The issue I try making is that a spiritual absolute would necessarily be the essence of sentience, from which life rises, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which it fell. More the new born, than the wise old man. The light shining through the film than the images on it.

Since no culture could function by simply reveling in sentience, there is a place for this top down, father figure lawgiver, but a point is being reached where conflating the ideal with the absolute is beyond fruitful.

For example, the assumption is of good and bad as some cosmic conflict between righteousness and evil, when they are the biological binary of beneficial and detrimental. The 1/0 at the foundation of organic decision making.

So all the higher order functions; honor, respect, responsibility, love, trust, etc. are nuanced feedback of interactions between life and context, yet when we can’t see beyond good and bad, conflicts tend to become a race to the bottom, of us versus them, white versus black, as neither side can expect the other to hold to this developed social and civil infrastructure. Rather than using the issues as an opportunity to examine the complexities of the situation and potentially evolve further.

Though that seems the sort of debate that is beyond both theists and atheists.

To the social justice warriors, not every acorn gets to be an oak tree. Some are seed, the rest are fertilizer. Wrap your feelings around that.