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RE: Irredeemable
but we don't disagree Jim... Knowing what we know today, we clearly see all these old practices as unacceptable... but we are living today, and that distinction is key.
It seems obvious now... I mean... I'm with you 100% but if we read some of the ideas being espoused by revered thinkers, political figures and leaders of years past, we might feel shocked and confused.
For example, Jefferson is remembered as a founding father, as our third president, as a man who helped lay the first bricks to create this great nation. But... he also owned slaves. In his day, nobody thought of him as a monster... and we try to be fair to the context of time.
It doesn't matter what we know today because slavery has always been wrong. By keeping slaves Jefferson was behaving immorally. He might have believed that he had a right to take away a mans freedom but how could he have ever actually had the right? The majority of people didn't think he was a monster but some forward and right thinking people did because there is no justification for keeping slaves just like there were forward thinking people in the deep south in the past who knew it was morally wrong to lynch a black man (or any man for that matter).
If there were 50 white men at a Klu Klux Clan meeting and a black man walked in, the majority of people at the meeting would agree that the black man had no rights and that they had the right to harm the black man but the black man would disagree. Who would actually be correct? Did the Klu Klux Clan actually have the right to harm the black man because the majority believed it and because there were racist laws in existence that allowed them to justify their actions in their heads?
Yes Jim, we don't disagree.
But again we know this today, they didn't know better back then.
Using a different example. If we judged let's say Socrates for thinking the earth is flat, we would be unfair. The knowledge of the time was what he had at his disposal. We would not call him crazy or delusional. We know the truth now.
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If you believe that at some point in the past or at some point in the future, slavery could/would be morally right simply because 'times change' or because the majority believe it to be so than we do not agree. Slavery has never been morally right, can never be morally right and will never be morally right, regardless of what you or anyone else believe and what laws might have been written by men to justify it. Nobody has the right to take another mans freedom from him because theft is wrong in all circumstances and at all times and places in the Universe. If you can think of an example of where slavery was actually morally right and not just percieved to be right I will be interested to know it and also how you came to the conclusion.
Socrates belief that the earth was flat did not cause him to take actions that harmed other people so he wasn't doing anything wrong by asserting that belief and aside from that how do you know it is true that it is round? I'm guessing you haven't personally verified it for yourself and depend on NASA and other sources to tell you what is true.
The idea of moral relativism along with the neo Darwinsim are both dangerous ideas that provide people with an excuse for immoral behaviour and I believe they have been pushed/encouraged deliberately to move humanity away from the truth that morality is fixed. Anyone who believes that they get to choose what is right or wrong has the potential to be a dangerous individual if they get into a position of power and couple that with the idea of 'survival of the fittest' and you have a recipe for disaster. It saddens me just how many moral relativists there are in the world but it goes some way to explain why the world is in the shit state it is.
I get your point, but I seem to fail to make mine clear.
Slavery was never ok, people were ignorant of that truth, period.
Who knows, a thousand years from now everyone might think that we were monsters in the 21st century, because we ate animals.
What you describe when you say relativism, is the parallel conversation that justifies regressive ideologies in the name of tolerance. The stoning of homosexuals for example by Islamic nations. Nobody in their right mind should tolerate barbarism.
I'm mostly referring to the constant shift in social norms that affect our moral glass minutely every generation.
Here's another example of recent times. In my grandpa's generation, women would get married commonly at 16 years old and start having children right away. Today, we would say that a couple who's still in their teens has no business getting married.
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