This is a very scary belief system to me the ramifications of this theory are far reaching, if it is true that there is no absolutes and man determines for himself as an individule what is right and wrong then we would be in a lot of trouble.
I agree, it is quite a scary concept. However, just because something is distasteful or has bad consequences, does not mean it is not truth.
I think it is important to learn from history and the thing I learn from that is man is not capable of being the determiner of right and wrong (ie rape, murder, incest, and etc are wrong) and if we lift mans reason above the absolutes written on all mans hearts we will see the same thing happen as did in the French Revolution.
Hmm, I disagree here. You see, even Christians put their own decisions about what is right and wrong over Gods. Lets take a look at a few examples from the Bible.
In the Bible, it says that women are not to be teachers. And yet, we have women preachers. We have decided, with our own created moral values, that that particular part of the Bible is no longer applicable, as it is "meant for different times" or "adifferent culture" or whatever else apologists may come up with.
Similarly, it is notorious that St. Paul wrote in one of his letters, "slaves obey your masters". We, in our modern times, have decided that slavery is wrong. Once again, we have used our own man-made morals to judge the Bible.
Clearly, morality does not come from any holy book or deity, but from ourselves.
Let me also say, although I disagree with the view that there are no absolutes I do not take away others right to believe that, but I would argue its merit as I have.
Okay, lets take a look at this. I'll use the example that Richard Dawkins uses in his book, The God Delusion, which he himself got from a survey on morality.
We have a moral dilema. A train is heading towards a group of 5 people, and will kill them. We can divert the train off to a sideline, but there is a single man on this side line, who then would die. What do you do? The survey showed that most people would divert the train, saving the 5 people but killing the one. Effectively murder.
We now take another, similar, moral dilema. A train is once again heading for a group of 5 people. This time, our only way to stop it is to push a very fat man onto the track (unrealistic, but thats not important, it's an academic exercise), saving the five but killing the one. Interestinly, the survey showed that in this situation most people would chose not to save the five at the cost of the one.
Both situations have the same end result, saving five people in exchange for the life of a single other, but in one situation people chose to sacrifice the mans life, in another they did not. It has been identified that the reason for this is the manner in which the person is sacrificed - in the first, you are using the side-track to save the 5 people, and the man's death is a side-effect; in the scond, you are actively using the man's death, which people seem to object more to. However, in end results, they are both the same.
This shows the non-absolute nature of morality. In one case, the consensus is that murder is OK to save lives, in the other case the consensus is that it isn't, simply due to the manner of death.
Something for you to think about at least.
I hope I haven't come across as too aggressive. You may be surprised to learn that I actually do believe in God, though I don't believe in a personal God that cares about me or my life, or even humanity as a whole (well, perhaps he is a bit interested in humanity, I know I would be, if I had created the unverse - we're pretty interesting, though by no means the only interesting thing around). No, the God I believe in is more of a first-cause, reason-why-the-universe-works kind of God. I don't believe in religion, and I don't believe in any sort of after-life. For a long time I called myself a Christian (I still do sometimes), but I don't think that label can really apply to me anymore. I'm still undecided about Jesus. I'm leaning towards a pluralistic interpretation of religions, with Jesus as the guy who got closest, but still just a man.
Anyway, try to re-convert me if you want, it would certainly be nicer being a Christian than ambiguous lol.
xeno's got a bit too "philosophical" for me here. what i think is taure has a theory, and imo it sounds logical and valid.
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. History is not my department but FAIK crusades were the solution to the problem of most countries in Europe fighting each other (show them a common enemy, if it doesn't exist, make one).