something can be eliminated. Suppose there was this powerful but benevolent king who wanted a very consistent justice system. So he instructed his counsels to write up a set of criteria for what constituted murder. They wrote up a set of criteria so elaborate that it covered every possible case in which a killing occurred. The judge would not have to do anything subjective. All he would have to do is look at the circumstances of the case and see if it matched the criteria. It would be like solving a simple problem in arithmetic. Is this theoretically possible? There would also be a precise, definite answer: either a killing was murder or it was not.We need not consider problems with evidence, because that's not a moral matter. That's a factual matter.

Either you're contradicting yourself or we are using different meanings for the words we are using.When I say that we cannot say for sure that something is immoral, I mean that we can't know it, for sure(or...absolutely), to be immoral. It is just a label we put on it. We just deem it immoral, but really, we cannot know, for sure.So when you start with this:

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Sure we can say for sure that something is morally wrong or right.

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and end with this:

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Go against a cultures code and one will be deemed immoral.

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You seem to be contradicting yourself, or at least what I mean by these words. If we are just deeming something immoral, then we don't know, and cannot say, for sure that it is immoral. Its our opinion. These are not absolute morals though. They are not "for sure". Otherwise, I agree with you here.

For all practicle purpose I agree there is not. But I believe in God and I think he has an absolute morality set up. Sin is that which seperates you from god and its immoral. I think a working definition has been established (from wiki). An example is not possible because we will always be able to think of a scenario where the morality is ambiguous, and not absolute. The best example possible, IMO is The Golden Rule. Acually, I just jumped in becuase I thought it was stupid that DL was all like "Oh yeah, define it!" Which I thought was a pretty easy thing to do.Whether or not it actually exists is not knowable. It is certainly possible if god exists.An example? Can we even come up with an example of an absolute anyting?

No, it merely shows a specific application of the Law to a particular situation, nothing subjective or relative about it. Murder has many degrees because of different circumstances that don't call the absoluteness of the law into question, as the idea of subjectivity or relativity does. Robin's post after yours makes this distinction.