Do you wish there's a god?

[The Grand Nudger]

 Excellent post, thank you.

The issue is complicated for me because  I remain a 'cultural Catholic'.  That means my day-to-day  moral values remain based in  Judaeo-Christian values. In practice that means I can agree intellectually on a given moral proposition, but remain emotionally against it. Terribly inconvenient at times,  I can tell you.

Yes, my positions is that there are no moral absolutes. However, based on what you've said, I'm no longer sure I'm a moral relativist.. My position is more  reactive than proactive. I tend to instinctively  question absolute claims, religious, political or even scientific.

Logically, my positions is that many behaviours we see as wrong are actually  morally neutral in and of themselves. The morality arises from the situation, intent and outcome.

It's always good to question claims.  I agree, and moral realism also posits that many things we see as wrong are or can be morally neutral.  If moral realism were true, a great majority of the things we think are wrong (or right) would likely fit that category.  There are different ways of balancing those three contributing factors but they also play a part in a full realist appraisal.  They don't modify the nature of the act as hypothetically good or bad, but they can modify desert, and (and by) modify(ing) our understanding of the moral agents motivation.  Particularly in light of our limitations.  The sort of absolute value that realists assert and relativists deny has nothing to do with situation, intent, or even outcome.  

A realist asserts that "shooting people is bad" is a true statement in an absolute sense, because nothing about the opinion of culture changes the nature of a gunshot wound, and that nature is what makes it bad.

A relativist asserts that "shooting people is bad" cannot be a true statement in an absolute sense because it's not anything about an act itself...rather, the opinion of culture that makes things bad.

A subjectivist, just to throw that in there, asserts that "shooting people is bad" is only a true statement if it is the opinion of the person making it that this is so.

Moralities that require a god are relative cultural artifacts based on the assumption of a gods personal opinion....or even less, completely arbitrary.