(July 28, 2023 at 9:15 pm)Belacqua Wrote:(July 28, 2023 at 9:04 pm)Varium Wrote: I mean to be fair, The Bible has several moments where both slavery and infanticide are approved of by God. Sure, Christians in the past have abolished slavery, same with Jews in the Old Testament, but was it because of what God said? Or because of basic human morality?
https://www.evilbible.com/evil-bible-hom...-pro-life/
https://www.evilbible.com/evil-bible-home-page/slavery/
Interesting question!
I'm curious about the term "basic human morality." Is there such a thing? How do we know what it is?
The fact that people have so frequently behaved badly seems to argue against such a thing. Or maybe the fact that we can so easily act against it means that it has little influence.
I've seen people claim that all morality is based on empathy, but I'm skeptical about this. It seems to me that morality varies quite a bit with the age, and may have very little about it which is "basic" to the unchangeable human operating system.
So for example you and I take slavery and infanticide to be bad, but in vast regions of time and space they were normal.
Or perhaps this concatenation of history implies that morality is both subjective and relative, and therefore subject to changing mores.
