I just can’t see the point. With the current climate of fear about the littles being forced to learn anything of a sexual nature and who is qualified to teach such things and people saying they will pull their kids out of school, or quit a teaching position if they are forced to teach anything remotely pertaining to sexual behaviors or sexuality, how will anyone explain adultery to them?
If you need a wall poster to remind you not to commit murder or lie to your neighbor, I’m less worried about your religion and more worried about your basic functioning as a human.
The irony? Moses liberated people from authoritarian rule, and now he's being turned into a mascot for state-mandated theocracy. Somewhere Charlton Heston is weeping into his tablets.
Ten Commandments? Cool story. But how about we try ten virtues you actually live by?
Start with honesty. End with courage. Keep your religion optional and your conscience on.
I can go along with the discussion on natural morality to a certain point. However, I fear that it breaks down when we come to the basic question of whether every human being deserves to be treated with dignity, respected, loved or whatever. Without that "divine spark" it seems to be all too easy to justify deciding that some other person or group is evil. The possibility for atonement goes away, since someone's human worth is based solely their actions, the circumstances of their birth, or even their words (you said a racist thing and therefore you should be ostracized forever.)
Kohlberg wrote his theory back in the day when people were still going to church, which means that many people's lives included a weekly opportunity to think about one's moral shortcomings. Children were still being subjected to authority and punishment by their parents. Yeah, yeah, sure, lots of problems with religion and churches. But the dominance of religion in previous centuries ensured that "morality" was pretty much floating in the cultural air, whether you went to church or believed anything or not. Thus many had the intellectual and emotional tools for working out their own practical morality, (including most of the writers in the short bibliography above.)
In these days of psychological parenting, what happens if young people never experience the first three steps of moral development and emerge into young adulthood (after some incredible middle school cruelties) at step four? Here, the only "authorities" they find are their peers and those eerily attractive people on Instagram. Do they have the tools to proceed further on Kohlberg's progression, or do they just end up reverting to convenient ideologies that exploit the darker aspects of human nature?
(The real-life observations underlying my ongoing question here are my neighbors on reddit who insist on dehumanizing our street campers, and who make fun of anyone who advocates for giving the unfortunate any benefit of the doubt. More peer pressure, fortunately not the majority as far as I can tell. And, before that, there was "wokeism's" absolute condemnation of anyone, living or non-living, who violated its incompletely examined moral absolutes or even questioned them.)
Christian Nationalism is the precursor to the long-term demise of the Christian religion. Theocracy inevitably produces a profound disbelief, because the attempt to impose infallible truth by the interpretation of infallible scriptures by fallible human beings runs aground on the rocks of reality. The example of Iran is instructive here. When (if) the ayatollahs are overthrown as the governing authority, Iran will be probably the most secular nation on earth. The First Amendment doctrine of separation of church and state is actually a gift to religion, because once religion becomes entangled with the state, it loses its power to reach the dimension of depth (to borrow from Tillich) that transforms souls.
I just can’t see the point. With the current climate of fear about the littles being forced to learn anything of a sexual nature and who is qualified to teach such things and people saying they will pull their kids out of school, or quit a teaching position if they are forced to teach anything remotely pertaining to sexual behaviors or sexuality, how will anyone explain adultery to them?
If you need a wall poster to remind you not to commit murder or lie to your neighbor, I’m less worried about your religion and more worried about your basic functioning as a human.
The irony? Moses liberated people from authoritarian rule, and now he's being turned into a mascot for state-mandated theocracy. Somewhere Charlton Heston is weeping into his tablets.
Ten Commandments? Cool story. But how about we try ten virtues you actually live by?
Start with honesty. End with courage. Keep your religion optional and your conscience on.
I can go along with the discussion on natural morality to a certain point. However, I fear that it breaks down when we come to the basic question of whether every human being deserves to be treated with dignity, respected, loved or whatever. Without that "divine spark" it seems to be all too easy to justify deciding that some other person or group is evil. The possibility for atonement goes away, since someone's human worth is based solely their actions, the circumstances of their birth, or even their words (you said a racist thing and therefore you should be ostracized forever.)
Kohlberg wrote his theory back in the day when people were still going to church, which means that many people's lives included a weekly opportunity to think about one's moral shortcomings. Children were still being subjected to authority and punishment by their parents. Yeah, yeah, sure, lots of problems with religion and churches. But the dominance of religion in previous centuries ensured that "morality" was pretty much floating in the cultural air, whether you went to church or believed anything or not. Thus many had the intellectual and emotional tools for working out their own practical morality, (including most of the writers in the short bibliography above.)
In these days of psychological parenting, what happens if young people never experience the first three steps of moral development and emerge into young adulthood (after some incredible middle school cruelties) at step four? Here, the only "authorities" they find are their peers and those eerily attractive people on Instagram. Do they have the tools to proceed further on Kohlberg's progression, or do they just end up reverting to convenient ideologies that exploit the darker aspects of human nature?
(The real-life observations underlying my ongoing question here are my neighbors on reddit who insist on dehumanizing our street campers, and who make fun of anyone who advocates for giving the unfortunate any benefit of the doubt. More peer pressure, fortunately not the majority as far as I can tell. And, before that, there was "wokeism's" absolute condemnation of anyone, living or non-living, who violated its incompletely examined moral absolutes or even questioned them.)
(Thanks for the opportunity to comment.)
Why not the Beattitudes? Post those
This is jammed with so much food for thought. Thank you. I will have to sit with this a little longer.
Great read!
Christian Nationalism is the precursor to the long-term demise of the Christian religion. Theocracy inevitably produces a profound disbelief, because the attempt to impose infallible truth by the interpretation of infallible scriptures by fallible human beings runs aground on the rocks of reality. The example of Iran is instructive here. When (if) the ayatollahs are overthrown as the governing authority, Iran will be probably the most secular nation on earth. The First Amendment doctrine of separation of church and state is actually a gift to religion, because once religion becomes entangled with the state, it loses its power to reach the dimension of depth (to borrow from Tillich) that transforms souls.