Absolute morals

Firstly, I quoted Aristotle's words in order to challange your claim of Summum bonum coming as not a reward but also ,,excellence, striving towards a higher power, to transcendence'. Understanding Aristotle is the first step in realizing that in fact the quote is in context. As it questions your idea of why acceptance of it would affect our own view on morality. God making rules doesn't provide more absolutism than me making rules. Consider the Euthyphro dilemma. If things are good because He says so, that's arbitrary (because He had no prior obligations to make certain choices, so there's nothing to respect about them objectively); if He says things are good because they are, He relies on an external standard to which we can appeal in principle. Don't fool for the "being good is his nature" response, either. Is X good because it's in God's nature, or vice versa? I guess another question that could be asked is if there is a god, how do we know what he/she considers to be moral? Christians may answer "it's in the Bible", but anyone who has read the Bible knows it's full of highly questionable morality. And it often contradicts itself. Absolute is something for sure, unequivocal, unambiguous - something that is not veiwed as partial or relative, in otherwords it is real, tangible, and obervable by nature - it's defintion does not need to be qualified by anyone because it is what it is, hence, absolute. People associate values and morals from the context of society. Many religions derive their values from their ancient societies, and one set for one group is not constant across other groups. This is one of the beautiful aspects of different cultures and learning something new, no matter how odd it may initially feel. The concept of stealing is not absolute for the very reality that there have been and is now, communal societies where sharing is so inherent that the concept of stealing is impossible. Many Native Americans engaged in theis system. Stealing only grew to be an outcome of "private ownesership" a ideal releatively new, that began with the modern world. Wealth, ownership, property, stealing, adultery, and many of the others rules stated by the Abrahamic religions are products of a philosophy that created ownership. If nothing is owned, then nothing can be stolen. Marriage, owning of another (it is) has a counterpart, adultery. This may seem odd, but marriage is an institution created by modern man - it has not always been the mold so to speak, and takes on many different forms throughout the world. There are no moral absolutes. There are not many absolutes any of us are sure of for that matter. You cannot ignore the fact that when something is done one way here it is done another way there. The world is different all around, hence, no absoulte. Mankind tries its best to find structure and stability - these are the reasons for many institutions: government, marriage, power, ownership, don't forget these are man-made, they are not some invariable consequesnce of nature or existence - they do change, will change, and have changed - many and often. Being a human our objectives are to preserve our existence, hence, we don't like death, so the humaistic option is not to do it; but don't confuse this with a "moral absolute", but rather understand it for what it is - a form of cooperation. Just remember, even Newton thought space was absolute until Einstein came along and prove it wasn't. Like many things in this world/life, everything is relativistic. It's all relative. Those who claim absolutes I feel are closed-minded and inflexible. They wish to put all their eggs in one basket and to ignore all others. This deifes the essential beauty of the human experience, of life itself. You have one chance, one time on this Earth - it's all that we have and there are so many wonderful things to see an experience. Laws, and cooperative rules formed by society are good to adhere to, but you can see for yourself- in you example about stealing food - how things are relative. A starving man's need to eat food for survival is a perfect example of how things are not absolute, because the game changes for his needs to survive. You can find example likes this all throughout life.