pop morality

[Drich]

@ Dritch

Just assuming for the sake of argument, that there is a god (and that is a rather big assumption), at what point in time have people ever agreed about what god's righteousness is?

Man does not have to agree on righteousness. Righteousness is God, for us righteousness can be found in his law, and the understanding that we can never obtain righteousness through following the law. that righteousness for us can only come through atonement.

 Man's conception of god's will appears as variable over time as man's morals.

completely agree. which is what I told true christian.

 You may argue that you know, but I fail to see how your view is superior to that of other Christians here and now, elsewhere, or past.  If the standard is unknowable, than it is of no practical use.

No the standard is knowable in the Law of moses as well as the extention of the Law though Christ.
The problem is that 'morality' seeks to justify sin and make allowances in the law that were never supposed to be there.
Morality even on a high 'christian' level is nothing more than man's perversion of God's righteousness. it is the allowance of sin in God's law baring some circumstance or minimalization of sin in general.

For God all sin is the same. a white lie is deserves the same sentence as murder.
For us because we lie alot and can not seperate ourselves from this sin/slave to sin, and because 'we' hold to the idea that we are 'Good' people. we put lying on the low end of our scale of sin/evil. Now because murder is something that most of us can live a life without doing, and because we are all 'good people' those who murder must be wicked. So then we must augment God's law/righteousness to fit our sliding scale. This augmentation is morality.

Morality says it is ok to lie so as to not hurt someone's feelings, to steal food to keep your family from dying of starvation..

Righteousness says It is never ok to lie or to steal no matter what.

Now because God knows we can not live by His righteousness he provides atonement. Atonement says I forgive you when you lie not to hurt someone's feelings. I (God) Forgive you for stealing to feed your family, but we must own our sin, not justify it with circumstance as morality allows for.. Why? Because Morality begets/spawns Selfrighteousness. Self righteousness if a word that describes a morality that can be bent or twisted to do anything even marching jews to a death camp, and everyone still feel like they are 'good people.' When in fact the very core of selfrighteousness is Evil and evil that loves the sin that we want to be apart of and yet still see ourselves as 'good people.'

My question demonstrates that 'we' are never in a position to see our own self righteousness without the benefit of an unchanging absolute like God's righteousness.

You see, the extreme variability of man's understanding of god's will suggests that god's will is an idea created by man to bolster particular men's views of morality and nothing more.  It's better to leave god out of it, as then we can discuss what morality is best in a rational manner.

That's the thing God's will hasn't ever changed since it was made know to moses and extended by Christ. The change you are talking about is 'christian morality' which is nothing more than self righteousness itself.
God has a very simple plan. show us via the law that we can never abide by it.
provide atonement so we don't have to to be found righteous.
allow us the freedom to worship to the best of our ability.
Eternally separate those who want to retain their own righteousness.

I suggest this standard:  on any given moral question the rule should be that which a person who is not yet born and does not yet know what his race, gender, sexual orientation, or place in society will be would consider to be the best rule.  Applying this standard requires dispassion and reason, and would result in fairness. I will not hold my breath for the standard to be applied though because our morality is not entirely born of reason.  It is a product of empathy, which is why our moral standards are higher with regard to those we know or can otherwise identify with, than it is with regard for those we don't know or can't identify with.  The "other" is always given less rights be it because they differ in income, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, nationality, language, profession, or dress. Biblical morality demonstrates this clearly.  Hebrews are expected to treat those they identify with (other Hebrews) better than those they don't (everyone else).  The adult male Hebrews writing the OT naturally give more rights to adult male Hebrews.  The adult Christian men writing the NT naturally give more rights to adult Christian men.  Naturally, they denigrated the rights of Jewish men who rejected Christianity.  

Far from behaving better when applying god's standard, people use god's standard to justify their lack of empathy for others.  Thus, the differing standards for: the chosen people versus all other people; my gender versus other genders; people of my faith versus people of other faiths; people of different incomes versus people of my income and so on.  Selfish people have used god's standard to justify everything from socialism (easily justified by Jesus's teachings) to capitalism (easily justified based on god's obvious preference).

This is still performance based morality.. which means no matter how well intentioned it is still subject to self righteousness, and will eventually degrade and fail.