That's the whole point. If there is no god, there are no moral abosolutes. If there is no god, all humans acts become neutral. If there is no god, it is as Marquis de Sade claimed, "what is, is right". Atheists must be moral relativists if there is no god because the only remaining source for morals is "man" - each man plays God for himself or tries to play God for other people. Atheists like AR are all moral relativists BECAUSE they don't believe in God.
As for other religions, again, just apply the law of contradiction. Each version of God contradicts the other and all cannot be right. One can be right, or all can be wrong, but all cannot be right. Therefore, one must look at the only one that covers all the bases of reality - Christianity.
Beyond that, I'm saying that if our source is something else than God, and absolutes are associated with that something else, you may then conclude they are not moral at all, that they are more akin to saying it is an absolute that newborns are dependent on responsible adults for their survival. That dependence while absolute is neither moral nor immoral.
Let's just stick to reality shall we? If you think morals can come from something else, then name it. From what specifically? If you can't name it, it doesn't exist.
My argument here can be summarized as follows: 1. Mankind has a source.
Only possible sources are God or the primordial ooze - take your pick.
Only possible sources are God or the primordial ooze - take your pick.
If I may, those are not the only possible sources. There have been several threads on offered on Free Republic discussing the concept of Intelligent Design as an alternative to evolution, or primordial ooze, if you prefer. As far as I can discern, they do not posit that God must be that intelligence. So, we have the possibility of another intelligence as a source of humanity. Might that other intelligence have absolutes? I'll say, yes, it might.
Might another intelligence have begun the creation process, gotten so far, and a second intelligence entered the process and finished it? It's possible. Might the second intelligence have had absolutes? Sure, it's possible. Do I believe that is what happened? No, I don't. I'm just pointing out that the God-man dichotomy you assert is incomplete. There are other possible sources of humanity and each may have absolutes.
Atheists must be moral relativists if there is no god because the only remaining source for morals is "man"
Your statement is simply untrue. If there is no God, there must be another source, or sources for man, as man did not create himself. That source may have absolutes and they may be categorized as moral.
"Thou shalt not kill." It is not thou cannot kill. We clearly can. So why shouldn't we kill? Well, because it will lead to dire consequences if we do. What dire consequences? In the Christian model, loss of eternal life, fellowship with God, those sorts of dire consequenses. In the Hindu model, having another crappy life in your next incarnation, kind of like repeating second grade.
What other dire consequences might be associated with choices that would make them moral choices? I'd say the destruction of all of humanity would be one. If we are here as the result of some intelligent designers that were/are not God, the process of creating us may have included some steps that humans, acting on our free will, could undo. What if that undoing resulted in the destruction of us all. Is that a really, really dire consequence? Yes. Could we do it? In the scenario I presented, yes. Should we do it? I'd say no. It's pretty much a moral absolute to me.
Let's just stick to reality shall we? If you think morals can come from something else, then name it. From what specifically? If you can't name it, it doesn't exist.
I've already given you my moral absolute: Liberty. Its source is the process that created us. In other words, we were created in such a way that liberty is a moral absolute. It is moral because we have the choice of denying liberty. But, if we deny liberty, dire consequences will ensue. Dire consequences always have and always will result from enslavements.
That is what I believe. Don't bother asking me to prove it, it a belief, just as you believe in God but cannot prove His existence.
Your are free, however, to disabuse me of my belief by presenting valid possible situations where enslavement augurs well for humanity.