Morality Decreasing With Time?

'Love thy neighbor' and 'love thy enemy' are becoming the universal absolutes for morality.I see the problem arising in 'hate the sin, not the sinner'.In the effort to love the sinner in equality, we are ceasing to see the sin. We are in many cases declaring the sin not to be sin any longer. From a Christian perspective morality is indeed declining.The thing is, we Christians don't see it being a perspective. We see it as being asolute truth. If God has ordained the moral norms, and God is eternal and unchanging, the morals therefore must be unchanging and timeless. So, a blanket statement 'morality is in decline' is absolutely true. We don't see there being any such thing as Muslim morals, or christian morals, or societal morals, or any other subjective morals.Again, the problem appears to be in the interpretation of morals. All morality comes form God, but God has left the decision about what is moral somewhat up to us. The decription of what is moral is changing in our lifetime, as it has before. Therefore, to say that morals are declining-shifting-changing-is true, IMO.Christian absolutist morals are in decline...we just don't acknowledge the seperation between Christian absolute truth, and absolute truth. In our opinion there is none. So, hence the statement 'morals are in decline'?

I had a conversation with Jon about whether or not God has pride. I think this is along the same lines.God does not have morals, He is The Moral.God does not have ego, He is Ego.I am Who Am.Weird, huh?

That is the general idea behind religion, yes.Men are still confused at times about what His standards are.

Well, I should rephrase it. God is the moral norm, and God can't change, so morals can't change.Men just don't know enough about God to know what is morally absolute, and our opinions change over time...WE change our minds, not God.

Relative to absolute truth, I think.Doing evil may be good, if it is done for a greater good which brings you closer to the absolute truth.Killing in relation to a lesser evil, is wrong.Killing in relation to a greater evil, is right.

You mean from Old Testament stories? Just wanting more clarification.

And no one ever will. We are all just guessing.Scottness' best guess at absolute truth tells him that by those standards, morality is decreasing.Since his best guess is one which he believes to be more than a guess, then he is justified in saying that to him, morality is decreasing.It may not appear that way to anyone else.He believes that absolute truth which he has found applies to everyone whether they know it or not.And before I put more words in his mouth, I will shut up.

I can not tell in what context you are reading these words. In the context of what I am saying, they refer to what you elsewhere have called 'Question'.Since I have gone this far, I may as well finish my analogy.I have a version of absolute truth. It differs from yours, it differs form scottness; so from my point of view everyone else is part of the problem of moral decline, and vice vesa.Since we can't all agree, we have to pick the greatest common denominator. It seems like the greatest common denominator is 'love thy neighbor' and grant all neighbors the same rights and freedoms. Since loving thy nieghbor is a good thing, it is hard to say that morality is in decline. Very very hard.Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.

You can't! I can't! None can!I can only tell you how I used the term.I said that morals are our perssonal guesses at truth.Collective morals such as 'love thy neighbor' are the colsest we can come to absolute truths.You pointed out that some moral behavior based on 'thou shalt not kill' for example, is relative.Relative to what?It is relative to 'love thy neighbor'. An absolute truth, or so it seems.If killing shows less love, it is evil.If it shows more love, it is good.It is evil to kill out of hate.It is good to kill because a child's life is in danger.The situations are relative to the greater good, and the greatest good is Absolute Truth.Edited by anastasia, : grammar

Watched any good National Geographic specials lately?

I'm just being funny, sorry.I read some of that myself about 10 years ago, but I had no idea it was the same thing till I watched it. I wasn't too into the subject back then, I guess.Anyway, I didn't come up with a good answer to that problem yet about the violent-seeming nature of God. The best thing to do is take the stories one by one as they have been doing on evc...and just realize that they are not the over-all picture.

So, I am going to contend, again, that the closest we have come to a moral absolute as a SOCIETY, is;'Love thy neighbor'.Nevermind the 'as yourself' bit. Whether or not it should be or ever was part of the equation, it most certainly isn't now.Our laws give it no meaning. We are obliged to treat our neighbor well no matter how crappy we might feel towards ourself. There is no such thing in a court of law as 'I had a bad day". Or month, or year, for that matter.We are not even forced to love ourselves either. Sure, people get on you about smoking and excercising and eating MacD's, but I have yet to see massage or meditation or diet imposed by law. We can't smoke in certain places, sure, only because it affects our neighbor.The absolute in society is 'love thy neighbor, in spite of yourself' and of all your feelings toward them, religious or otherwise, that makes you sick to your stomach. Our own opinion of morality is swallowed up in the one command 'love thy neighbor'.A person who says morality is decreasing..I will venture a guess..usually had two examples in mind; abortion and SSA laws.On the first subject, there is no meeting of the minds about who exactly the neighbor is. Is it the mother, or the baby?On the second subject 'loving the sinner' has in all reality swallowed up all notion that there was sin. This is problematic for the slight? majority of society that is still not convinced. In the very least it is problematic because it has no parallel that I can think of off-hand (I am open to reminders).I say that using 'love thy neighbor' as the absolute creates division. Societies (not individuals!) are getting closer to Absolute Truth in this regard, and in many many ways morality is increasing. But at the same time, the closer we get the more division there is, which kind of makes sense. We can consider ourselves as getting closer to a final answer, and upon seeing this, we rush to get involved and say 'no, this can't be it!'. I imagine an encounter with Absolute Truth in the form of God to be quite similar. Indeed the closer we get, the more the contentions that we are as a society 'playing God'.

I never said that the absolutes are not subject to interpretation. In fact, I said they were. If God is an absolute, we have known all along that He is subject to interpretation. If 'love' is God as a moral absolute, it is still open to interpretation. Point is, both sides claim to be working towards the same absolute of 'love'. Sorry, SSA= same sex attraction.

I KNEW you would say that The absolute is still absolute.Grass is green..but how green? what shade? is green just blue and yellow in reality? can a blind person even understand this absolute?Every religion is an interpretation of The Absolute. But is God actually bound any of them? As everyone points out, religion is man-made, but that sure doesn't mean there is no God.

Love is not always part of the equation?As some have shown in this thread, survival was of primary importance for societies at one point.Only when the society has reached a comfortable zone in loving itself, can it get around to loving its neighbor.