(January 27, 2016 at 12:01 pm)Pandæmonium Wrote: Can you point to a time period in history, any time period, where the above has not been the case (fluid social structures, conventions and agential [sic] behaviors that either inform or exist as a result of those structures and hence give form to 'morality')?

Yes! but not if you hold the current pop morality as your definition of right and wrong.

(January 27, 2016 at 12:02 pm)Lemonvariable72 Wrote: Because there is a very robust system for determining what is and is not moral. It's called empathy. It is both older and far superior to your christian teaching, because christian teaching render morality arbitrary. In fact the reason you see the changes is because of us moving away from this arbitrary moral system.

Empathy is a joke. It can be manipulated in both directions. People can and have been trained to have it if certain conditions exist and with hold it if they do not.

For example why do you think Osama started with his terror attacks in the 90s? It was because he had empathy for the people of Iraq after gulf war1. Yet showed no empathy for those who did not share his religion/skin color.

What else do you think transcends your current moral value system?

(January 27, 2016 at 12:18 pm)Drich Wrote: How do you know that what has evolved in western pop morality is not evil?

We use our brain, of course. Not perfect but enormously preferable to blindly following a bronze-age book.

Is pop morality the kind where you don't have slaves and don't kill people based on voices in your head?

I always wondered what it was. How disgraceful.

(January 27, 2016 at 12:04 pm)TrueChristian Wrote: ^ Sorry fellow Christian. But morals are more elastic/changing than you would think. And a strong-judeo Christian value system has not kept values stable.

Perhaps you misunderstand the meaning of the word 'moral'. Morality is man's version of God's righteousness/perfect standard. To be 'moral' is to hold to what YOU think is right but at the same time allowing for sins you think are acceptable.

I at no point hold the view that Christian morality is any better than pop morality. it's a joke which is why (in part) I am having this discussion.

Quote:They change based on people's advancement and growing experinece, not so much the words of the bible.

Christians today embrace secularism of a sort by saying slavery is evil ( allowed in NT) and by saying Jews are worthy of respect (Jews as a people are repeatedly denounced in Acts and letters of NT.)

The "basic constants" of don't rape, don't steal and don't kill have been held by all people for all times (to other people in the society that is) and religious people have always been able to find justifications for the above. See the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs.

Again, all valid points however I would point to the evil that these Christians were willing to accept in their 'morality' for the rapes and murders of conquered people rather than experience or need for any type of evolution. the only time we need to evolve our 'morality' is when our hunger for evil is no longer satisfied by the current 'moral standard.'

Quote:Oh, and as to the totalitarian societies you referenced? They do not hold for "pop morality" and have the opposite of the humanist "live and let live" philosophy .

Actually sport, they do if you hold to the definition I provide in the OP, and do not try and substitute your own.

Again just so their's no confusion. Pop morality is what a given people (Here, North Korea, Germany, Syria) in a given generation (1890's, 1990's, 1940, now) define as what is right and what is wrong.

Example the live and let live (for the sake of argument) defines pop morality for this generation in western countries. Kill all Indians was the moral obligation of the people in our western territories in the 1890's. Kill all Jews was the Moral obligation of Hitler's german citizens.

Do you get it now? Pop morality defines what it popular to a given people in a given time period.

Quote:All of them were deeply religious societies (thouhg only one promotes a theistic religion.). In North Korea, the Kim family are almost worshipped as gods,

not almost, they are God.

Quote:their status almost similar to that of the pre WW2 Japanese emperor, or the "mandate from heaven" Chinese emperors.

It's not just statues.. Think Catholicism and all of the different wall hanging, shrines, buttons, pins, candles, Minnie home shrines, and all of the other religious tchotchkes the church promotes that 'brings people closer to their god. the same is true there. Either way, that does not change anything because This is how the majority want to live. We know this because when a Kim dies the whole country mourns and laments for weeks. which still means that what they see and right and wrong is still considered 'pop morality' "North Korea style"

Quote:The Nazis similarly held they had the "Absolute" truth, and did not tolerate any dissent. They tolerate churches and Christians when they went along with them, and killed/jailed christians who dared contradict them.

The term Hitler used was 'positive Christianity.'
Very early on Germany cut ties from the church/Vatican because it was planning to change the direction of it's 'morality' radically and needed to take out God's word/any absolute that would contradict their version of Nazi 'pop morality.'

Quote:So.... the societies you mentioned had a defiicit of "pop morality" rather than an excess

Again, the countries I mentioned morality WAS POP MORALITY!

With that in mind I ask the question If one simply abides by the rules of pop morality when ever where ever he is born, then what keeps them from being a death camp Nazi? A North Korean solider? A Cowboy who slaughters Indians???

Then I ask with your acceptance of current 'live and let live' Western version of pop morality How do you know you are not as bad if not worse than the Nazis or ISIS soldiers I mentioned?

Any one who relys on 'morality' as their only standard of right and wrong can be manipulated into any evil society wants to be apart of.. Now again think the Nazi's were a society, ISIS is a society, We are also a society, so what separates us from them when you remove God?

(January 27, 2016 at 12:14 pm)Cecelia Wrote: Empathy is exactly right.  How one treats others is what we judge morality on.

Again empathy is a joke. It can be manupliated like any other form of government propaganda.

For instance what do you say about a God who order (whole bible now) 10s of thousands of babies to be slaughtered?
Bad deity right?

Now what do you say about a society that has over seen the death of almost 1.5 billion babies?
http://www.numberofabortions.com/

Bottom line babies die.
Propaganda relables aborted babies and uses the Latin word for them and they have their human rights stripped away. all of this in a change of word. Seems trivial does it not?

But you show 'empathy' for one, and no empathy for the other, even though a BILLION More people were slaughtered before they even had a chance to grow up.

How? You've been trained to empathize with one group of babies because they meet what society trivially sets as it's thresh hold/tolerance for infanticide while the other group no matter how many die, and no matter how horridly they die have not met that threshold.. but again bottom line the effect is the same a baby's life ends.

So again, if you were born in Nazi Germany and taught not to have empthy for the jews, or in the 1700's in America and taught not to have empathy for slaves what in your mind makes you think you would just develop empathy for them then? After all you seem to have no issue taking cues from pop morality when it says have no empathy for the unborn, or no empathy for anyone deemed a terrorist? Those labels we use to dehumanize the unborn/partially born are also successfully used on other people all the time. So again Empathy is a joke/false sense of absolute/foundational morality.

What else you got?

(January 27, 2016 at 12:16 pm)AFTT47 Wrote:

(January 27, 2016 at 11:45 am)Drich Wrote: Pop morality is an ever changing standard.

More accurately, it is an ever evolving standard. That is why we no longer condone slavery or stoning people to death for blasphemy. Our moral standards move forever forward. Contrast that to the Bible with its dark-ages standard of morality. No wonder so many people have walked (or ran) away from the pews and why it will continue.

but again, who says the direction you are moving is indeed forward? just because you are pointed in a direction doesn't mean that is the way you should go.. after all from a 1940 german perspective burning Jews in ovens was 'moving forward.'

I'm asking that if you leave all standards behind you how it is that you know the direction your going is indeed the correct way forward?

(January 27, 2016 at 12:33 pm)AFTT47 Wrote:

(January 27, 2016 at 12:18 pm)Drich Wrote: How do you know that what has evolved in western pop morality is not evil?

We use our brain, of course. Not perfect but enormously preferable to blindly following a bronze-age book.

again, so did the North Koreans, Nazi Germans, late 19th century Americans, and everyone else who commits unspeakable acts against current 'pop moral standards...' what makes them right/wrong? how do you know what you currently believe is not just as wrong or worse?

My guiding sense of morality is the so-called (by Christians no less) 'Silver Rule', as opposed to the so-called Golden Rule because I find the negative wording of the sentiment underlying both to be more flexible a tool than the positively worded formulation found in the NT. Now in what possible respect is that "pop morality" since it is millennia old?

I know this Pop Morality trope of yours is one of your favorite hobby horses, and you seem to believe it applies to anyone who doesn't, for example, accept the Bible as normative. However, it misses the mark. You once sent me a PM in which you suggested that my embracing gay rights was an example of Pop Morality. I knew then that a response was pointless since you had already made up your mind that it couldn't be otherwise. But I'll respond here and now. I graduated from High School in 1985. In my senior-year civics class, we were assigned to present a speech to the class arguing in favor of a "controversial" position. I chose for my topic "Marriage Should be Legal for Homosexuals" which proved by a wide margin to be the most controversial subject presented. Now, not that it should matter in the least, but I -- a heterosexual male -- had no personal, self-serving interest in the outcome of the question. I chose my stance based on (1) the law should be applied equally -- i.e., a government license (as such, a secular license) should not be denied to one group of people based on others' disgust or religious bigotry, and (2) such discrimination violates the basic moral insight that one should avoid doing to others that which one finds painful or ethically objectionable. 1985, if you recall, was a time when gay marriage wasn't even on anyone's radar as a live issue. Was my advocacy of this position an example of 'Pop Morality' or was it prescience on my part? The gasps of disbelief among my classmates (not to mention my teacher's reaction: "Well, that certainly was controversial; I wouldn't hold my breath to see that happen in my lifetime if I were you") hardly suggests to me that I was toeing some line of popular morality or political correctness.

The Silver Rule is not an "objective" moral standard by any means, but for people who aren't sociopathic or hypocritically self-serving it provides a decent rough-and-ready standard by which one's actions can be evaluated.

(January 27, 2016 at 12:53 pm)robvalue Wrote: Is pop morality the kind where you don't have slaves and don't kill people based on voices in your head?

I always wondered what it was. How disgraceful.

It's both..

It's whatever a given culture in any given time wants to believe what right and wrong is.