Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Morality in the 21st Century

I think a 21st century conversation about moral truth, on what's truly right and wrong should happen. For centuries our moral flourishing has been restricted by dogmatic 'dusty' pre-scientific books written by men, but allegedly published by god (he's an author btw, not the best writer/editor in my view if I am honest) So Gods commanding what's right and what's wrong to pseudo-historical illiterate peasants and we must take their word that this is as good as morality gets!
 Its true murder and theft are immoral, in my view, but these texts claim its immoral to say 'gods a cruel idea' -perpetrators must be punished by death and often can have no appeal. Stoning naughty children, that's ok too morally speaking, slavery, well, that's not immoral, but there are limits to owning slaves, and what one can do with them. The moral line is drawn in beating them to death, as God does have his moral standards too. If any modern morality can be found in these ancient texts, morality that is still relevant today. I submit it is possible to discover these without recourse to cruel, counterintuitive morally hypocritical scribbling's.
 Any modern literate person knows god was wrong on the slavery issue, but he got thou shalt do no murder right so that's ok? Well no its not OK, God fails to condemn torture, rape, child abuse, animal cruelty etc the list is enormous. God does give ten rock solid commandments that any educated 10 year old today could improve in 10 minutes. How about instead of forbidding graven images, why not make slavery or genocide immoral? With all the knowledge now known- (that the human authors of these texts didn't know-and it shows) and the fact our 'moral' holy books often are guides on how to commit atrocities and acts of sadism. Then these pre/iron age morals forged in the name of ignorance with a sprinkling of thou shalt not kill doesn't redeem the grotesque acts they condone, one human sacrifice doesn't make anything right or better, not then, certainly not now, probably not ever. 
So amongst all this depravity and the deplorable immoral depths to which old books on morality plunge, it is not recommended to base a 21st century moral system on them, rather we should outgrow them for humanity's sake. Humanism as a science of morality is the future, if our species is ever to live up to half its full potential.

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