I'm not really asking for you to foretell the future, I was just looking for an example of what sort of things you find today that are possible candidates for future condemnation.
To answer your questions directly.
"if you had been raised in a wealthy family in the pre-Civil War south, you would not have kept slaves? If you had grown up in 13th century Mongolia and marched with Genghis Khan, you would not have raped and pillaged along with your comrades? If you had been a good Christian in Salem, Massachusetts in the 17th century, would you have refused to put an accused witch to death? If you had been a good Christian marching west across America in the 18th century, you would not have believed that the only good Indian was a dead one??
No, No, Yes and No, respectively.
Treating Human beings, (created in the image of God) with disrespect and unjustified malice was, and is, wrong.
Regarding the Old Testament, you are seriously mis-characterizing what it teaches, but how interesting you should bring that up in light of your slam on Ravi's response to a legitimate question, as a "straw man". You seem to be raising exactly the same objection as the young man who hadn't thought very deeply about his own presuppositions.
The essential problem with the Moral relativist is not that he or she sees all morality as fluid and transitory. Rather they refuse to stop using selective, "absolute" statements about right and wrong, in spite of their loud pronouncements about the meaninglessness of all such categories.
Your utopian ideas about why we all just can't get along are as naive as they are unrealistic.
The problem with your thinking on this is mirrored in what Woody Allen said about sleeping with his adopted daughter, "The heart wants, what the heart wants"
You accuse Ravi of making unwarranted assumptions, but you are making a few yourself, chiefly, that people always want what is right. I have news for you, THEY DON'T.
"the more people accept the responsibility and start thinking seriously about what we want our society to be and how we think we can move toward that goal, the better off all of us will be."
Unless you could achieve absolute consensus on this you would always be in the unenviable position of imposing your arbitrary, and admittedly ungrounded morality on others who disagree with you.
"if there is no god, then all is permitted". This of course is nonsense: since there is no god, we must decide what is permitted"
Nonsense? No, it's called logical inference. God is alive and well thank-you very much, and He will be our judge not as you imagine in your vain thoughts, the other way around. Who's the we anyway, and who says what they decide is right? Sounds like fascism to me. |
