: : :: Absolutely not. 'conscience,' like 'morality' is a social construct. : : Barry, in all honesty, don't you have to disprove the existence of God and therefore any moral standard He may have endowed us with to claim the above as an axiom?
: Stuart, before you can even say the above, try providing any meaningful and verifiable justification of your statement.
: Much as I may disagree with Barry on some points, he is entirely within his rights to make his statement; since he is starting from verifiable first principles; whereas you are not.
: Thus, to make any vaguely substantial argument, you have to provide some empirical justification for believing that morality and conscience are universal.
: : These statments, and others like them, made by you are predicated on belief, no? You believe there is no God - right?
: : You certainly can't prove that.
: Just as you can't prove the opposite; but you are basing your beliefs on something eternally unproveable, whereas he is basing his assertion on lack of evidence to the contrary.
Wait a minute. The Bible is a basis for belief.
: As such, his belief is more reasonable than yours; it can never be proven to be correct or incorrect; but it explains the perceived phenomena better.
The seven deadly sins explain a lot too.
: And if you disagree, perhaps you'd like to go and eat a pork chop in the centre of Mecca...?
: After all, if you believe that your morality is the only correct one, you can't really suffer any blame for what happens to you...
sure you can, and in this case would, because others would be wrong to harm a man who ate pork. Would you defend their actions? Your position is that since there is no absolutes, not only would they be within their rights to do so, but that slavery is acceptable, ethnic genocide is acceptable, and come to think of it, that eliminating entire economic classes of people is OK too. Hmmmmmmmm, sound familiar?
: : Morality is only a social construct if there is no higher ideal imposed upon us by a higher source.
: And of course, yours is the only correct morality, Stuart...
Correct to the best of our knowledge.
: : If man's perception of right and wrong is continually evolving, how can you or anyone else have any intellectual integrity when using the language of moral absolutes?
: Oh-ho, it's the old 'intellectual integrity' accusation; something that Stuart rolls out when he doesn't understand or agree with his opponent's point of view.
But you don't answer. Is it because there is an internal contradiction in claiming to have answers while denying there are absolutes?
: (Given that Stuart is to philosophy and theology what Dan Quayle was to politics and diplomacy, this ain't exactly rare...)
Tut tut, ad hominems, from one who claims there are no absolutes, ie; 'your opinion is no better or no worse than mine'.
: : To attempt to emotionally persuade folks with moral absolutes is foolishness if you are merely a man with an opinion.
: Except for you, of course; you have a hotline to The Almighty, don't you...?
Ooops! another ad hominem. C'mon, the best you can do, if you really believe in what you say you do, is to say, 'oh, that's a nice opinion'. All opinions are based only on current and impermanant things after all.
: To attempt to persuade folks with moral absolutes is a waste of time, since their faculties are so damaged by their obsession that they are unable to discard any obsolete article of faith.
: Farinata.
So tell me Far, is that an absolute opinion? LOL!
