[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[quote]Sloth wrote:
[quote]therajraj wrote:
[quote]Sloth wrote:
[quote]therajraj wrote:
Exactly. Modern civilized thought is all we really need in deciding what is “wrong” and what is “right” in society. [/quote]
Then why the need for quotation marks around right and wrong? It’s suggests an uncomfortableness with the distinction between right and wrong.[/quote]
I put quotations because some things that are considered right and wrong in modern civilized thought differ from what is considered right and wrong in religion.
According to the bible, stoning an adulterer is considered “right” but according to modern civilized thought it is considered “wrong”[/quote]
Well, it was Christian society that gave ‘modern civilized society’ the ideal. It didn’t take anything close to an atheistic or agnostic majority to overturn the practice. For Christians, despite continued wrongs committed in it’s name, Christ long ago gave the thumbs down to the practice of stoning sinners. Unfortunately, humanity is often extremely slow at taking things to heart and putting them into practice. For the Christian, while Christ may have left a path to walk, it was still human beings who had to travel it. Look, vengeance, to the point of blood, even death, against unfaithful spouses has been and will always be with humanity. I’m sure nonreligious and even atheists have cast their own stones in a fit of rage over unfaithfullness. Of course, today the stones exit the barrel of a firearm.
Christians (oh, I’m sure there are niche sects, don’t get me wrong) do not believe that old testament prescriptions reflect law fullfilled (as it was ultimately planned). We tend to believe they often reflected and even made concession to the people, and already established practices of the time. Today, many would say an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, would be excessive. But, what if yester-year the most likely scenario would have been blood vengeance against an entire family or tribe for the loss of a finger of one’s own family or tribal member? What if the custom, in regards to unfaithful wives, led often led to not only the death of the wives, but the kinsmen who married them off?
There is a peculiar practice today of imagining an alternative and utopian trek through history. One guided by ‘modern thought.’ And there is an even more peculiar practice of forgetting the ‘civilizing’ that was nurtured in Christendom, often with devout men leading the way. Abolition, desegregation, DUTY to family and children, DUTY towards charity, etc. “Modern civilized society” is largely resting, even partying it up, on the surplus left by more devout forebearers, who already wrestled and tamed some of the biggest issues of history for us. “Modern civilized society” has it easy. Perhaps that’s why so many people can find the time to try to save cows from ending up on your dinner plate.
Even so, this MCS is doing rather well in spending off it’s social surplus. 50% out of wedlock rates for hispanics, 70% for blacks, now up to 20+ for whites. Then there’s the crime and poverty attributed with these and other broken homes. And, of course, there’s the resulting dependancy on government which follows. More prisons, and more welfare dollars and programs. And, of course, declining educational results.
Yeah, fathers, increasingly without a sense of familial duty, basically. Mothers who could’ve used alot more of that old-fashioned prudence and self mastery. And the predictably feral children who start building their rap sheets before graduating from high school. If they graduate. If, they weren’t just graduated to get such problem children out of the school’s hair…
Meh, looks like the troll post (op) got me. I’m out of here.[/quote]
I think you’re getting into the wide world of moral relativism here, and I like it.
Religion has largely served as a medium through which civilizations have established some sort of “ideal” or “absolute”, namely a rigid, unwavering standard that we can always look to as a measuring block of our own morality. How close do we come to that standard? With moral relativism, there is no higher authority that establishes this “absolute”. We are the standard because our morals are based on how WE feel about things, not how we are instructed to by another, more powerful being/entity/deity/etc.
While Christian thought and morality is largely (most would say almost entirely) responsible for Western society’s mores, Islam has had just as large an influence in other parts of the world. Essentially, the conflict between ANY two cultures who are shaped by different religions stems in varying degrees from the differences in what that “absolute” is.
The Pope made the case in a speech of his right before he was named as Pope that the world may be experiencing some sort of moral decay due in large part to a general move away from recognizing some sort of absolute standard from a higher moral power, whether it be God or another name one assigns it. A loss of not only religion, but of spirituality as well.
I’m not into the Pope, but I think he’s on to something.[/quote]
from the Pope to the Sceptic