OK. But then we are back to "whatever" -- no moral standard unless someone just arbitrarily says there is one.
Not only is this simply not true, it is also obviously false.
At bottom, morality isn't that complicated. It's connected to the well-being of sentient beings on all levels (from the individual all the way to the whole group / society). Generally we can say that things that increase well-being are good and things that increase suffering are bad.
That's the bottom line.
Obviously in a complex society this becomes very complex. There's an inumerable amount of factors to keep into account, like individual rights and freedoms. This is why you can't knock 1 person out to harvest their organs and then save 10 people with those organs.
But at bottom, it's easy and simple and clear.
And that's the standard.
Which, as we can see, is a problem in and of itself.
The only problem here is that you are so blinded by religious belief concerning morality, that you can't even fathom the other option.
I submit, btw, that while you attribute your morality to god / religion, really you do it in the same way all of us do. You reason your way through based on the available information with a standard in mind that is connected to well-being of sentient creatures.
And I'ld further submit that whenever religion comes into it, it only ends up poisoning this process, leading to conclusions like homophobia.
1) In the beginning (precedent - original intent) man created a man and a woman and He gave them (and their offspring as mankind) dominion over the earth... not dominion over other men and not "I created a man and a woman and slaves to serve them"
2) Love your neighbor as yourself. Unless you love being a slave, you wouldn't treat another human being as a slave.
For me, that is obvious enough.
So we are just going to ignore the parts in the bible that explicitly allow and regulate slavery, which is never ever revoked or retracted?
Sounds good to me.
Here's that reasoning process at work that I was talking about.
Your
actual moral standard informs you that slavery is evil. So a priori, you know that you need to interpret your bible in such a way that it agrees slavery is evil. So you've come up with those 2 points. In the process, you conveniently ignore that the same book explicitly allows and regulates slavery. To the point of explaining how hard you may beat your slave.
Now that I brought it up, you are going to come up with the excuse that you use of how jesus brought a "new covenant" and how "the old laws don't apply anymore". Yet for centuries, the slave trade was defended with waving bibles. Curious how after 2000 years, suddenly it is discovered how the book doesn't allow slavery, now that it is universally recognized as an evil practice in modern human society.
Here's the thing that is happening.
You are not deriving your morals from the bible. Instead, you are super imposing your morals on it.
You cherry pick and "selectively interpret" to make it match your opinions and beliefs on the subject.
I firmly believe there will come a time, where homosexuality gets the same treatment as slavery gets today.
Then also, there will be people on forums saying that "the bible never was homophobic" and wave some verses around that they'll interpret to make it say what they want it to say.
