Morality has often been "inherently" associated to religion.

However, let's take a more critical scrutiny into this basic assumption.

Hence....

Which Came First - Societal Laws Or Religious Morality?

Please jump in.

Thanks.

As soon as religious morality arrives, we'll be able to answer that.

hackenslash » Mar 29, 2010 9:25 pm wrote:As soon as religious morality arrives, we'll be able to answer that.

Which Came First - Societal Laws Or Religious Morality?

Societal laws if we desire to separate the two, serve to preserve a basic degree of order, Religious "morality' is for the sake of the flourishing of a culture, of instilling values, and communal aesthetics. Their role is in creating moral habits, to curb immoral ones, rather than a societal level where it's only the punishing offenders that is of any concern.

Recently in philadelphia, there's been a wave of violent flash mobs of your children. The city has been criticized for cutting back on after school programs, and activities because of our economic crunch. The Mayor, and Police Commissioner responded to these criticism by claiming it's not the governments job to raise children.

This reveals the traditional divide between the two, religions traditionally served to create community among members of a society, conceiving children into a particular shared cultural aesthetic.

Governments may serve to punish human rights violations, to punish immorality, but their traditional role has never been to instill a valuing of the morals, or human rights at all, in individual citizens. That's the role of shared culture, or what's commonly known as religion.

Bollocks of the highest order. That's basic parental responsibility.

hackenslash » Mar 29, 2010 4:12 pm wrote:Bollocks of the highest order. That's basic parental responsibility.

Sure, if parents were omnipresent raisers of their children this wouldn't be a problem. But a child is shaped not just by his parents, but also by those that occupy the corner he lives in, and often the latter is more influential in the child's life than the former. As a child of immigrant parents, the ability to raise a child in a home so foreign to them was quite difficult, if it was not for the aid of the community in that process. Ultimate legal responsibility may fall on that child, but it's culture in which that parent occupies as well as the extended community that actually raises that child.

The culture itself occupies the space of all the experiences the child goes through, a parent in all actuality occupies only a portion of that space. How many children find their parents to be the true relators of their experiences growing up? How many find their young friends, who occupy the same space as them, the true relators? Culture is the attempt to create a shared sense of values among all participants. Void of this makeup you risk decadence.

And what the fuck's wrong with decadence? I like a bit of decadence. It's my raison d'etre, in fact.

When parents aren't the major influence, they're not doing it right.

Societal laws probably came first, religious morality wasn't necessary until after the advent of agriculture and people started living in huge, stratified groups.

Religion and societal laws are bound up intricately within the evolution of the human mind. I tend to not give much time to theories that appeal to the idea that Homo was some noble savage/ proto-rationalist before dem nasty religious memes came along.