On Thursday, February 1, 2018 at 1:58:19 PM UTC-7, Chris L Peterson wrote:
And IMO, highly dangerous thinking. Once you propose
absolutes, you allow people to claim that their choices are those
absolutes. It takes reason out of the equation. It is the fiction of
such absolutes that has resulted (and continues to result) in the
great harm religions usually cause.

Ah, you have addressed the specific point I thought I'd mention.

However, religion, by its very nature, posits the existence of
God, and so it will put forward moral absolutes even in the
absence of secular ethical philosophers who propose natural law
theory.

So it fails one of the tests for dangerous thinking; it lacks the
power to make things worse.

Religion is - one of the forces in this world that discourage
people from lying, cheating, and stealing, and it is a force that
encourages people to make charitable contributions, and so on.

If non-religious thinking goes to the extreme that you advocate of
being different from religious thinking, then it has the problem
that it will fail to provide moral guidance in a form that is
understandable to ordinary people.

The "American civil religion", or secular belief in the democratic
principles of the Declaration of Independence and so on as having
inherent absolute moral value, is at least understandable and
emotionally appealing. That our innate sense of fairness and
justice reflects something as absolute as mathematics - may or may
not be true, but it seems the best way for us to understand it at
this time.

John Savard