Do you talk like this down at the local bar?
I most definitely do, except when it becomes obvious that for the sake of education, I have to dumb something down.
I'm well aware of the dictum that says the more we know the more that we realise that we don't know. But what we have learned in the first place should still be available. It's not like you're Homer and have to forget a bunch of stuff to learn something new. So what good is all that book learnin' if it means that you don't generate some opinions on matters such as objective morality?
Throwing your hands in the air and suggesting that no-one can know everything that's needed is a cop out. It's an excuse not to put forward an argument. Because...what? You might find that someone has a better one? We'll, here's a heads up: That's how we make advances in our knowledge. It's a means to grow. We test what we have studied and what we think we know in the market place of ideas. One of those 'market places' where that happens is called a forum. So if you don't want to put your own ideas forward to test them here, in this forum, then I really don't know why you're here.
Originally, 15 years ago, my main reason for being here was to either encourage or to educate others who struggled toward the Christian Faith. I was never here to debate, and definitely not here to exchange hamfisted sarcasms with smart-alecky atheists.
But then, numerous Ex-Christians began to pop up with increasing regularity, necessitating a change of mode on my part. Even with that being the case, I'm not here to debate, and I leave it up to others to continually guess existentially what that means.
So, what's your current understanding of the concept of absolute morality?
My current understanding of it, such as my own limits will allow, is to realize that there was no sane reason why Lenina had to be murdered or that the Savage had to come to a bad end. Some of my realization in this comes out of the Religious Language Problem, but I would aver that it also comes out of what I'd likewise call the Ethical Language Problem. The term, absolute, is itself relative in certain ways and can be used with different connotations, depending, as you (and I) say, upon the specific set of contexts in which it is used, or by whom it is used. Particularly this last point.
The rest of what I might be tempted to say about Absolute Morality or about Normative Moral Relativism would be hashed out from the following sources, and others that I'd add in due time:
Sahakian, William S. Ethics: An introduction to theories and problems. New York: Barnes & Noble Books.
Pojman, Louis P., and James Fieser. Ethics: Discovering right and wrong, 2nd Edition. California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1995.
Shafer-Landau, Russ. The fundamentals of ethics. Vol. 4. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Hare, R.M. Sorting out ethics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.
Cooper, David. Value pluralism & ethical choice. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993.
Rachels, James, and Stuart Rachels. The elements of moral philosophy. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2007.
Taylor, Paul W. The moral judgment: Readings in Contemporary Meta-Ethics. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1963.
Harrod, Howard L. The human center: Moral agency in the social world. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981.
Ruggiero, Vincent Ryan. Thinking critically about ethical issues. California: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1992.
Rosen, Bernard. Strategies of ethics. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1978.
Rachels, James. Created from animals: The moral implications of Darwinism. Oxford University Press, 1990.
Epstein, Greg M. Good without God: What a billion nonreligious people do believe. New York: Harper, 2009.
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Sandel, Michael J. Justice: What’s the right thing to do? New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2009.
Dershowitz, Alan M. The genesis of justice. Warner Books, 2000.
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Meeks, Wayne A. The origins of Christian morality: The first two centuries. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993
Crook, Roger H. An introduction to Christian ethics. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1990.
Outka, Gene H. and Ramsy, Paul (eds.) Norm and context in Christian ethics. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1968.
Wogaman, J. Philip. A Christian method of moral judgment. Philadelphia, The Westminster Press, 1976.
Hollinger, Dennis P. Choosing the Good. Michigan: Baker Books, 2002.
Clark, David K. and Rakestraw, Robert V. Readings in Christian Ethics: Volume 1 Theory and method. Michigan: Baker Books, 1994.
Mott, Stephen Charles. Biblical ethics and social change. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Boyd, Craig A. A shared reality: A narrative defense of Natural Law Ethics. Michigan: Brazos Press, 2007.
Sittser, Gerald L. Loving across our differences. Illinois: IVP, 1994.
Green, Joel B., Jacqueline Lapsley, Rebekah Miles, and Allen Verhey, eds. Dictionary of Scripture and ethics. Baker Academic, 2011.
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Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
Animal Farm – George Orwell
1984 – George Orwell
Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Lord of the Flies – William Golding
The Screwtape Letters – C.S. Lewis
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Revelation - John of Patmos