Are we prisoners of sin

The flaw in empathy-based ethics (and by extension the "golden rule" of Christianity) is that not all people have the same desires and fears. For example, I may find that shaking hands is a positive experience, and so would wish to shake hands with any new people I meet. A person from a different culture may be offended by such a custom - for example, a Saudi Arabian would be offended if I offered him my left hand.This can be applied to other scenarios as well. A person from a culture where "property rights" do not exist and resources are shared communally by the group would not identify "theft" as "bad."Empathy-based ethics work well only within the same cultural background. Just like morality in general, empathy is subjective.

Now you see, that is precisely the bizaare kind of "logic" that I was talking about Christianity's teachings about morality leading to.And, yes, it is indeed survival of the fittest. Only you do not have any clue what that means. It does not mean, as you are using it here, that the biggest and meanest individual fitness can do whatever he wants. In the case of morality, it's the peaceful, cooperative individuals who are much more fit than the bully individuals. Here's the introduction to the subject on Wikipedia (Fitness (biology) at Fitness (biology) - Wikipedia):

quote:

---

Fitness (often denoted w in population genetics models) is a central concept in evolutionary theory. It describes the capability of an individual of certain genotype to reproduce, and usually is equal to the proportion of the individual's genes in all the genes of the next generation. If differences in individual genotypes affect fitness, then the frequencies of the genotypes will change over generations; the genotypes with higher fitness become more common. This process is called natural selection.

​

An individual's fitness is manifested through its phenotype. As phenotype is affected by both genes and environment, the fitnesses of different individuals with the same genotype are not necessarily equal, but depend on the environment in which the individuals live. However, since the fitness of the genotype is an averaged quantity, it will reflect the reproductive outcomes of all individuals with that genotype.

​

As fitness measures the quantity of the copies of the genes of an individual in the next generation, it doesn't really matter how the genes arrive in the next generation. That is, for an individual it is equally "beneficial" to reproduce itself, or to help relatives with similar genes to reproduce, as long as similar amount of copies of individual's genes get passed on to the next generation. Selection which promotes this kind of helper behaviour is called kin selection.

​

The concept is particularly difficult to understand and frequently misunderstood; J.B.S. Haldane when discussing it with John Maynard Smith is reported to have described it as "a bugger".

---

Individual humans can have a very tough time trying to survive completely on their own, especially in the wild. It's even more difficult to raise children to maturity so that they can themselves have and raise children, and so on for many generations. The individual who murders and steals and rapes at will is not increasing his fitness, especially since the other humans will band together to stop him.You see, that's what humans do, they band together and work together for the common good. Be cooperative and willing to join the group and work with the others and your chances of survival increase greatly. Not only that, but the chances of your children's survival also increases. The cooperative individuals are more fit because those traits ensure that their genes will be more represented in the population.Yes, it is about survival of the fittest and now you know what fitness actually is. First, "moral absolutes" is a myth. Second, while Christians give a lot of lip service to "moral absolutes", they never practice it. Do you observe every single law in the Bible? No, you do not. Not only do Christians pick and choose which laws to observe (more usually done on a church/denominational level than an individual one, though since everybody builds his own theology based on his misunderstanding of his church's teachings, there is more picking and choosing going on at the individual level than they'd like to admit to themselves), but they also choose to not observe certain laws for particular occasions. IOW, those "moral absolutes" are actually relative rules. The most glaring example that most here are familiar with is the willingness of creationists to suspend laws against lying, which they must justify as acceptable because they're doing it out of their "love for Jesus" (I kept catching that creationist I quoted earlier in one lie after another, even though he proclaimed to me that "nothing is more important than the truth").Morality is relative to the society it's practiced in. One size does not fit all. Each society's situation is different and the conduct of its members must adjust to meet the situation they face. Morality is "right behavior" and avoiding and preventing "wrong behavior". "Right behavior" has the effect of strengthening the group, increasing the sense of membership and security within the group, minimizing the friction of interacting with the others, all of which increases the group's chances of survival and hence the individuals' within that group. "Wrong behavior" has the opposite effects of dividing the group, increasing friction between members, threatening the survival of the group.Please note that that is true even in the absense of "moral absolutes". In other words, your absolutes have no effect on the existence and importance of morality. Who gives them that right? Society does, the group that you belong to. That's how society survives, by encouraging right behavior and discouraging or even stopping wrong behavior. If you don't like the rules, then you may leave society and go off to live completely on your own in the bush. And in doing so your fitness will have gone way down.Because religion is often a part of those early societies, the rules of right and wrong behavior became codified within the context of that religion. The rules of one such ancient society eventually got written down and those writings became part of the canon for another religion. And that is where your "moral absolutes" came from. And now you can see that your so-called "moral absolutes" are really nothing more than the rules of that ancient society relative to the situation of that society.

A common story in our church is of a Baptist Sunday School student doing a class assignment where they are to learn what the other churches believe by interviewing ministers from those other churches. When she learned that Unitarian Universalists don't believe in Hell, she was shocked. "So why be good?" "Because it is the better way."I live in an urban area with 13 million other people. When I drive to and from work and elsewhere, I share the road with a sizable portion of those 13 million people. I have neighbors living all around me. The stores are always fairly full of people. How can we possibly all live crowded so close together and arrive safely to where we're going and get what we need in a fairly timely manner? Because the vast majority of us follow "the better way" of being good. We cooperate with each other -- I will let other drivers make lane changes and I will get out of the way of faster traffic and most of them do the same for me -- and, when a potential problem does arise, we use politeness and courtesy to keep the situation from escalating and we resolve the problem.If you instead want to just be bad, then society will deal with you as it must. Bullshit! Human authority as embodied by society is the only authority we have. Even if something that could be identified as "God" were to exist, the rules we follow and the means by which they are enforced are still solely through human authority.If that's not good enough for you and you want to be just as bad as you can be, then society will deal with you as it must. Not you, but rather society. Morality is mostly about how we deal with other people, so as long as your decisions will impact other people, then what the right behavior is for you is no longer your decision alone. Nobody can arbitrarily decide what good is, in part because very few, if any, people are able to predict what effect that particular behavior will have on society. It takes time for a society to learn what works and what doesn't work.

(please excuse this off-topic item)I made the phrase up, really. I meant it to mean that you are defining the location of the 'power' in terms of conflict between two entities (the Marxist bit) and by highlighting this attempting to reduce the power differential (the Emancipatory bit).I do apologise, I've been reading social research again

hi Granny, so why do we have police and law courts. Surely we do all believe in sin which is a breaking of law whether they are Gods laws of mans.

No apology is needed at all! It is a neat phrase and expresses your idea very well. It's too bad that the writing one finds searching online for it is so incredibly dreadful.You must have a "great mind", since there are clearly others thinking "alike" with you.

quote:

---

so why do we have police and law courts. Surely we do all believe in sin which is a breaking of law whether they are Gods laws of mans.

---

Sin is not something to believe in. It is a word used by many religious today to describe moral wrongdoing or an offense against God not just any mistake or wrongdoing.Elective abortion is considered immoral, but it's legal.Is speeding considered immoral or an offense against God?
Is one considered immoral if they don't pay their taxes? Is it an offense against God?Someone who doesn't believe in God or isn't religious would just say the action is immoral.

As I understand these ideas, crimes are defined by societies. Breaking a law is a crime. Sins are supposed to be defined by supernatural authority. Breaking a religious commandment is a sin. So, if one were alone on an island (ie not in a society), for example, one could sin, but could not commit a crime. A given action might be a sin, or a crime, or both, or neither.If it is not established that there is/are god/gods, the idea of sin is null. That is why religious taboos are not transferrable to unbelievers.Edited by Woodsy, : Simultaneous post with purpledawn's.

Words like must, ought to, should, or supposed to can only stem from a world governed by absolutes where transcendent good and wrong exist; you cannot tell me I mustn’t tell untruths, for even if I lied it would make no difference, seeing that it’s nowhere forbidden to lie. Your argument is as follows, there are no absolutes, but despite this a group of people who have come together can formulate their own absolutes by which every member of that group would have to abide by if he wishes to continue existing and living in that group.Okay so at least we agree that without God there aren’t any absolutes, so everything goes that has been accepted and agreed upon by the majority. And any action not in keeping with what has been agreed upon by the group will then have to be amoral/immoral.In light of this note the following quote made by anthropologist Ruth Benedict illustrates in Patterns of Culture:We might suppose that in the matter of taking life all peoples would agree on condemnation. On the contrary, in the matter of homicide, it may be held that one kills by custom his two children, or that a husband has a right of life and death over his wife or that it is the duty of the child to kill his parents before they are old. It may be the case that those are killed who steal fowl, or who cut their upper teeth first, or who are born on Wednesday. Among some peoples, a person suffers torment at having caused an accidental death, among others; it is a matter of no consequence. Suicide may also be a light matter, the recourse of anyone who has suffered some slight rebuff, an act that constantly occurs in a tribe. It may be the highest and noblest act a wise man can perform. The very tale of it, on the other hand, may be a matter for incredulous mirth, and the act itself, impossible to conceive as human possibility. Or it may be a crime punishable by law, or regarded as a sin against the gods. (pp.45-46)So according to the above data and in line with your definition of what is morality, if the killing of innocent babies is the majority consensus in a given part then that is moral thing to do right, so not killing and fighting for the survival of babies would be immoral. If lying is a common and acceptable practice in a certain culture then not lying would be the immoral thing to do. You know what I think, I think this is rubbish. Your definition is rubbish because we all know that certain practices and behaviors are just plain wrong. Things such as slavery, torture, or political repression are regarded as immoral regardless of your background. There is a universal right and wrong that all submit to or at least recognize (their conscience will haunt them if they break it), I’m not saying that everything is universal but there are things that everyone from all around the world agrees to be moral and immoral. Even if it would be the majority consensus to kill unborn babies, cripples, the old we know that this practices are outright immoral.When Hitler killed all those Jews and the greatest part of Germany supported his actions, then to adhere to your definition of morality Hitler was acting morally since this was the moral consensus of his day in his country. Hitler might have bypassed the moral consensus of the Jewish people by going into their land to retrieve them but once they were in his country he could do with them as he saw feet, and by that times the existence of the Jewish peoples was immoral according to the consensus of Germany.Or take the eugenics movement upon majority consensus it was viewed moral to sterilize hundreds of thousands of people in some states it was even made law. But sit back and ask yourselves is any act regardless of how evil it seems to me how wicked and abhorrent it seems in nature, any act simply because the majority agrees that it is moral could it really be moral.According to your definition of morality what suits the society is moral but if saving lives is moral in the part of the world you find yourself then in other parts of the world saving innocent lives would be immoral if there that is the consensus. If the whole world agreed that the existence of the Jewish nation and people as an example is amoral and that everything Jewish for that matter should be eradicated would it be moral just because it is the majority view or societal view.Were the Aztecs morally correct by performing all those human sacrifices, was slavery morally correct because it used to be the majority consensus. By your definition of what is moral this acts were indeed moral seeing that the societies practicing them had agreed that they were.

Sure I can. I can also refuse to do business with you (for example) if I find that you lie, since societies would be impossible without trust. These things are regarded as moral in some places. They are even promoted by certain kinds of religion! Check the recent news from Afghanistan! I have been told that this is exactly the case in the middle east, in some contexts. That is why people there make extravagant threats that they have no possibility of carrying out. Those things would be the minimum required for people to live together at all, surely?What you are doing is applying the standards of your own culture to everyone. Those who live in other cultures would no doubt like to apply very different standards to you.An interesting phenomenon is the constant change in what I have seen called the moral zeitgeist. That is, the majority moral consensus. For example, slavery used to be generally accepted (see the bible for examples). These days, slavery is mostly disapproved of.Personally, I hope that with worldwide travel and communication a common moral zeitgeist will become much more generally accepted.

Yes, that's what people have been telling you for several pages of posts now. Does this have anything to do with being "prisoners of sin," though? And you appear to disapprove of the Aztecs and their murderous ways. How do you feel about Joshua, who "fit the battle of Jerico" and then "utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword." Is that behavior moral or sinful, or is it OK?

This is an flawed statement, since the opposite has been observed to be true. There is great mistrust in the world, that is why skepticism is so widespread, because people have distrust about many things or things that they are not easy with. But despite this society carries on unharmed. However what if lying is the consensus as in the example you supply below, here you have no choice but to tolerate my lying even if you do not agree seeing that this is morally acceptable thing to do. Thank you for providing me with this example, where lying is the consensus of the day, so in this context people are being deliberately fed propaganda, but nonetheless it is the consensus and therefore is the moral thing. North Korea is another prime example where deception and brainwashing are considered moral.But you haven't answered the core question which is are this things right just because a bunch of people say they are, this means that nothing is wrong because what is viewed as wrong by a group of people is viewed to be right by another group of people. this means that nothing is really wrong, it all boils down to opinion's, we think that this is wrong and that that is right because it suits us best that way. No good or bad just opinions.Edited by Cedre, : No reason given.

Sure I can, because the society I live in frowns on lying. If you lie often then you will gain a reputation as a liar and people will not want to associate with, you which will cause problems for you (bad credit for example). I don't see any requirement for an invisible sky wizard to come kill your soul to enforce or establish such rules. Well that is a shame, she was so close to overcoming her personal prejudices. There are many things which most societies agree on being right or wrong but there are exceptions all over if you look hard enough. There *may* be some things which are absolute in their acceptance as moral or immoral according to the society, but that is hardly condemnation against the concept. Societies naturally work better with certain rules; killing your fellow man for instance has significant impact if it were to be commonplace so it is almost universally condemned. Note though that it is only *almost* universally condemned. This particular statement is debatable, since as I recall the actual death camps had a fair amount of secrecy and the majority of Germany was horrified when they found out what exactly was happening. However, assuming the truth of the quote then yes we can assume that Hitler was acting morally. For his own society rather, which may have only consisted of his top officers and the SS. For the rest of the world he was acting immorally.See, in a non-absolute system it is possible for there to be a difference of opinion about morality without one of those views being "wrong" per se. I think that the inability to understand this concept causes a great number of wars. Yes, yes, and yes! At the time, in the setting of their respective societies they were doing the moral thing. Surely you are capable of distancing yourself enough from an ancient Aztec priest during daily life to distinguish their societal norms from your own. Surely you won't argue that as that priest cut the still-beating heart from a willing human sacrifice and held the glistening trophy to the Sun so that it would keep moving, that deep in their hearts they all knew it was wrong and wanted jebus to save them. Because they didn't.

This is simply not true. There are often clashes between cultures based on untruths or bargains not being upheld. If lying was the norm then you would be the exception and we would all be acting like your are crazy for demanding truthful interaction. Yes, that is correct. There is nothing that is inherently good or bad except that which is defined by society. Within that society there can be differences of opinion and aims to shift public consensus, but there is no moral absolute imbued into the fabric of the universe.

Out of curiosity, what do you think absolute means?In the responses to you it has been made clear that laws, rules, etc. adjust with the needs of the civilization. They don't all remain unchanged. Even the rules in the Bible didn't remain unchanged. That's the purpose of the Oral Law to adjust for the change in their civilization.Slavery was the accepted way of life, but not owning slaves didn't make the person immoral. God made no rules for or against slavery. Rules were provided in Exodus 21 concerning Hebrew slaves. Some parents sold their children into servitude to get money, but they were also supposed to be released in the seventh year except for women.As someone has already said, you're using your own morality to judge other culutres and past cultures. Each group has their own standard of living. Why is that difficult to accept?