The evolution of religious and secular morality

Tricky wrote:
Hi and welcome back, Christian. Hope the kids are doing well. I can understand you haven't had much time to post lately.

Hello my friend, thanks. You got that right, I'm going to try to post more often again.

Now to savage you unmercifully. )

Carry on. :D

Correct moral compass? I was unaware that such a thing had been developed.

For centuries. One of the main concerns in philosophy has been morality and justice. Another way to put it, (from a legal standpoint) is that humans have been searching for what is infinately??? just. In jurisprudence there is a classical school of thought that deals specifically with this very thing. They call it "natural law". This is the compass that according to them must be used to create positive law.

You see, I really don't agree with Stimpson's concept of morality. And most philosophical thinkers definately do not agree with his view of morality religious or not.

As far as I can tell, there is a great deal of difference, even within Christianity about what is "correct". There is some general agreement about big issues (don't murder or rape) but the fuzzy areas are just as fuzzy as ever. A lot of Christians (in the US at least) feel the death penalty is biblically justified, while a lot of atheists (in Europe at least) feel this is completely wrong.

I agree, and please note that this does not contradict that universal moral laws exists. It just says that humans have and will disagree on what they are.

I certainly don't think Christianity has any more claim to "correctness" than any other group.

This is an interesting point Tricky, it is not related to the one I'm trying to make. My point is that Christianity has made enormous contributions to the understanding and eventual implementation of morally correct principles.

Loki wrote:
Hiya, long time no argue! I hope the wife and kids (new and old) are doing fine.

Thanks Loki.

Loki wrote:
The thing that I thought you might shed some light on is some thinly veiled attacks on the Protestant movement. In other words, it appears that at least some Catholic histories want to paint the Catholic church as a leading opponent of the African slave trade (if not universally, then at least at the top - ie the Pope), and simultaneously portray the Protestant churches as 'pro-slavery'. Does this fit with your understanding of the stance that the the early Protestant churches took in regards to the issue? Or is this just a cheap shot by a few militant Catholics?

It is my understanding that the most progressive (over all)Christians have been the Catholic. The evidence would support this view. One of the darkest points in American History is that slavery went on for such a long time even with overwelming education against it. Protestants in America should have taken a different path. They did not.


But, this in no way diminishes the theory that Christians have had and still today are a mayor contributor to the effective application of justice.
 
Que -

Slavery in the US - Well, we read that the primary opponents of slavery in the US were Quakers and New England protestants. Were there sufficient Catholics in the US at the time to be on the forefront? Not that I have read.

Law and religion - What gross generalizations and what rubbish

You said:
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"In ancient times there was a clear distinction between religion and law."

and

"Please note that all jurisprudence (as we know it to be from documentation) began in Greece"
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Let's bash these with a two-fer:

From Gerald A. Larue (infidels.org): "The discovery of Oriental codes much older than those of the Bible, yet prescribing laws similar to those found within the Bible, has helped scholars to understand better the nature of Hebrew law. The Imperial law code of King Hammurabi of Babylon, coming from the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries [BCE]"

[Hint: this predates ancient Greece by a couple of years]

Continuing: "Hammurabi's laws were not an original creation but reveal development, for it can be demonstrated that the Hammurabi code is related to the law code of King Lipit-Ishtar of the city of Eshnunna who lived in the nineteenth century B.C. Both the Hammurabi code and the Lipit-Ishtar code indicate that the laws had divine sanction. The stele upon which the Hammurabi laws were inscribed depicts, in a relief, the monarch receiving authority to enact law from Shamash, the sun god and patron of justice. In like manner King Lipit-Ishtar, in the prologue to his law code, indicates that he was summoned by the god Enlil to establish justice in the land which he proceeded to do in accordance with the divine command.28 Just how the laws were supposed to have been imparted to the monarchs is not revealed, but the point was that the directions or laws for the guidance of human affairs were given by the gods and therefore were superior to the intentions and desires of any single human being."
 
Gregor wrote:
Slavery in the US - Well, we read that the primary opponents of slavery in the US were Quakers and New England protestants. Were there sufficient Catholics in the US at the time to be on the forefront? Not that I have read.

I would agree with this. Since the general population was protestant, most opponents would have been protestants.

Law and religion - What gross generalizations and what rubbish...Let's bash these with a two-fer:

Yes, I shouldn't have said all. I should have said most. The thing is that the richest source of philosophical thinking we have is from Greek and Roman sources. That is the Western bias (as well as in music, art, etc.) So, Gregor my point is (was) that the vast historical Western documentain (as oppossed to other histories) showes that religion and law were much different.

And if you think about it, you're actually supporting my point. The eastern cultures also made a distinction between religion and law.
 
Gregor said:
Slavery in the US - Well, we read that the primary opponents of slavery in the US were Quakers and New England protestants. Were there sufficient Catholics in the US at the time to be on the forefront? Not that I have read.
Click to expand...
Although the U.S. Catholic population probably didn't really begin to surge until the Irish influx in the 1840s, I suspect that there were at nearly all times more Catholics than Quakers in America (which goes to show that sheer numbers aren't everything).

Also, I expect that the Catholic voice was somewhat hampered by widespread anti-Catholic suspicion in the country at large. The U.S.-targeted release of the papal anti-slavery document In Supremo Apostolatus in 1839 (see supra), for example, was viewed by many in the non-Catholic mainstream as yet another insidious attempt by papists and their cultic foreign potentate to meddle in American affairs.
 
[/i]Originally posted by Loki[/i]
More on the Pope and slaves - about as close I can get. Seems pretty clear that any Papal involvement was with "just" slaves - war prisonsers, etc, rather than African slavery.
...

quote:
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[snip]

In 1488, King Ferdinand sent 100 Moorish slaves to Pope Innocent VIII, who presented them as gifts to his cardinals and other court notables.

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Click to expand...

(And we thought this thread was dead.)

Loki, at the time, I couldn't locate any useful scholarly references to the episode you cited above. However, I just happened to find a brief treatment of it by Princeton sociologist Rodney Stark, whose take on it is as follows:
It is true that some popes did not observe the moral obligation to oppose slavery – indeed, in 1488 Pope Innocent VIII accepted a gift of a hundred Moorish slaves from King Ferdinand of Aragon, giving some of them to his favorite cardinals. Of course, Innocent was anything but that when it came to a whole list of immoral actions... However, laxity must not be confused with doctrine. Thus while Innocent fathered many children, he did not retract the official doctrine that the clergy should be celibate. In similar fashion, his acceptance of a gift of slaves should not be confused with official Church teachings. These were enunciated often and explicitly as they became pertinent.
Click to expand...
That's from For the Glory of God: How Monotheism led to Reformations, Science, Witch-hunts and the End of Slavery (Princeton University Press, 2003). (I picked up this book once before but never reached the part about slavery.) I still haven't finished that chapter; maybe I'll post here again when I'm done if I think anyone might still be interested in this thread topic. However, you can tell from the title of the book what conclusion Stark draws about the role of religion in the abolition of slavery in the West.
 
Wow, talk about a "resurrection from the dead".

Synchronistically -- well, ok, by cooincidence -- this is currently an interesting topic for me, although my musings may hi-jack the thread.

IMO, Stimpy's position misses the utility of "religion". The question is not when they enter the game, rather if. Does anyone believe we'll see anytime soon 1 billion people praying 5 times a day to Bill's Handbook of Secular Humanism? I don't.

Over the last 50 years we've seen the info explosion allow more & more splinter groups -- think male homosex, NOW, NAACP, etc --to get their message publicized to the point they gain adherents to their particular cause yet fail to gain the public acclaim and acceptance they seem to desire. Conversely, Bush's simple message of reliance on a "higher power" resonates with (I'm too lazy to research it) maybe 75% of the "god-fearing" US population.

Belief in the "higher power" appears to me to be hardwired for large numbers of us, and harnessing of this belief for good or ill provided and will continue to provide all real impetus for societal change.
 
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