Development of morality since Christianity

[_maklelan]

Many of the values we hold today as self-evident and immutable are values that we did not hold dear until quite recently, and find their origin not in Biblical moral codes but in the development of values from the Enlightenment onward. Examples:

Yikes.

Individual autonomy - each person owns himself. Slavery and lesser forms of ownership are morally repugnant.

Aristotle wrote that there were portions of Greek society that asserted that "controlling another human being was contrary to nature, since it is only by convention that one man can be a slave and another free; there is no natural difference, and therefore it cannot be just, since it is based on the use of force." Plutarch wrote that Numa was a more humane ruler than Lycurgus for freeing slaves at the feast of Saturn. He comments that during the golden age of Saturn, there was no slavery. Many Greek authors, including Herodotus, described golden ages of human society where slavery did not exist. Gregory of Nyssa described slavery as a sin that ought to be abolished. Justinian I published the Digest, which states, "slavery is an institution of the common law of the peoples by which a person is put into the ownership of somebody else, contrary to the natural order."

Additionally, there are many parts of the world today where slavery is still a common practice.

Same with torture, once a ubiquitous practice.

Still a ubiquitous practice.

Racism - discrimination based on race is morally repugnant.

Racism did not exist in antiquity because they no concept of race as we understand it. Ethnocentrism was the norm back then, as people were categorized according to nationality, not race. It was actually not until the Enlightenment that more scientific views of racial inequality became widespread. People like Kant, Voltaire, and Hume all promoted the idea of a hierarchy of races. At the Nuremberg trials the Nazis actually produced critically acclaimed 20th century publications from American scientists which promoted eugenics (as well as US Supreme Court decisions!). The Carnegie Institution and the Rockefeller Foundation heavily funded this enterprise, and Yale, Harvard, and Princeton pumped out many of the leading eugenics scholars of the day. At the same time, contemporary ethnologists acknowledge that race is actually a social construct.

Misogyny - abuse of women was universally tolerated within the lifetime of most of the people on the board. Only until very recently was spouse abuse considered worthy of punishment by the state, and victims worthy of protection. Likewise, self-ownership of women, including the idea of rape as a tort against the state rather than the woman's owner (husband or father) is quite recent.

This is a much more recent development, but I would point out that women were afforded more rights and influence within ancient Christianity than without.

Children - Economically valuable and emotionally worthless to economically worthless and emotionally valuable. Infanticide was once a VERY common practice, practiced by most people except for the very rich.

Of course, ancient Judaism and Christianity were exceptions to this general rule, although there were many others, too. It wasn't until Christianity took over in Rome that severe penalties were levied across the empire for things like abandoning infants. "Childhood" is also a social construct that needs to be taken into consideration when analyzing the different treatment of what we today consider children.

Even in the 18th century it was quite common to find the corpses of abandoned babies everywhere one went.

I'd love to see some kind of support for this notion. Ironically, I might point out, in ancient Greece and elsewhere, there is no evidence that abandonment and infanticide was motivated by gender concerns. Contrast that with the growing popularity of gender-based abortions today.

Abuse of children was completely ignored until early in the 20th century.

This is simply untrue. While most ancient societies tolerated a much, much higher degree of physical abuse than today, most also had a limit that was enforced by the courts.

Early orphanages were quite literally death camps, where 50-95% of children died due to neglect, abuse, or over-work. Jewish law permitted the murder of infants under the age of one month,

I'd like a source for this, please. Also, most children have historically died in orphanages from disease and malnutrition, both of which were largely a result of the close quarters, poor funding, and poor medical knowledge. It was not intentional neglect, abuse, and over-work.

and the execution by stoning of disobedient children.

This is Israelite law, not Jewish law. The difference is not trivial.

Now child abuse is unthinkable, let alone infanticide, to the point where even spanking is a crime in many developed countries.

Abortion is not unthinkable, and a strong argument can easily be made that birth is a rather arbitrary boundary.

Democracy - not a new concept, but one developed quite apart from the Judeo-Christian tradition and only realized in full in the last 250 years.

Democracy has not been realized in full anywhere in the modern world, and that's a good thing. What we have in the United States is a constitutional republic that incorporates democratic elements.

Capitalism - once barely tolerated as a necessary evil, now lauded as God's own system of exchange, even though the scriptures never advocate anything but collectivism.

Actually much of antiquity was built on capitalism. The Phoenicians were capitalists in the Late Bronze Age, and many Near Eastern law codes regulate capitalistic endeavors, especially in Assyria.

The humanism of the enlightenment has more to do with the genesis of what we consider our most cherished values than does the Bible.

That's quite a reductive and myopic thesis.

The Bible tells us not to worship false gods and where not to rub our genitals. The Enlightenment helped us learn to live in peace and stop murdering our children and raping our wives and enslaving minorities.

No it didn't.

Morality is evolving. We're watching it happen right before our eyes, but with our historical myopia,

This is quite an ironic accusation.

our new morals seem so obvious and eternal. They weren't obvious a hundred or two hundred years ago. It's obvious now that rape, infanticide, genocide, slavery, racism, sexism, torture, and now even homophobia are great social evils. This was not obvious to our ancestors.

This is demonstrably false.

I think perspective on these brand new morals does a great deal to dispel the notion that we need to have our morals handed to us by any omniscient third party.

That's not the only alternative to the sophomoric thesis you've described here.

We seem to be figuring it out on our own. And the world has never been a safer, more peaceful place.

Apologies to Dr. Pinker.

Wow.

[_zeezrom]

Please note that my argument is not that Christians had no hand in ending injustice, only that they did it based on evolving secular ideas, not the Bible.

Buffulo, this right here is why your arguments tend to be completely idiotic.

What you are basically saying is that one can ignore Christian influence because it is always REALLY some sort of crypto-secular influence, not any felt, thought, or claimed Christian influence. What you have done is not argued for the superiority of secularism, but simply defined it as victorious from the outset. Christianity can't possibly be the source of anything good anymore on that account, because even if one thinks that one is acting on the basis of Christian ideals, it's not really those Christian ideals, it's an ill defined and irresistible secular influence which pervades all that is good in the post Enlightenment world.

This is all related to my trouble with the debate that Utah is adversely affected by high concentrations of Mormons living there. Although, it is a different subject, so I will only store this away for a later time.

[_Buffalo]

You're aware that it was always legal (and often, compulsory) for black people to practice Christianity in America, right?

So what? What does that have to do with whether the New Testament or the writings of early church fathers condemn what modern people would call "racism"?

The relevance is that the very limited egalitarianism of the New Yestament was fully compatible with both slavery era American values and Jim Crow-era values. Allowing the "other" to convert to your religion doesn't really cut it. Even the Taliban permit that.

[_MCB]

A couple of points here. If anybody wants to CFR, I won't, because I am busy with something else.

Race-based slavery was a recent development. In fact, the concept of race was not even around until recent times. Race-based hereditary slavery was based on the assumed inferiority of the enslaved. I believe that it was Aristotle who said that the intellectually inferior were best served by slavery, because their basic needs would be taken care of, and they could be put to productive work. The Bible also tells people to treat their slaves well. Today's struggles against racially-based theories about intelligence are actually struggles against those people who would like a return to slavery. Many minority people are afraid to express/develop their intellectual capabilities because, among racists, they might be perceived as "uppity," and suffer ass a result.

Spelling error intentionally preserved.

John Dehlin 3:30, George Albert Smith, September 23, 1855

The Lord conferred portions of the Priesthood upon certain races of men, and through promises
made to their fathers they were entitled to the rights, and blessings, and privileges of that Priesthood.
Other races, in consequence of their corruptions, their murders, their wickedness, or the
wickedness of their fathers, had the Priesthood taken from them, and the curse that was upon them
was decreed should descend upon their posterity after them, it was decreed that they should not bear
rule.
In looking abroad on the earth and seeing the effects produced upon different races of men, it
will be plainly discovered that there are races who have never been permitted to bear rule to any
great extent.

[_Darth J]

You're aware that it was always legal (and often, compulsory) for black people to practice Christianity in America, right?

So what? What does that have to do with whether the New Testament or the writings of early church fathers condemn what modern people would call "racism"?

The relevance is that the very limited egalitarianism of the New Yestament was fully compatible with both slavery era American values and Jim Crow-era values. Allowing the "other" to convert to your religion doesn't really cut it. Even the Taliban permit that.

Okay, so you can't quite decide if the New Testament fails to condemn ethnocentrism or fails to anachronistically condemn the modern concept of racism, and now you are re-framing the issue as "very limited egalitarianism," which is different than either ethnocentrism or racism.

Somehow, the New Testament was also fully compatible with the abolitionist movement and the civil rights movement. Proponents of both those movements did in fact take their cues from the New Testament, not some asserted independent secularism that seems to be the tapir in your Limited Christianity Theory. So maybe it is more than a little specious to imply that there is some grand unified theory about what all Christians think the New Testament means.

Allowing the "other" to convert to your religion doesn't really cut it. Even the Taliban permit that.

I cannot even guess what this is supposed to mean.

[Guest]

Abuse of children was completely ignored until early in the 20th century.

I notice a lot of vague, question-begging terms in these sweeping assertions about history. Like, what is the universal, objective understanding of "abuse of children" that is being employed?

Now child abuse is unthinkable, let alone infanticide, to the point where even spanking is a crime in many developed countries.

And "spanking," which does not mean the same thing to everyone, is not a crime in many developed countries, depending on what "spanking" means.

[_Buffalo]

Aristotle wrote that there were portions of Greek society that asserted that "controlling another human being was contrary to nature, since it is only by convention that one man can be a slave and another free; there is no natural difference, and therefore it cannot be just, since it is based on the use of force." Plutarch wrote that Numa was a more humane ruler than Lycurgus for freeing slaves at the feast of Saturn. He comments that during the golden age of Saturn, there was no slavery. Many Greek authors, including Herodotus, described golden ages of human society where slavery did not exist. Gregory of Nyssa described slavery as a sin that ought to be abolished. Justinian I published the Digest, which states, "slavery is an institution of the common law of the peoples by which a person is put into the ownership of somebody else, contrary to the natural order."

The idea didn’t take hold until…. ______________ (fill in the blank)

Additionally, there are many parts of the world today where slavery is still a common practice.

Like all forms of barbarism and cruelty, it has been vastly reduced. Along with war violence, rape, murder, child abuse, torture, etc.

Still a ubiquitous practice.

Not at all. A historically myopic viewpoint.

Racism did not exist in antiquity because they no concept of race as we understand it. Ethnocentrism was the norm back then, as people were categorized according to nationality, not race. It was actually not until the Enlightenment that more scientific views of racial inequality became widespread. People like Kant, Voltaire, and Hume all promoted the idea of a hierarchy of races. At the Nuremberg trials the Nazis actually produced critically acclaimed 20th century publications from American scientists which promoted eugenics (as well as US Supreme Court decisions!). The Carnegie Institution and the Rockefeller Foundation heavily funded this enterprise, and Yale, Harvard, and Princeton pumped out many of the leading eugenics scholars of the day. At the same time, contemporary ethnologists acknowledge that race is actually a social construct.

These were not new ideas. The idea of the inferior/loathsome other has been around for thousands of years. The Babylonian Talmud depicts blacks as the sinful, degenerate sons of ham.

This is a much more recent development, but I would point out that women were afforded more rights and influence within ancient Christianity than without.

Were they now? CFR

Of course, ancient Judaism and Christianity were exceptions to this general rule, although there were many others, too. It wasn't until Christianity took over in Rome that severe penalties were levied across the empire for things like abandoning infants. "Childhood" is also a social construct that needs to be taken into consideration when analyzing the different treatment of what we today consider children.

Ancient Jewish law permitted infanticide up until the age of one month. Infanticide, while prohibited among Christians, was also common among Christians until the last few hundred years.

I'd love to see some kind of support for this notion. Ironically, I might point out, in ancient Greece and elsewhere, there is no evidence that abandonment and infanticide was motivated by gender concerns. Contrast that with the growing popularity of gender-based abortions today.

One of the primary motivators for infanticide was actually based on practicality and circumstance – support and ability to care for the new child. Infanticide in the Middle Ages "was practiced on gigantic scale with absolute impunity, noticed by writers with most frigid indifference" per Harvard historian William L. Langer.

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/2012 ... ocus1.html

Ian Boyne, Contributor

The outrage over the killing of 16-year-old Vanessa Kirkland, which has even drawn the tongue of the normally quiescent Jamaica Council of Churches, reminds me of how far humanity has evolved in our moral understanding and practice.

The fact of the matter is that the killing of infants, not just teenagers, was common and accepted in much of humanity's history. All cultures practised infanticide. Until relatively recently, up to 15 per cent of all babies were killed shortly after they were born, and in some societies the rate was as high as 50 per cent. Children were sacrificed to gods, commonly sold into slavery and religious servitude, and subjected to the cruelest forms of corporal punishment.

Children were also subject to legal punishment. A seven-year-old girl in 18th-century England was hanged for stealing a petticoat. And as late as the turn of the 20th century, German children were regularly placed on red-hot stoves if they were deemed stubborn, or tied to their bedposts for days.

According to one British coroner in 1862, "The police seemed to think no more of finding a dead child than they did of finding a dead cat or a dead dog."

In 1527, a French priest wrote: "The latrines resound with the cries of children who have been plunged into them." And many of those children who survived were sent to workhouses where, as Dickens wrote in Oliver Twist, they were "without the inconvenience of too much food or too much clothing".

This is simply untrue. While most ancient societies tolerated a much, much higher degree of physical abuse than today, most also had a limit that was enforced by the courts.

I’d love to know what you’re basing these responses on. It certainly isn’t history.

Probably a large factor in the decline in advocacy for abuse of children was the abandonment of the notion of original sin. But things didn’t get better for children until the early 20th century. Children’s rights activism was inspired by animal rights activism.

I'd like a source for this, please. Also, most children have historically died in orphanages from disease and malnutrition, both of which were largely a result of the close quarters, poor funding, and poor medical knowledge. It was not intentional neglect, abuse, and over-work.

This is Israelite law, not Jewish law. The difference is not trivial.

It’s in the Bible. God said to do it.

Abortion is not unthinkable, and a strong argument can easily be made that birth is a rather arbitrary boundary.

Birth isn’t the boundary. But the vast majority of abortions occur before the development of consciousness. And abortions are becoming less frequent.

Democracy has not been realized in full anywhere in the modern world, and that's a good thing. What we have in the United States is a constitutional republic that incorporates democratic elements.

Doesn’t even merit a response.

Actually much of antiquity was built on capitalism. The Phoenicians were capitalists in the Late Bronze Age, and many Near Eastern law codes regulate capitalistic endeavors, especially in Assyria.

You didn’t contradict anything I wrote. Capitalism was barely tolerated by religious leaders as a necessary evil. Now we know it’s a great force for peace.

That's quite a reductive and myopic thesis.

That’s quite a meaningless dismissal, devoid of argument.

No it didn't.

Mindlessness.

This is quite an ironic accusation.

Your myopic view of history expressed in this thread confirms it.

This is demonstrably false.

And yet you neglected to demonstrate it.

That's not the only alternative to the sophomoric thesis you've described here.

It’s quite easy to dismiss ideas you don’t like without articulating why they might be wrong. It’s not very impressive, though.

Wow.

Are you under the impression that world is more dangerous? That violence and human rights abuses are on the rise?

[Guest]

Somehow, the New Testament was also fully compatible with the abolitionist movement and the civil rights movement. Proponents of both those movements did in fact take their cues from the New Testament, not some asserted independent secularism that seems to be the tapir in your Limited Christianity Theory. So maybe it is more than a little specious to imply that there is some grand unified theory about what all Christians think the New Testament means.

Actually, no. Both the abolitionists and the civil rights crusaders had to proceed with their cause against explicit New Testament teachings that slavery is just, slaves should be content with their lot in life, and the governed should not oppose the government.

The morals outlined in the OP contradict Christian scripture on many points. But, thankfully, modern Christians are full of a benign sort of hypocrisy that allows them to overlook it.

Trying to refer to my opinion in terms of mopologetic silliness seems ironic, since you're the one defending dodgy religious texts here, not me.

[Guest]

Abuse of children was completely ignored until early in the 20th century.

I notice a lot of vague, question-begging terms in these sweeping assertions about history. Like, what is the universal, objective understanding of "abuse of children" that is being employed?

Meaning that, for instance, in America there was no real legal recourse for physically abused children until the 20th century.

Now child abuse is unthinkable, let alone infanticide, to the point where even spanking is a crime in many developed countries.

And "spanking," which does not mean the same thing to everyone, is not a crime in many developed countries, depending on what "spanking" means.

Any form of physical punishment of children is illegal in Britain and several other European countries. Approval of spanking has steadily declined in the last 30 years, as has approval of spouse abuse (not that long ago most Americans thought that there might be a legitimate reason for a man to smack his wife).

These are brand new moral values. We came up with them collectively.

[_Darth J]

Like all forms of barbarism and cruelty, it has been vastly reduced. Along with war violence, rape, murder, child abuse, torture, etc.

How might one determine the objective definition of each of these terms? The dictionary will not be sufficient, because terms like "rape," "murder," and "child abuse" have specific definitions in law, which are not necessarily the same as the vernacular, which are not necessarily the same as the social sciences, and so on.