: :: No, it's my opinion, as I implied. My opinion is not absolute and eternal; no-one's is...: That's my point at the beginning of all this, F. Reread my first post in this thread. I stayed out of this whole thing until you went full circle and reiterated it.
: Barry made a statement that was posited as an axiom. It is not an axiom to state that morality is a social construct.
Of course it is!
Any philosophical statement that is a base part of any philosophical theory is an axiom. It's a basic part of predicate logic.
Try reading up on your logic.
: That statement is widely controversial and entirely unprovable.
Barry's philosophy is a model, composed of various axioms; of which one is that morality is a social construct.
Yours is a different model; of which one of the axioms is that morality is not a social construct.
Axioms are the building blocks of any philosophical theory; the fact that Barry's axiom isn't an axiom to you doesn't mean that it isn't an axiom; it's just not part of your model.
: The only peripheral point I make in all of this is that people like Barry use morality and the language of absolutes to argue a position that can only be based on opinion and belief.
He's not; you're merely failing to read the implicit "...according to my interpretation of the world and the evidence I've seen" rider.
Barry is not God; he is not claiming to be immortal or correct on an 'absolute' scale; thus any statement he makes is predicated on his own interpretation of the world.
Your interpretation of that as an absolute statement is due to a) the imprecise nature of human languages and b) your imprecise understanding of Barry's meaning.
: To suggest or imply that any particualar moral code supercedes another is to suggest that one's opinion is superior to another's
Which is exactly what you've been doing for the last 3.5 years on this Debating Room.
: I'm pointing to the hypocracy of the left when I show that those who claim to know tolerance best, at times, practice the worst intolerance.
Has Barry killed you yet?
Not as far as I can see. He may have called you an idiot (or similar) at some point or another, but that's because this is a vigorous debate.
How do you justify that as being 'the worst intolerance'? - I can think of lots of nastier ways to be intolerant...
Barry may call you an idiot, but he never said that you had no right to your opinions, or that his was the only right way.
: The language of absolutes should not be used to defend one's position when one otherwise disparages moral absolutes.
I advise you bone up on your English (and logic) a bit, Mynheer Goort; accusations of hypocrisy are unwarranted unless you can actually provide indisputable evidence of same.
Farinata.
