Originally posted by moonbusMorality was "invented"?!?! That's worthy of a thread!
It wasn't a law then. It was a custom. It was neither moral nor immoral. Morality and laws were invented later.
How do you interpret this:
If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbour, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.
Leviticus 20:10
Originally posted by wolfgang59Worthy of a history lesson in humanity. Individuals do not invent morality; cultures do. Every civilization at some point in its history recognizes the utility of re-examining its hoary customs and practises and of writing them down and codifying them and giving them some basis of legitimacy (as having been handed down by the gods or God, for example). The code of Hammburabi is one such example. The OT records another such, the Ten Commandments being perhaps the best known example in the Western world. It was a critical moment for humanity, and it is this which I have called “invention”. Obviously, laws and morality were not invented in quite the same sense in which Edison invented the light bulb. If you don’t like the word “invented” then use another word. “Developed” or "instituted" or whatever.
Morality was "invented"?!?! That's worthy of a thread!
How do you interpret this:
If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbour, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.
Leviticus 20:10
How do I interpret Leviticus? As a record of the values of a previous, now-defunct, civilization.
Originally posted by moonbusBut you dismissed the cultural values we were discussing as 'a custom' and not morality.
Worthy of a history lesson in humanity. Individuals do not invent morality; cultures do.
Every civilization at some point in its history recognizes the utility of re-examining its hoary customs and practises and of writing them down and codifying them and giving them some basis of legitimacy (as having been handed down by the gods or God, for example).
Surely the passages in question are exactly that, yet you dismissed them as not having anything to do with morality.
How do I interpret Leviticus? As a record of the values of a previous, now-defunct, civilization.
But by your description, they were the moral values of that civilization, yet you denied that earlier. Which is it to be?
Originally posted by twhiteheadI do not dismiss them at all. I accept that those were in fact the values that civilization embraced. I just don't call that "morality"--because THEY wouldn't have either. There was no such concept then, just as there was no concept of freewill then or the rule of law. Morality was a later development/invention/institution, just as the rule of law (as opposed to patriarchal fiat) was a later development/invention/institution. Custom is just something people do, without thinking about it or trying to justify it or legitimate it, 'because people have always done it that way'. Such practises _become_ morality by being re-examined, codified, legitimated, justified, given Divine Sanction, etc. Sometimes, through the process of re-examination, they get dropped. Stoning addulteresses was one of the customs that got dropped. THAT was the point of Jesus' injunction, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." He was explicitly dropping that custom as outdated and no longer applicable.
But you dismissed the cultural values we were discussing as 'a custom' and not morality.
[b]Every civilization at some point in its history recognizes the utility of re-examining its hoary customs and practises and of writing them down and codifying them and giving them some basis of legitimacy (as having been handed down by the gods or God, for exampl ...[text shortened]... they were the moral values of that civilization, yet you denied that earlier. Which is it to be?
EDIT: "Your sacrifices are odious to me" was Jesus' explicit outdating of the rest of Leviticus. No more literal burning of animal's innards; the sacrifice was thereafter to be of a different nature: Jesus offered himself as that sacrifice.
Perhaps it would help if I gave some examples of how morality develops.
Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone shows us one such development from the ancient Greeks' perspective. Antigone’s brother has been killed in battle; his body lies on the field. The gods command that a fallen soldier be buried, but the local tyrant, Creon, has forbidden this (his reasons do not concern us). Antigone is faced with a dilemma: if she obeys the gods and buries her brother, she will be punished by Creon; if she obeys Creon and does not bury her brother, she will be punished by the gods. (Engaging someone else to bury her brother will be interpreted by Creon as having done it herself.)
Now, any modern Western person would say it’s bloody simple: she should do what the gods command and appeal to the local judge (who would have been Creon--expect no mercy) that the god’s commandments are higher than the local tyrant’s and that she should therefore be acquitted. A simple case of justified civil disobedience.
But not for the ancient Greek public, for whom the tragedy was written. For them, there was no such concept as justified civil disobedience. Kings ruled by divine right; any edict from a king had equal weight with that of a god. No other interpretation makes any sense of Antigone’s dilemma.
The idea of a moral reason to disobey a civil law had first to be “invented,” I use that word precisely. The very lack of this concept at that time is what gives Sophocles’ tragedy its point. That concept was invented, not by one man in one swell foop, as Edison invented the light bulb, but over generations of philosophers and tragedians and politicians, among them Sophocles’ successors, and Socrates and his successors.
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Another example, this time from medieval Christianity. The ancient Greeks and early Christians had no concept of free will. This concept had first to be “invented”, I use that word precisely. In this case, one man did invent it: Saint Jerome. He was addressing a deep puzzle which had vexed Christian theologians for centuries, namely, if God is omniscient, then he knows everything everyone will ever do, say, think, desire, and believe. So all these things must have been pre-determined. But how can a merciful God punish people for what is pre-determined, for something which is bound to happen no matter what anyone does to try to prevent it? The answer Jerome came up with was: “free will.” Bingo. Morality in the making. There was no such idea before Jerome, and it has had enormous consequences for the civilization to which we all belong now. It is, for example, the basis for the legal distinction between involuntary manslaughter and murder. Many previous civilizations punished people for what we would consider involuntary manslaughter. In ancient times, if a member of Clan A killed a member of Clan B--even by accident--, then any member of Clan B was entitled to seek revenge and kill any member of Clan A. That was the prior custom; it was known as the justice of Rhadamanthus in Greek, an eye for an eye in Hebrew. We don’t do that anymore, partly because we have the concept of “freewill” and a legal system based on it--namely, the intention (mens rea) matters, not only the act.
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Originally posted by twhitehead
You clearly have a very different understanding of what the word means than I do.
So let me change the question: Do you think that the people in question were wrong to stone adulterers?
What people now think about what people did 3000 or 4000 years ago has nothing to do with right or wrong. We have only a very fragmentary understanding of the problems, issues, and dilemmas people faced then. It would be presumptuous of us to pass judgment on them; to pass judgment upon them would merely vent our present prejudices. Within my own lifetime, miscegenation was widely considered to be unnatural and immoral, and there were laws prohibiting it in several states of the U.S.A. Nowadays, most people don't even know what the word means, so far has morality/prejudice changed in a mere 50 years.
I note that previous civilizations had different values than ours, without judging them to have been right or wrong, while accepting that some of our present values grew out of theirs through a historical process which can, in some instances, be traced in the extant literature (of which the OT is a part). I hope that is a clear enough statement of position.
Originally posted by moonbusI think it does.
What people now think about what people did 3000 or 4000 years ago has nothing to do with right or wrong.
We have only a very fragmentary understanding of the problems, issues, and dilemmas people faced then.
If we had more than a fragmentary understanding, would that change your stance? Is our fragmentary understanding the reason why you say it has nothing to do with right or wrong?
It would be presumptuous of us to pass judgment on them; to pass judgment upon them would merely vent our present prejudices. Within my own lifetime, miscegenation was widely considered to be unnatural and immoral, and there were laws prohibiting it in several states of the U.S.A. Nowadays, most people don't even know what the word means, so far has morality/prejudice changed in a mere 50 years.
So, given that it occurred within your lifetime, surely you have more than a fragmentary understanding of this particular issue? Was it right or wrong at the time?
I hope that is a clear enough statement of position.
You appear to be saying that right and wrong are whatever the society of the time decides it is.
So, would you agree that in societies today that stone adulterers, they are right to do so because that is the prevailing culture?
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Originally posted by wolfgang59
Is a law requiring a woman to be stoned to death immoral?
Here is josepw's opinion.
It wasn't the law that was immoral.
No-brainer.
Subjective Question
Can your god (as far as you are concerned) make any law and that makes it moral?
Is a law requiring a woman to be stoned to death immoral?
Could you specify what law you have in mind?
This is too general and I'd like to consider the particular text and context IF you are referring to something in the Old Testament.
I recall something about a woman being raped when in the field and no one being able to hear her cry. The man is punished.
I recall something about a woman being lain with in a place where she could be heard to cry for help and did not. In that case both the man and the woman are punished.
I recall that along with the laws of punishment there were also many remedies about various offerings to atone for sins - sin offering, trespass offering, consecration offering, peace offering.
The effect seemed to me to be that some laws were very harsh but there was a way to confess and atone for one's sins through the Levitical priesthood.
I also recall that Moses was leading a one of a kind theocratic nation for a temporary testimony to the surrounding nations. That is temporary as a function to prove that mankind cannot live up to God's righteous demands and needs a Savior and grace.
And I recall that Jesus, in John 8, was pressed to participate in stoning a woman. He did not apologize for the law of God in the least. However, He did use it as an opportunity to prove that not one person in the crowd was free from being just as guilty.
Mysteriously the Bible says that He was writing something in the sand. We don't know what it was He was writing. It has been thought that perhaps He was writing the names of the men who had committed fornication with the woman. Perhaps some of them were standing there in the mob.
He is God incarnate. He knew more about ALL of their personal lives then they did. But we don't know what He was writing in the sand. We know that instead of apologizing from the law of Moses He said -
He who is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.
So my Bible doesn't end with an instruction for all nations to practice stoning adulterous women.
twhitehead: If we had more than a fragmentary understanding, would that change your stance? Is our fragmentary understanding the reason why you say it has nothing to do with right or wrong?
Moonbus: No. It has to do with cultural distance, not fragmentariness. Removing the fragmentariness makes one realize how much sense there was in previous cultures or is in other concurrent ones; lack of understanding of details makes us think that what they do is just senseless or stupid or wrong, and tends to lead to snap judgments which turn out to be baseless prejudice.
Moonbus: ... Within my own lifetime, miscegenation was widely considered to be unnatural and immoral, ...
twhitehead: So, given that it occurred within your lifetime, surely you have more than a fragmentary understanding of this particular issue? Was it right or wrong at the time?
Moonbus: I am entitled to pass judgement on this issue precisely because I am immersed in that culture and have a detailed understanding of the issues. (I grew up watching MLK Jr. on tv, images burned into the memory of my generation; as images of the collapse of the WTC will be for another generation.) This is a clear case in which what had passed for morality for a very long time came to be seen to be baseless prejudice. The moral ground shifted: what had been wrong (interracial marriage) became morally irrelevant and resisting the change became indecent. I for one did not resist the change; I welcomed it.
twhitehead: You appear to be saying that right and wrong are whatever the society of the time decides it is. So, would you agree that in societies today that stone adulterers, they are right to do so because that is the prevailing culture?
Moonbus: You are asking me to presume to pass judgement other cultures, to make a pronouncement that what they did (or do) must have been (or be) right or wrong. I won’t do that. It would be arrogant. We are in no position to claim any higher ground from which to make such pronouncements. We are on a level with other cultures.
It is certainly not the case that whatever any culture thinks is right is right, and there has never been a culture which claimed that anything is right so long as someone thinks so. That is a nonsense position which does not need refuting; no one maintains that position. Nonetheless, different cultures do in fact have different practices (not just anything) and they legitimate or justify them differently (not just whimsical ‘because we say so’ ); these differences are relevant to the discussion, whether a judgment of right or wrong in any particular case (such as stoning as a form of execution) is appropriate and by whom.
I think you will find that the cultures which practice honor killing are also the ones which have arranged marriages. These two things go together, historically and conceptually.
Marriages for love are a peculiarly European institution. In ancient times, and in many parts of the world today, marriages were/are arranged. In such societies, marriages were power alliances between families, the purpose of which was to consolidate property (especially land) and to ensure that it passed, intact, to the next generation. The ‘problem’ with adultery was not that people were having sex (Oh, horrors!); the problem with adultery was that it tended to produce illegitimate heirs, and the problem with that was that illegitimate claimants disrupted the arrangements between families by scattering power and land. The fact that adulteresses were executed (by stoning or some other means) shows how important power, property, and inheritance relations were.
Now, if you want to condemn the execution of adulteresses (by stoning or some other means), then you condemn their whole social structure of marriage and power and property and inheritance, too. So you might as well condemn them for their clothes.
The Mullahs think we are immoral for letting our daughters go out in public with their faces uncovered. I will not presume to say that the Mullahs are wrong to think so. However, I prefer not to live there, and the fact that I have a choice where to live is a good thing (total neutrality about everything is also a nonsense position which need not be refuted because no one holds it).
Sorry, this is getting awfully prolix... but a good solid discussion going here.
Originally posted by sonship"He did not apologize for the law of God in the least." Does this mean Jesus endorsed it?
And I recall that Jesus, in John 8, was pressed to participate in stoning a woman. He did not apologize for the law of God in the least. However, He did use it as an opportunity to prove that not one person in the crowd was free from being just as guilty.
How many other "laws of God" were unenforceable because those who might have enforced them were not "free from being just as guilty"?