Comments on: Different stages of moral development (Harris)

By: Joey Mannon

Joey Mannon — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:11:34 +0000

Social justice (in America) has increased, yes. The general condition of the human heart is unchanged in my view, however. I understand morality to encompass more than just outward actions.

By: Josh Sowin

Josh Sowin — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:04:12 +0000

I’d rather people be looking at porn that lynching black people, or being openly homosexual than putting them in prison or killing them. Etc. Right now we may have an increase in personal sin (and to me that’s a big maybe, since that’s alway been there too) but social justice seems to have increased.

By: Joey Mannon

Joey Mannon — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:58:37 +0000

Edman, I wasn’t saying that the fact that we don’t lynch black people anymore is no big deal. I’m married to a black woman and my children are half-black, so it is a big deal to me. What I was saying was that just because outward manifestations of hatred are not as common as they once were, hatred (and lust and greed) still exist in the human heart. Are we more moral just because racial violence in this part of the world has decreased? Or do we find other outlets for our hatred?

The availability of evil will lead the human heart to search it out. The information age will lead to increased pornography addiction, among other things. Do I think we’re more moral than 200 years ago? It depends on how you label morality.

By: Josh Sowin

Josh Sowin — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 13:19:29 +0000

I had written a reply but I just read Edman’s and he said it better than me. Great points.

By: Edman

Edman — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 13:14:11 +0000

“simply because we don’t lynch our black brothers anymore?”

While it may be no big deal to you that black people aren’t being lynched anymore…to them (and the rest of us) it is an extraordinarily big deal. It is certainly a sign of moral progress when we don’t go about killing people for the color of their skin. And that’s not the only example.

In 16th century Paris, a popular form of entertainment was known as “cat burning.” They would tie up a cat and lower it into a fire, while the audience would laugh and cheer as the animal burned to death.

I think that it’s a good sign that we see these sadistic things as horrible now. It means we are becoming more moral as a whole, although the speed of progress may seem terribly slow to us.

Your complaint about the Information Age indicates that “subtle debauchery” is the new Bad Thing, and that “greed, lust and deception are more rampant”. While I do not deny that some of these things seem more prevalent, I believe it is a byproduct of the Information Age. We used to see every newsworthy Bad Thing of a local population ranging from 1,000 to 200,000. Now, we see every newsworthy Bad Thing in a population of 6 billion. It should come as no surprise that these things should seem more “rampant.”

However, I’m confident that progress will continue to happen, and the bar of morality will continue to be raised. Our great-great-grandchildren will find some of our common misdeeds reprehensible, just as we see our great-great-grandparents, and wonder how they could have justified slavery.

By: Joey Mannon

Joey Mannon — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 04:00:04 +0000

It makes me wonder where we’ll be in another hundred years. While barbarism is not as visible in our culture as it once was, I’d argue that greed, lust and deception are more rampant if only because they’re more accessible in this information age. Has our morality really evolved simply because we don’t lynch our black brothers anymore? Or has the human condition simply taken on a more subtle form of debauchery?