Apparently, somebody's been accusing Deb of being a moral absolutist. Ah, one of my favorite hot-buttons has now been pushed, stand back, everyone...

I love it when people make pronouncements like "War is wrong" or "We don't have the right to interfere with other nations." Great! I think, on what basis do you conclude this? And why should I believe or agree with you?

For example, I'm a Christian. Therefore I attempt to base my morals on the teachings of Christ and the Bible, as best I understand them. You may certainly question the validity of my moral foundation (the Bible, or that Jesus guy), or my interpretation and application of said canon, but I have a clear line of reasoning justifying my moral stances:

Q: "Why is adultery wrong?" A: "Because God, the God of the Jews as revealed through Moses, said it was. Also, my common sense and inner conscience confirm this." From there we can argue about the bible, or my interpretation thereof, or the likelihood of its historical accuracy. And you may or may not agree with my answers, but I can give very reasonable answers as to why my conclusions are justified, all traceable back to evidence we can find in the real world.

Now, for contrast, here's a conversation I often have. Me: "Why are you a vegetarian." A: "Because its wrong to eat animals." Me: "Why is it wrong to eat animals?" At this point, we usually go into a loop, or end with an "I don't know."

And I think: Great, you have a huge part of your life determined by a precept you have pulled out of thin air. You just made some crap up and then decided it must be truth, and based your life around it.

(Note that I'm not talking about vegetarianism here, I'm talking about how we decide what's morally true. In contrast, I have friends who are vegetarians who are theists. They usually say something like: "God cares for animals." And that's enough for me, at least they can point to some reason other than "I feel like it.")

There are certain anti-war protestors who take this same tact: "We don't have the right to go to war!" etc. Some are Christians. Those I debate on theological grounds. (I may be wrong, but since they never, in my experience, justify their thinking, its hard to get a second opinion.) And then there are those who are relativists. Only not really, because they're stating absolutes, as Deb rightly notices.

This is idolatry, what the prophet Isaiah criticized the gentiles for doing: A man cuts a tree down. Half of it, he uses for cooking his lunch; the other half, he bows down and worships as divine: He prays to it and says "Save me; you are my god!" (44:17)

Funny, atheists accuse theists of making God in man's image. But it is really those with no external foundation for their own beliefs, who create a moral/belief system out of their imaginings, and then bow down and worships it as God, as Truth. As if it were something more important than their feelings du jour.

Real relativists are hard to find. I haven't met one yet. Most are just confused absolutists. Who are also painfully obvious hypocrites.