Theistic morality

[The Omnissiunt One]

What I find morally reprehensible about this verse is that it's okay to beat slaves as long as they don't die right away. But if they suffer and die after an acceptable period of time, that's totally okay.

Which is worse, dying on the spot, or dying after suffering for a few days?

And notice it does not condemn the beating, simply gives instructions for when the slave can die from the severity of the beating. It's appalling.

Progression is a part of morality, and that includes what is socially acceptable. As morality evolves we learn why previously held moral ideals are wrong. It used to be morally appropriate to have slaves, beat your wives, etc... Now we know better. There are things we do now that may seem moral correct, but maybe a hundred years from now people will say, "What were they thinking?" I think euthanasia is moving into the direction of becoming socially acceptable and therefore morally acceptable. It may be a slow progression, but I think as we as a society refine our thinking on human suffering when no other viable option is available for saving them, the stigma on euthanasia will change.

I agree, but this means that morality cannot be only what is socially acceptable.

Ultimately, morality is an agreement between people. A social agreement was constructed to not kill people because people understood the desire not to die, and therefore agreeing within a society that killing people is wrong and to punish those who do, you start the basis for morality.

That may have been how morality originated, and I think it forms the basis for moral discussion, but to say that morality is just an agreement between people is simplistic. After all, if it were just that, it would exclude babies and the disabled from our moral sphere.

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Nope. It's subjective. Social morality is based upon the agreement of what is wrong, which is why people can still have personal morality that differs with what is generally agreed upon by the society. I find it morally wrong to eat animals for many reasons. I'm not going to detail my reasons here, because that is not the point. The point is I don't eat meat based on certain ethical and health convictions, and there is no doubt many people here would vehemently disagree with me on this issue, and that's fine. We can still as a group of people agree that it's morally wrong to kill people.

You're clinging onto the usage of my word know to say, "Ahah! You have to be objective!" Nope. Our society has evolved our morality to declare that treating women like property and keeping slaves is wrong, based on our propensity to learn and recognize what benefits the society as a whole (The basis for morality). We as a society know slavery is wrong because we have deemed it to be such based on the consequences of slavery and recognition that all people are equal. Therefore, we know people in the past are wrong. I realize this is a difficult concept to grasp, but as I said before, if morality was objective, then it had to always be wrong, and we know from that people in the past did not consider it wrong. Therefore, subjective.

Just because, as a phenomenon, morality is a subjective thing that has changed from culture to culture, that doesn't mean moral standards themselves are subjective, though. A slave-owner was morally wrong at the time, even though society tolerated slave-owning. No doubt rjh4 would now say, 'Why were they wrong? If you don't have God, there can be no objective morals'. But he has yet to show us why God's command is not arbitrary, and why the Bible doesn't permit slavery. Theism gets us nowhere on the objective morality front. Personally, I believe morality comes from the recognition that the interests of our fellow humans and those of other species are just as important to them as our own are to us. Once we suppose this to be true, we have the basis for a solid utilitarian ethical system.