Quote:
Originally Posted by Prudence
This is the facet of religion with which I currently struggle. So many of the "instructions" were clearly (from our modern perspective) designed to address social issues of the time. And we have no trouble, as a (western) society, dismissing the rules about stoning and selling daughters and whatnot. But the other rules society swears are the unerring Word of God and must be obeyed blindly.
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I have been advocating the guidance of a fixed set of moral values (vs. Moral Relativity). But in every age, these have to be applied to the situation by using our intelligence and logic (Situational Ethics). I think both secular and religious people get confused about how to do this. There really are two areas of confusion:
1. Moral Relativity and Situational Ethics.
Moral Relativity vs. Absolute or Universal Morality
An ethicist has asked hundreds of high school students who they would save first if both their dog and a stranger were drowning. 1/3 say the dog (a more secular response, because they love the dog and not the stranger), 1/3 say the stranger (a more religious response, because people created in God’s image and are more valuable than animals) and 1/3 say they don’t know. But my point is about a follow-up question: When either dog or stranger savers were asked if the answers of the others were wrong, very few would say they were. In other words, they feel that everyone’s sense of right and wrong is personal and does not necessarily apply to others. This is what I said about the danger of the bus ads, that everyone can make up their own rules, as opposed to norms that apply to everyone.
Situational Ethics:
Many religious people will confuse Moral Relativity with Situational Ethics. They might say “lying is always wrong”. If you were sheltering Jews in WWII and the SS came to your door and asked “Do you know where any Jews are hiding?”, wouldn’t the ethical answer be to lie?
2. Institutional vs. Personal
“Turn the other cheek”. This makes a great deal of sense on a personal level. If we never forgave people who wrong us, we would end up with no friends. Sadly, many people shut others out of their lives because of intolerance of any transgression.
But it makes no sense to apply this on a national level. Do we say to our enemies who bombed New York, “OK, now you can bomb LA?” Many secular people will point to teachings that were meant to be a guide for the individual and mis-apply it to the behavior of governments.
In the example of lying, many times on a personal level lying is the right thing to do (“honey, do I look fat in this dress?”). But on a national level, it is almost always disastrous.
There has been bit of discussion about selfishness. Religion has seemingly contradictory answers. Rabbi Hillel said, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I?”. I think in this case, in the personal realm, selfishness drives others away and will lead to unhappiness. But in the intuitional or national realm, an entity has to know what it stands for and pursue its mission (provided it is a good one). So it becomes a responsibility to defend oneself against aggression and to help others who are victims of it where possible.