If there are no moral absolutes...?

Just because people do what is convenient or right in THEIR thinking, doesn't mean that there are no moral absolutes. There are. And those who say there are ABSOLUTELY no moral absolutes, are defeating their own statement WITH their statement.

There is such a thing as moral absolutes. The concept of a "social contracts" is nebulous at best and completely insufficient at it's worst. Let's take the concept of honor killings for an example. One group or society holds that honor killings are moral and just while another society holds that honor killings are immoral and reprehensible. How is it determined which way the greater society should act? How does one society take the dominant role? Should it be based on intellect, population, politics? Or does it necessitate war in order to solve the problem . Even then, does that mean the winner of the war was right? Was Machiavelli correct that might makes right?

Actually, there is someone to judge you for your actions, deeds and behavior on earth - the society you live in, the people around you. If your god told you that school kids were evil and you committed mass murder, you'd be violating the moral code of your group and would be punished. If you committed statutory rape, same thing.

You miss the main point. Each person does _not_ "decide for themselves what is moral and what is not." The moral sense arises from within, but is modified and balanced against the shared moral sense of the group. People who are unable to match their moral sense to that of the group are considered criminals.

Theists' moral sense starts the same way as everybody else's. The only real difference is they've codified it into a holy book, created a god to justify it, and declared it an absolute moral code. Because of this, theists forget the true source of their own moral sense and believe that the only possible source or morals are those imposed from without. Without that external source, they believe, a person is without any moral sense and would run rampant.

In a way, it's sad that theists are so blind to their own selves.

We also have such a thing as empathy. We use our brains to put ourselves in another person's situation and experience the horror of a tragic event as if it had happened to us. From that we can make pretty good guesses about what's right and wrong.

Murder is wrong. Rape is wrong. Stealing is wrong. There doesn't need to a higher authority to decided this.

And what does it say about your own character that the only thing preventing you from doing one of these despicable acts is an "invisible sky enforcer" watching over your shoulder?

Also, how do you explain that countries like Sweden where only 18% of the population claim to believe in God, or Japan where Christianity is a tiny minority, that their violent crime rates are far lower than the United States? How are they able to achieve morality without belief in a Christian God?

There ARE moral absolutes - they are called laws - and that is why throughout history mankind has striven to quell the animalistic urges of SOME people (not all) by laying down rules and regulations.

Under your creed of 'do what thou whilst' mankind would have never developed their societies and we would have made each other extinct with slaughter and rape (as rape in young woman/kids can cause long term damage and infertility). Selection of healthy mates would also cease to exist and children born of forced sex may get weaker and weaker and the gene pool watered down until offspring would have more and more deformaties.

If a society goes into freefall and self gratification it will fail, which is what our ancestors learned from millenia of wars, rape and carnage.

So in a world of no rules and morals you can go ahead, do what you want, steal, kill, rape where you like but there's always a stonger/younger opponent ready to destroy you and your offspring too.

"No moral absolutes" does not equal "anything goes." Morality is part of the social contract.

If there were moral absolutes, a given religion would have taught exactly the same morals all through its history. Anyone with any grasp of history knows that's not true. Religious morals change right along with society.

But hey, never mind the facts, you have lies to spread and atheists to malign, right?

Even without moral absolutes, many of which were originally taken from religious commandments, there are an established set of wrong-full things not done. To us today, acts of murdering people is wrong, yet in the past it was not seen as such, and many homicides were unanswered.

So you would have to be a very unmoraled person to have none at all and more interestingly to accept that religion (which you may not accept as such) does not play a part in fixing what is right or wrong.

In general, our nature is not animal but it comes from where we live. In Japan a naked lady in a bath that is shared is acceptable, but a picture of her on the wall is not. Thus pornography depends on geography!

You seem to have a religious understanding of morality. That's to say, you don't understand it at all.

Morality isn't just a list of thing that are good and things that are bad - it's an awareness of the principles of fairness, and of the potential for actions to result in harm or benefit. Good moral conduct involves behaving fairly and choosing actions which minimise the potential for harm. The basis of this is the simple fact that we don't live in a vacuum - even if there's no "god" to punish harmful behaviour, there are still billions of other people in the world who are more than happy to punish you if you are known to behave in a manner which causes harm to others, and among these billions are the people in your immediate community - the people you actually have to interact with as you live your life. If you want to live your life free from persecution, your best bet is to treat people fairly, and hope that they're decent enough to treat you fairly in return, but of you aren't willing to do that you can't expect to be treated well by others.

What's more, if you actually (wrongly) believe that morality is actually based on any religion, please explain why you think having sex with child of the opposite sex is immoral? By religious definition, paedophilia is only wrong if you're preying on children of the same sex, and then only because they're the same sex and you're not married to them, not because they're children. So far as I'm aware, there's no religion that specifically says that having sex with children is wrong, so how can you possibly think that's immoral ... if morality is derived from religion? If you agree with me that anyone who uses any child for their own sexual gratification is morally utterly deplorable, to a far greater degree than anyone who indulges in pre-marital sex (or even same-sex relationships), then you can't possibly have derived that moral position from any religion.

Wrong.

The purpose of morality is to provide for a way for us to work together in communities. It is through morality that we gain the advantages of a healthy society. That morality, therefore, even if subjective, is not the product of a single person deciding for themselves what is moral and what is not. Morality is based on far more than personal preference.

The fact that you just copy and paste crap like this only speaks of how much you fail.

We all tend to make choices, and have the same basic morality and values, as each other, as part of the complex behaviour patterns that evolved in our species, and others.

When several behaviour patterns conflict in a given situation, our upbringing, experience, need to live as part of a community, and the satisfying chemical changes that evolved to happen in our brains when we do someone a favour, determine which to suppress; this is often done subconsciously, but can sometimes be conscious (which might be what we experience as conscience).

And when this goes wrong, we have remedies as a species codified in laws, penalties and punishments.

Having experience of life, I base my choices on mutual respect and compassion for others.

I don't attribute the origin of moral behaviour and values to supernatual beings, or claim that the way we resolve conflicting behaviour patterns consciously is through something supernatural or that the conscience is supernatural or comes from a supernatural being. We are responsible for our own lives, together with others that we have developed relationships with.

Most people behave in a way that benefits themselves, and this in turn usually benefits the community as well. We’ve also evolved to feel rewarded when we do favours for others; this in turn increases the chances that others will return favours.

Of course, parents and siblings are a good starting point, since the caring is already there in the majority of families.

We have moral absolutes, it's call the law. If you have sex with a 14 year old girl, and give her drugs, you're going to jail. If you blow up schoolchildren, you're probably going to get the death penalty.

If the only thing keeping you from behaving like a violent ape is "God," then there's something wrong with you. Have some respect for your fellow man or WE will judge and punish you, not "God."