The Bible: A Moral book?!

[NoMoreFaith]

Interpretation of the 'golden rule' nearly always occurs within each era's dominant social constructs.

Suppose for example that I was a 15th century landed noble with serfs. To me application of the golden rule would mean something like this: how would I want to be treated if I were a serf? I probably would not question the institution of serfdom's morality, even though a modern me would. Today I would apply the golden rule as meaning that enslaving another human being is wrong because I would not want to be enslaved.

Agreed on all counts. Hence why I wanted a bit more detail. Appreciated, makes good sense.

I would never argue that the Golden Rule is the sole means to obtain morality, personally I combine it with the harm principle, however, I would not place as many restrictions as you do, and your examples of its failings are based upon the failings of social and economic factors, rather than the rule itself.

For example, very few people would assert that a fetus is anything other than a human being, a very young undeveloped human, but a human none the less. Do we have any moral obligations to them no matter how insignificant? Most people look at pregant women that smoke and drink with scorn. Presumably they believe mothers have a moral obligation to care for the health of their unborn babies.

This is slightly faulty, in that the objection to pregnant women drinking and smoking is more a response to the harm it causes to the human in potentia rather than the current state of non-sentient cells (depending on the stage of pregnancy). Are people actually concerned about the harm done to the blastocyte? or the harm committed by the damage of development of the final human being? The distinction is vital to the argument.
I think many would not assert an undeveloped foetus before sentience is a human being, human cells which are developing into a human being, but not currently a human being. Again, in potentia. I would like to avoid this becoming an abortion thread, merely the consensus on Human Being is by no means as cut and dried as you make it out to be.

Yet, currently the unborn are legally non-persons to which we (under the law) have few or no moral obligations. The dominant culture does not apply the golden rule to unborn babys. What if I asked someone "how would you want to be treated if you were an unborn baby?" i.e. the golden rule.

Exactly why I disagree with your assertion regarding what a human being is. Is a human being a Zygote, Blastocyte, Embryo, Baby?
The golden rule does not apply, because the definition of human being supplied does not fully apply.

Who would say, "I would accept being killed if my birth created an economic hardship on my mommy." I'm not saying that unborn humans have the exactly same moral status as fully developed humans only that the golden rule isn't much help when thinking about the kind of moral obligations to the weak who cannot speak on their own behalf.

I completely disagree, the confusion comes from the pro-life absurdities of human cells = human being while trying to avoid the absurdity of treating morally those whom are only in potential rather than in actuality.

The idea of vulnerable populations is not confined to the unborn. Various eras defined away the humanity of blacks, Jews, the insane, homosexuals, the deformed and mentally retarded. Doing so allowed the dominant culture to selectively apply the golden rule.

This doesn't detract from the Golden Rule, it merely means that people have tried to redefine aspects of the vulnerable to avoid the guilt inherent in contradicting a solid moral rule. The rule has not failed here.

Under the golden rule, you're only obligated to treat others as well as you would like to be treated. Suppose you treat yourself badly. Does that mean you can treat other people badly.

Interesting viewpoint, my only real response to that, is that any action which is pre-supposed as badly, inherently contradicts the spirit of the golden rule.
The concept, whilst grammatically simple, implies the consideration of others, and how they would want to be treated, not how you wish to be treated yourself.
If you self-harm, you do not make a pre-supposition that others wish to be harmed, but rather whether they would wish to be harmed.

However, I completely agree that the Golden Rule is not an ethical system, merely a moral rule, and others, such as Harm principles etc should always be taken into consideration when devising your ethical principles.

Damn Chad, you always make me think hard