Quote:
Originally Posted by streetwaves
I completely disagree that we need the Bible in order to have a sense of morality. Modern Christians pick and choose what from the Bible they pay attention to, and ignore the rest. Does this not illustrate a modern sense of morality that has evolved since the Bible was written?
Stoicism taught such things as compassion years before Jesus was said to have been born, and did so without promising any life beyond death. They did consider it a possibility, and they most likely believed in some sort of god, but so did most every culture in history. Most of these primitive religions are "dead" now and not treated with the same sort of baseless respect as modern monotheistic religions - but if their gods were a figment of their imagination, where must their sense of morality have come from?
Our sense of morality has evolved over time, and it continues to do so. If anything, the Bible and other religious books have contributed to slowing our progress.
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That's not my argument at all though. My argument has nothing to do with how we obtain a "moral sense," but rather how we justify that moral sense. My argument is that without a principle higher than oneself, such as God, there is no way to ground moral principles. I don't think it's valid to take the higher principle as being societal values because an idea does not become more valid just because two people believe it instead of one. The validity of an idea has to come from within itself, and this is impossible if we simply create ideas for the sake of convenience.
Because of the society we live in, most people aren't driven to commit murder or other "evil" acts. Thus, saying that something is evil because most people aren't inclined to do it isn't enough. The problem is what can stop a person from murder once they find themselves in a situation that pushes them towards it? Because we find ourselves in a culture of moral relativism it becomes much easier to abandon morality once we find it's not the simplest way of dealing with a situation.