muso
|
"An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind." (Mohandas Gandhi )
Morality is necessarily defined by a society, even when that society is predominantly Muslim or Christian. All that the religion does is to distort societal values. The values of society vary significantly even from generation to generation and if we sampled it through the ages, we'd find that within a given society at a given time, it also depended very much on life stage, regardless of generation. In other words, attitudes change as we get older, regardless of which historical period we're looking at.
O tempora o mores! was uttered by Cicero as a crusty old man. We still have crusty old men condemning the morals of today and longing for the old days which were never quite as idyllic as they remembered them.
It might have been quite morally acceptable for a 2nd Millennium BC tribe to invade a city (eg Jerisho), kill most of its inhabitants and subject the women and children to slavery.
In the 21st Century, such an action would cause immediate intervention, especially if it was happening in an oil producing area.
As well as temporal relativism, even within a single religion, there is spacial relativism. Different societies have different values.
Morality is dynamic. That's how it is, that's how it has been, and that's how it will probably remain.
|