New Testament arguments

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Everything up to and including personal beliefs, interactions within a social contract and 'society' per se, the law, friends, family.

We're not born with a set of morals, we learn them, and they are almost always informed by the context we live in. A hypothetical Christian town in western Europe 1000 years ago would have displayed vastly different behaviour concerning decisions on morality than the same town today, even taking the % of christians within that town as a given. That's not necessarily good or bad, it's just the context of the moment. Retrospective analysis can certainly bring light to a situation but it doesn't always enable us to understand it. Certain societal customs that existed then were different of those that exist today, and any analysis can often be clouded by today's perception of those actions. Again, doesn't make those actions right, it's just how it is.

Which I find it curious that some Judge the morality of the lifestyle of people that lived in 1500 b.c. by their modern context.

Well that's where it's important to introduce some scope into it. Would I say that, say, raping a child is always bad. Yes, I wouldn't have any hesitation in defending it and neither I assume would many people who lived 1500 BC. there are many instances I think where a set of behaviours can seem universal, though naturally I still wouldn't infer a higher cause for that universalism but another common denominator (us, for one).

You mentioned the milligram experiment. Do you think the results would be different between religious and non-religious demographics?

I don't know, what I can say however is that it is against the teachings of Christ to inflict pain upon a fellow human being. Someone participates in activities that are against their beliefs are what we call hypocrites.

Funny because really aren't you just conforming to the results garnered in the milligram experiment? The expierment's aim had nothing to do with the pain itself, which I'm sure you know.