Quote Originally Posted by Viking View Post
That is though to dodge the question. You will need to make a circular argument at some point, argumenting like you do, because moral needs to start somewhere - a few things are the building blocks from whom every other moral conclusion must come from. If I say something is wrong, then it simply is. What is wrong and what is right varies from culture to culture. If I, on the other hand, claimed that it was wrong because it collided with some already established moral idea, then I would naturally have to argue my case.
For a religious person morality starts from the beginning of the universe, put there by God. For religious people morals are also universally applicable, they do not vary by time and place. Your "if I say something is wrong, then it simply is" statement is a hangover from religious thinking, as evidenced by the moral relativism in the next sentence! The two viewpoints are not compatable, either you hold your moral views because they have utility, or morality is axiomatic.



Yet any religious argument starts with a secular one:

Conclusion: a god does exist
Question: is what this god says is right and wrong, actually what is right and wrong?

That a god can be a source for moral is not at all self-evident. Maybe it is the righteous people that go to hell, that is the price for being righteous - whereas those who take the easy path and spend the eternity in paradise are the morally corrupt people.
Actually, it is self evident. A God who creates the universe gets to ordain whatever laws he likes, and that is the root of your morality - an evil God creating the universe would be a God who created us to see him as "evil" by giving us a diametrically oppossed viewpoint to his own.

Who is the president of Germany? I have really no idea. Berlusconi is the PM, not the president.

The president that I want is a toothless and ceremonial one - someone whose name is unknown to large portions of the society, simply because he is someone of little importance.
This is the core of my point. No one knows who the titular leader of Germany is, because it isn't the Kaisar, as a result the power vacume is filled by the Chancellor one rung down - who becomes more important by default. Same thing in Italy, you can't have a weak President and the sort of parliamentary democracy a monarchy usually enjoys in the West today.