I really do wish he would explain his position more because when I hear terms like "absolute morality" it sounds like they don't know what they are talking about.
Is the behavior of an individual not of his surroundings? Do you not notice how some kids and thus adults behave differently depending on which family they come from? Multiply that on many families and you get a whole region of people that we call culture. Yes, people's behavior and sense of morality come from the rules of the culture. And yes, culture does change, and no, it is not by whims that culture changes.
This is so evident because just a few centuries ago it was ok and common in the Christian world to torture people in public, frequently until they died, but today that is wrong. So where was this "absolute morality" for all these centuries when torture and slavery were ok?
Is the behavior of an individual not of his surroundings? Do you not notice how some kids and thus adults behave differently depending on which family they come from? Multiply that on many families and you get a whole region of people that we call culture. Yes, people's behavior and sense of morality come from the rules of the culture. And yes, culture does change, and no, it is not by whims that culture changes.
This is so evident because just a few centuries ago it was ok and common in the Christian world to torture people in public, frequently until they died, but today that is wrong. So where was this "absolute morality" for all these centuries when torture and slavery were ok?
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
