Morality - Who Decides? (America, abortion, quote, God)

[LBear]

Who decides what is moral?

Is morality absolute or is it an ever-changing thing?

[K-Luv]

I personally believe that humans are essentially moral beings with or with-out religion.

[Tricky D]

Empathy is essential to people who wish to be moral (or good), because if people are unable to love themselves they are also unable to love others.
I believe that empathy has to be taught but that it is not hard to teach, because all a parent has to do to teach her child empathy is to genuinely love them.

[LBear]

Originally Posted by K-Luv

I personally believe that humans are essentially moral beings with or with-out religion.

Click here for a statistical rebuttal:

After reviewing the above, do you still believe that humans are "moral" people?

Click here for more evidence:

Human history is FILLED with death, rape, violence, pain, suffering, slavery, injustice, etc.

[Ranj_Ramak]

Originally Posted by LBear

Human history is FILLED with death, rape, violence, pain, suffering, slavery, injustice, etc.

And most of it was due to religion..

[Tricky D]

Originally Posted by Ranj_Ramak

And most of it was due to religion..

True, but religion is not all bad. Some good things came out of it.
So I guess religion is just a tool and it depends on the user whether religion is a good or a bad thing.

[coosjoaquin]

moral relativist here

[more excellent way]

Morality is not an absolute, it is subjective (based on bias)...example...in China, Chinese peasants have been known to 'fatten up' dogs in their backyard so they can eat them, but, in America, we would never do that because we consider that immoral (but if food becomes scarce in hard times, such as an extreme food/economic crisis/collapse), who knows???, some people just might.

"Morality" is man's CHOSEN standards of 'goodness' ("ever changing"), but God's standard of "GOOD" is absolute (which is why He says that "NO ONE is GOOD but God alone". We are to practice "goodNESS" (make the EFFORT to be good), but we can't actually BE good/perfect like God).

"No one is good..." (Mark 10:18)

Our character is to be as a "lover of goodness" (Titus 1:8), it's also a fruit of the spirit (Galatians 5:22).

In order to be Godly/holy, we are to live according to absolutes (God's way).

[Tricky D]

The thing is that in India right now there are more boys than girls because the parents of the girls have to pay the dowry every time they get married, so mothers often have an abortion whenever they find out that their child is a girl. I dunno if this custom is purely economical or just social (and thus also religious). In some villages the girls are not being fed properly, nor do they receive an education.
It already is a fact that in some Indian villages no girls have been born at all.
I guess the Indians don’t do long-term planning?

[more excellent way]

I have read about the female baby "GENOCIDE" that is happening in India. The whole civilized world considers it "genocide" (UNICEF and human rights groups, even the Indian government has outlawed the killing of the female babies), but the people in India do it anyway.

Whether any individual parent actually considers it "MORAL" is a mystery to me, but the explanation I read is based on economics.

That's an example of how lifestyles/economics determine what is CALLED "morality". It's very subjective/biased for local 'convenience'.

So, "moral" is what man has decided what the rules of should be for "goodness", but God wants us to have a well intact CONSCIENCE (Godly principles/ethics).

Adam and Eve ate of the tree of conscience, and we are to learn how to use that knowledge properly (Hebrews 5:14) with "the sword of the spirit" (Ephesians 6:17) so that we can have our conscience purified also (Hebrews 9:14).

All verses are from the RSV.