Original Sin?

Quote: Face

How in the world is this not proof that morality shifts? By definition and by example, it has done just that. Where is there room to argue?

There is no room to argue, of course it
shifts. There is no master book of morality
that applies to every age of man. Even
the 10 commandments are so vague that
we still argue about what they mean.

It was common for Christian led armies in
the Thirty Years War between Catholics
and Protestants to vanquish a town, rape
all the women, steal all the children, and
kill all the men. Apparently the moving
target of morals takes a back seat when you
have a cause to advance. That war is a
fascinating time for the Church, it wiped out
25-40% of Central Europe, all in the name
of Jesus. Those wascally Catholics and Lutherans
just couldn't get along..

Quote: Face

Semantics? Yes, that is what I am arguing. I get what you and the Good Father are saying. Just because it was accepted to enslave blacks in the 1800's doesn't mean it was righteous and just.

Let's consider two actions: killing and slavery.

Killing has been forbidden in most, if not all, human societies going back to the beginning of civilization. But there were exceptions. Self defense goes back a long way. So does killing soldiers in war (and even captives and non-combatants). Killing someone accidentally has never seen the same way as killing someone on purpose. Malice also counts, and so we have a word for killing people maliciously, and that word is murder.

Slavery was rarely forbidden in most cultures. Some even failed to put any limits on what a master could do with or to a slave. War captives, combatants or not, were routinely enslaved. Often peoples in conquered lands were fair game. This persisted for a very long time, right into the modern era (ie after the Renaissance).

Slavery is one instance where morality changed to exclude it, very much as a result of political philosophy, of all things, beginning in the XVIII Century. But even that took an awful long time. Or is still taking a long time. Outright slavery and forms of serfdom, debt-servitude and such, still exist in many parts of the world.

With murder it was perceptions and social attitudes which changed. Dueling went from exception to murder, for example. Killing non-combatants in war, though it still happens, is seen as wrong and immoral (not to mention, when did a Western army last loot a city?)

Quote: Face

Where is my error? I fancy myself rather good at English and reading comprehension. The dictionary definition of these things match what I've been saying. Further, looking back into history, I see the evidence that I am speaking truth. Men, in accordance with the law and their God, behaved in this manner with no repercussions whatsoever. Many were quite successful, many are men whose statues adorn our places of importance and fill our texts today. They are remembered and revered as Great Men.

Now I'm not arguing, but I'm asking. How in the world is this not proof that morality shifts? By definition and by example, it has done just that. Where is there room to argue? Help me understand.

You come pretty close to answering your own question when you said earlier in your post, "I get what you and the Good Father are saying. Just because it was accepted to enslave blacks in the 1800's doesn't mean it was righteous and just." The morality, meaning the distinction that slavery was bad behavior, never shifted and never will. You can't take something like slavery and shift it into good behavior. Even if the entire universe considered it "right" it would not make it good. It makes no difference is "great men" partake in it or Christians or atheists, it matters not if they were successful or not; what is good is good and what is bad is bad. The slavery of blacks in the 1800s was, is, and always will be an immoral evil act and this cannot be shifted? I don't know why or what else you could possibly need for proof?

You could replace this discussion on slavery with murder, genocide, lying, cheating, stealing, adultery, rape, etc. There are objective moral truths whose morality, meaning if they have the distinction of being bad or good behavior, are not going to shift from bad to good no matter how popular the activity or how "right" people think they are. This is a principle of fundamental morality.

Evenbob, it is not surprising to me that your refusal to acknowledge the reality of sin causes you to be so confused when it comes to morality. It seems to you that if people are doing it; whether it is slavery, cannibalism, or war crimes it somehow justifies and legitimizes these actions for you. You get hung up on the cosmic nature of sin, but if you could rather look at it in its naked secular sense I think you can see that human beings do not always do what they know or feel is right. This is sin.

You might say that those who were enslaving blacks didn't know or felt it was right and I would say you are wrong! Every human being from the beginning knows it is wrong to enslave another for no good cause or to ever treat a human being as an object or an animal (yes even like one of your beloved cockroaches). Want proof? Look at the disgusting bobbles you collect and the other ways in which whites had to constantly try to degrade and dehumanize black people. They were constantly fighting against an interior feeling that they knew they were wrong, it was scratching at them from inside their mind and soul. They were desperate to stop this nagging notion of injustice planted deep down inside them so they strove assuage their guilt and to prove these people were not human was one way to do it. Twisting and manipulating religion was another. Reacting in violence to anyone who would dare question how blacks were being treated was another. Then of course the lynchings and beatings and torturing of the slaves who by running away, speaking out, or in some other way dared to show that they were human beings. They needed to be made to not even look human anymore. It is all so sad and caused by our weakness, or desire to determine what is good or bad for ourselves (the fault of original sin) and to ignore the God given conscience we all have.

People did not always believe that slavery is wrong.
At the time of the bible, slavery was a normal part of society.
The bible, Jesus, Paul did not speak out against the institution of slavery.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/sla_bibl2.htm
There are rules for the proper treatment, punishment, creation, and potential release of slaves. Rules about who can and who cannot be slaves.
Nothing about it being immoral.
More on Jesus and slavery: http://pathofthebeagle.com/2011/10/20/what-did-jesus-say-about-slavery/

Quote: FrGamble

The morality, meaning the distinction that slavery was bad behavior, never shifted and never will.

It depends.

Do you consider morality objective or subjective? If the latter, then what is moral is what people, singly or collectively, deem to be moral. And this can change in time. In fact it has to change in time. If the former, then a bad act is a bad act, regardless of what other people believe about it, or what arguments they may have for their position.

The problem with religion is that its morality is subjective. Not to mention it is largely outdated. Of course I say this because there is no such thing as "God," therefore all of the moral teachings of all religions are the teachings of men (mostly) as set down on papyrus ages ago. But I would say the same if I believed in a deity who set down such laws, unless it was willing to explain the why of each one. Otherwise moral law coming from a transcendent entity with phenomenal cosmic powers are just as arbitrary or subjective as a child's whims.

Of course, if ethics and morality are as objective as science, that doesn't mean the whole of morality has always been known any more than the entirety of science has ever or will ever be known. It's a bit like radio. Radio waves emanating from the Sun and the universe have always been reaching Earth, but until recently we didn't even know they existed.

More concretely, was slavery wrong from the beginning of humanity until it was largely abolished a few decades ago? Yes. Did people know it to be wrong all that time? Most of them didn't. Does lack of knowledge excuse their actions? That's actually a very complicated question to answer.

In danger of getting sidetracked unto a discussion of slavery in the Bible instead of objective moral truths let's clarify a few things. Arguably the central and most foundational story in the OT is God freeing the Israelites from slavery. This was a slavery akin to our modern conception of slavery. It was forced upon the Israelites not because they had done something wrong or were prisoners of war. They were not paying off a debt. They were enslaved because of who they were as a race of people. They were treated inhumanly, their male children slaughtered, and forced to do hard labor for the Egyptians. Jesus connects directly to this foundational story as His mission in the NT to free all people from the slavery of sin.

The modern conception of slavery that we are familiar with through the treatment of blacks in the 1800s is not commonly found outside of the Exodus event. However, I disagree with your links and feel they do a very poor job of interpreting the Scriptures and pointing out just how small the slaver's bible was. They both need to read Paul's letter to Philemon again and the artificial distinction about not applying Jesus teaching, for example of the Golden Rule, to slaves because of examples given in parables is fairly weak.

Anyway, regardless of how someone could take certain verses out of context and make it seem like the Bible supports slavery, the proof that this is not a proper reading of the Scriptures is that in their heart they would still know that treating another human being like property is evil no matter what they think the Bible says.

Quote: Nareed

Do you consider morality objective or subjective? If the latter, then what is moral is what people, singly or collectively, deem to be moral. And this can change in time. In fact it has to change in time. If the former, then a bad act is a bad act, regardless of what other people believe about it, or what arguments they may have for their position.

Morality is objective. I don't think anything could be more clear. As you put it a bad act is a bad act and even if people vote and they say the majority of us now think killing an unborn child is not a bad thing - it still remains a bad act. Now there are many arguments that are used, some of them very powerful to lessen someone's culpability or to help understand why their choice was made, but it does not change the objective morality of the act.

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The problem with religion is that its morality is subjective.

What?!? Can you give an example of this?

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Of course, if ethics and morality are as objective as science, that doesn't mean the whole of morality has always been known any more than the entirety of science has ever or will ever be known. It's a bit like radio. Radio waves emanating from the Sun and the universe have always been reaching Earth, but until recently we didn't even know they existed.

I've been fighting off using the scientific knowledge analogy, but I do think it is a good one. The Earth has always been round and it didn't change its shape to conform to the idea that it was flat at some point. The biggest problem with this analogy however is that the knowledge of what is morally good or bad is already given to us, it is ingrained in us. No one can claim ignorance that they didn't know it was wrong to steal, rape and murder.

Quote:

More concretely, was slavery wrong from the beginning of humanity until it was largely abolished a few decades ago? Yes. Did people know it to be wrong all that time? Most of them didn't. Does lack of knowledge excuse their actions? That's actually a very complicated question to answer.

It is complicated and it goes back to the question you raised at the beginning. Morality is objective and known by us, but our lives are complicated and subjective. Applying objective moral truths to the complicated lives of human beings with mercy, compassion, and understanding is the field of moral theology and a great task of religion.

Quote: FrGamble

Arguably the central and most foundational story in the OT is God freeing the Israelites from slavery. This was a slavery akin to our modern conception of slavery.

There is a very big difference between the Exodus story and slavery in the Americas from the 1500s to the 1800s: the latter one was actually real.

Egypt has been studied and excavated for centuries, going back to the Egyptians themselves studying their own past. Nothing has ever been found to suggest large numbers of Israelites were ever held in slavery.

Granted Egyptians were dutifully negligent in recording defeats or setbacks, a slave population on the scale told in the OT would be impossible to hide. Three would be other sources from other places. Excess slaves would have been traded for goods scarce but desired in Egypt, like wood from Lebanon.

So, if people's perception of what is moral has changed,

just like people's perception of the shape of the world has changed,

but what is actually moral has not changed,

just like the actual shape of the earth has not changed,

how do we know we now have it right?

The earth was thought to be flat. Then spherical. Then more egg-shaped. But really, it is basically round but more lumpy.

How do we know we now understand the true unchanged morality?

it sounds a lot like the revelation of god and stuff, where everyone before had it wrong, but as things were revealed to us, well, we've got it right this time. don't we?