By DAMIANICELY
Added: Thu, 04 Nov 2010 12:03:54 UTC

Atheistic secular Humanists, (henceforward referred to simply as Atheists), are regularly met with the “moral relativism” argument. Without a rock solid standard like the Ten Commandments the concept of morality is meaningless. Anyone can feel anything about anything.

What fascinates me is that it IS a valid argument. If everyone felt completely different about moral issues the concept of morality WOULD be meaningless. But we don’t. I am always impressed at just how much atheists agree over moral issues. Indeed I suspect that the degree of divergence amongst Christians alone is far greater than that amongst atheists.

Additionally most of the commandments that actually deal with moral issues (five onwards) are really rather obvious but, for the most part, not the worst rules that could be broken. Be nice to Mum and Dad, Don’t kill, Don’t steal other people’s partners, Don’t steal at all, Don’t lie about other people, Don’t be jealous. One might find interesting moral situations where breaking these rules might be acceptable but on the whole they’re not terribly controversial and certainly not very comprehensive.

What about Racism? Slavery? Sexism? The handicapped? Homosexuality?

Hell what about Paedophilia? Rape? Incest?

If we’re only having ten rules I would have expected some of these before jealousy!

So here is my challenge to all of you moral relativists. I want Six commandments, (ten would be unfair as the first four have no bearing on an atheist’s morals). No more than a line each. If we moral relativists are so diverse in our morality then this should kick off the war to end all wars!

To be clear… I want to see some sort of convergence on these Six. Can we reach any agreement?

TAGGED: ATHEISM, DEBATE POINTS, RELIGION