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njlauren -> RE: What good is morality anyway? (4/13/2014 7:57:27 PM)
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To answer the original question as framed in the header,morality is in some ways ingrained into us as human beings. The altruism that is supposed to be part of religious teaching (the golden rule, the teachings in charity and helping others comes to mind) is apparently hard wired inside human beings, the instincts to help someone else, especially a child, and it is about survival as a species. The problem with morality is when it cannot pass a rational test on helping human beings thrive or otherwise move forward as a species. The morality around sex before marriage once meant something, in a time and place where disease would be unchecked, where an unmarried mother was a disaster to the cultural structure, when not knowing the provenance of child was a bad thing, that moral law made sense, because it protected against real ills. However, today, where marriage is not contract where the bride is purchased and virginity is part of the bride price, but rather where marriage is done in love, having sex before marriage can help insure the couple stays together (sexual incompatibility is a big cause of divorce and issues in the marriage).
The morality of not eating pork in Judaism or shellfish and such were driven both by health concerns and also that nomadic life doesn't work well with keeping pigs, there was a practical reason for those rules that today from that standpoint don't make sense.
In Islam, the rules against interest were put in place to keep bankers and the well off from making money off the poorer people by charging interest that basically kept the lower classes in debt to the rich, it was a moral law that was designed to try and make the lives of the poor more easy and stop the greed of the well off from hurting the poor. Whether it is the best solution is debatable, but it had a real reason in preventing harm.
The misogynistic stuff in morality about women is likewise cultural. The harsh rules against women in Islam is an example of cultural law,that was more than likely Bedoin nonsense grafted onto the faith, which has parallels with women's roles in Judaism. There is religious morality that says women cannot be priests (Catholic Church, Anglican churches outside England), that they don't have what it takes and to have female priests is blasphemy (which if you understand the origin of certain words, like Testimony, comes down to women not having the balls, literally, to be a priest....don't believe me? Friend of mine kept her ordination with the Presbyterians after SRS, they wanted to take away her ordination, arguing that when she took the oath of ordination, that the power of that came no shit from having male genitals, until she cited scripture that said Eunuchs were above them all..the word "Testimony" literally comes from the same root as testes, and it is rooted in ancient tradition that men gave 'testimony' while grabbing their your know whats, which meant swearing on his balls......
So how do you differentiate on which morality is useful and which is not? You apply a needs test to it, and ask what harm does it prevent, what good does it do? You look at Catholic morality of not using birth control, and what you see is no proven benefit and a lot of ills, including people having a lot of kids they cannot afford or educate, and issues like run away AIDS in heavily catholic countries like Uganda (the biggest irony, of course, if that this supposedly moral law can lead to something they claim is a bigger evil, abortion)......Women as priests? Last I checked, churches have women priests and bishops and the world hasn't come to an end. Same sex marriage? Some churches are perfectly fine with it, and as far as I can tell, in the 10 years Mass has had same sex marriage, God hasn't unleashed the end of days or created a giant plague of white castle hamburgers upon the land...
Whereas morality like helping your fellow man, whether privately or through government, has led to a world where most people are not starving to death (far too many are, I realize, but compared to what the good ole days were like, no) or where old people have some hope of dignified life; the morality of Charity has touched many people's lives and made it better, that is easy to see (tell that to a douchebag like Paul Ryan, I am still hearing crickets instead of the screams I should be hearing from the Catholic Bishops about him and his ideas). Morality that has measured effects to improve people's lives or help someone in trouble or prevent harm, like the morality of not stealing or killing, helps keep people going; morality based in silly syllogisms or simply saying "That is what God wants" are generally cultural and therefore are usually either never useful or represent something once useful but today historical baggage, like no sex before marriage or artificial birth control bans.
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