right and wrong

Thousands of years from now, people will be looking back at our "modern" culture. But to them, it will be a study of an "ancient" culture.

They will look back, and make judgments at the ideas we hold.

For one thing, they will look at our cultural mores, and our laws, and look at our "ownership" of livestock like cattle.

They will be aghast, at the immorality of our idea, that an animal could be "owned". They will look at the laws we have concerning what we consider mistreatment of animals, and the punishment rewarded those offenses.

And they will ask questions like:

The laws of the ancient tribe allow for ownership of animals. Is it ever moral to own animals? Their laws allow for animals to be killed!

What we consider to be "moral" in our modern culture (the ownership of livestock), what seems to be acceptable and right to us, will be considered "immoral" in another culture, who will be aghast at the idea that livestock can be owned, and denied freedom.

When that future civilization looks back out ours, how should they judge the "morality" of our culture? Should they inject their standards of right and wrong, and inject their more advanced knowledge, upon our civilization and judge us to be immoral.

Or, will they allow our civilization to be judged by our own culture, by our own best understanding of the universe, and of what we consider to be right and wrong.

Just something for us to consider. Something for us to take into account, when we choose to look back at an illiterate tribe of nomadic goatherders, and pass judgment on their moral standards of right and wrong.

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Steven J responded


But you're arguing that those illiterate nomadic goat herders had, as the basis of their laws and the authorization of their wars, a body of laws given to them by the omniscient, morally perfect, unchanging and all-powerful Creator of the universe. That they didn't know better, or couldn't do better, is unremarkable ... unless you argue that they had a perfect law given to them by a perfect Lawgiver and Judge able to remake the hearts of the faithful. Then you have to note that what struck that God's followers as "good" in 3000 BC doesn't look very much like what strikes that God's followers as "good" today.

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Steven,

I made no remark in my comment about the basis of morality of any civilization. I am only acknowledging what you yourself have argued, that there is, in fact, a concept of right and wrong within the universe, held by a small subset of the universe, which we call humanity,

The comment I made stands for all (and any) cultures that claim to have a a concept of right and wrong. That we hold the ideas of "right and wrong" is not invalid because the universe as a whole (as you have stated) does not itself have such a concept.

"unless you argue that they had a perfect law ... able to remake the hearts"

It's not at all clear why you would suggest that this is an argument I would make. I have never suggested that the "law" was able to make anyone perfect, or to "remake hearts". I've not suggested that it is the intended purpose of the law, nor have I suggested it was suitable for such a purpose.

you have to note that what [was considered] "good" in 3000 BC doesn't look very much like what [is considered] "good" today.

I do note some significant differences in what would be considered "right" behavior and "wrong" behavior. But I also note some significant similarities.

I suggest to you that thousands of years from now, a future civilization may note significant differences between what they consider "right and wrong" and what we today consider "right and wrong".

My suggestion was that we consider taking these cultural differences into account, when we judge the mores of an ancient civilization.

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Steven, in my comment, I made no mention of the origin, or "basis" of the morality for a culture.

We explored that topic in earlier comments, whether there was a "universal" origin of morality. I believe you were pretty clear that the universe itself, as a whole, had no concept of "right or wrong", and that only a small subset of the universe, "humanity" or "mankind" held the concept of right or wrong.

Since humanity had a beginning, we can only presume then that the concept of right and wrong had a beginning. The origin of the concept of right and wrong seems, then, to be intimately intertwined with the origin of man.

The idea that a "body of laws" is the origin or basis of morality doesn't seem to ring true. Consider, would a future civilization look back on ours and say that the "body of laws" that were encoded by our civilization was the "basis" of our morality?

Wouldn't they consider that our concept of right and wrong to be the basis or foundation of our laws, and the basis for our authorization for war. That is, we don't declare war because of a "body of laws", but because we have knowledge of right and wrong. Our "body of laws" is a rudimentary encoding of a subset of that knowledge.

I think we owe an ancient, illiterate civilization the same allowance we would have granted ourselves.

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Steven, you suggest that what was considered to "right and wrong" in 3000 BC is significantly different than what is considered "right and wrong" in our modern culture.

To be a little more clear, you actually said the morality "doesn't look very much like", and you restricted the comparison to "what struck followers of God".

When you compared the moral codes of the "God followers" in the two cultures, what similarities and differences did you note? How different or similar are the moral codes?