Actually, neither of those things reflect my position, properly understood. In fact, they show how little you have understood.
It is a commonplace, in reference to the Bible, to note that God communicated with the patriarchs and Israelites, and later the emerging Christian community, according to their capacity to understand, accept, and conform given their pre- existing social norms. Thus, for example, He tolerated polygamy among the patriarchs, although not among the Israelites; He ended up granted Israel a king, although He was reluctant; He tolerated slavery, although He tried to make it more humane; He did not radically change the status of women, although he did improve it somewhat, and gave us various female heroes, like Deborah and Esther; and so on. There is nothing incompatible with entertaining a belief in God, and even a belief in revelation, and acknowledging the limits imposed by the social development of those receiving the message.
Second, I have explained the idea of social and moral progress, according to which certain values reflect a better state of society, and a greater philosophical insight into the bases of evaluation, and therefore are superior to those more primitive, by and large. I suppose that we approach moral objectivity, that is, a conformity to the truest values, as we progress, but even if we are not sure of our relationship to the end, we can know where we are relative to more primitive societies. Thus, I have no qualms in saying that genital mutilation is simply wrong, and having a high degree of confidence in that judgment.
This is all similar to the argument that we must not judge the Founders too harshly because they were mired in social practices like slavery, but should admire them for articulating the basis for a liberal democratic society, for example, by enshrining freedom of speech. In the case of slavery, they were merely men of their time, in the case of the Declaration or the Constitution, they were making a moral advance that would eventually eliminate slavery........ |
