Quote:
Originally posted by LadyMischief
The essential moral truths remain unchanged and are mostly just common sense. Most of the instructions given to the Israelites while they wandered in the desert were sensical too. Burying their excrement. Burning down the houses of lepers (the bacteria that causes leprosy can live in the walls of houses), not eating pork (they couldn't properly cook pork and therefore trichanosis would have been a serious health risk), etc etc. I doubt though they would apply in a way today that would make any sense at all.
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I agree with you on most of the things you wrote, but I wouldn't call the moral aspects of the bible "moral truths". Moral commonplaces would probably be more suitable.
If you look at morality rationally it's pretty much a cultural aspect not unlike most others. The reason we see the morality largely the same as what's written in the bible is twofold.
First of all, we were born and raised in a culture largely based on christianity, so obviously we will tend to agree with most of it.
Secondly, many morals are almost universal among cultures - not because they are "true", but because they are practical for a culture. For instance "thou shalt not kill" (which is mostly about people within the same community, as can be seen by other quotes in the bible) is simply essential to the survival of a culture. A culture which does not condemn and punish it's members if they kill eachother will disappear quite rapidly.
The reason that that's in the bible is not that it's a moral truth, but that it's a moral commonplace. Any not entirely unsuccesful culture which would have written down it's rules would have come up with largely the same ideas.
What makes the bible so powerful is that it takes these rules from the realm of the subjective (that is, created or agreed upon by humans) to the realm of the absolute and objective (that is, laid down by a supreme being). This makes it easier to enforce them by giving them a much stronger justification, and hahahahahas them way deeper into the cultural consciousness than any law ever could.
Still, it does not make them real, objective, absolute truths
