Do you understand morality differently than I do? I believe morality is the instrument of prevailing opinion that limits the ability of one to act in accordance with a different understanding of reality. A different understanding of reality is a threat to the prevailing opinion. All acts are political acts that are aimed at life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. Moral acts hinder these pursuits in ways we don't always understand.
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This makes morality no more significant than "group think," which strips it of any reason to be moral, other than to preserve the status quo.
Right and wrong, good and evil, righteousness and sin are what they are, even if the prevailing opinion is entirely running counter to them.
I do believe there is some value in preservation of that prevailing opinion that creates the environment in which we are able to act.
Please share what right and wrong, good and evil, righteousness and sin are if not prevailing opinion.
There really are only two options:
1. Right and wrong are just social constructs created to preserve a status quo. In which case, there is no moral imperative requiring anyone to follow what is thought to be "right" by dint of prevailing opinion, nor is there any firm foundation for calling out the majority opinion when it is "wrong." By definition, there is no outside standard to measure the prevailing opinion by and determine whether it aligns with it or falls short.
2. Right and wrong are revealed by a divine authority to whom we must give an account. Only under this understanding can there be any grounds for calling society out when the prevailing opinion is wrong, because it is the only understanding that provides a standard that originates from a higher authority than society itself.
Would you rekcon it is at all possible for 2. to manifest without a human intermediary?
There could be a third option - this thing we call morality are a set of useful bits of information that emerge into our experience. They are not created by us, but they are shared among us to facilitate our survival in complex social groups and organizations. Just as a hand emerged through evolution allowing the user of the hand to grasp what the world has to offer. Calling morality a creation seems wrong as there is no need to assume creator in this option.
Not really. That's still just option 1, but with a naturalistic explanation for why society arrived at the current state of prevailing opinion. The highest standard of morality remains nothing more binding than maintaining the status quo set by society at large, and that means there isn't really anything binding at all, since the prevailing opinion of society can and has changed. The next non-conformist movement may be temporarily seen as immoral, but come to take the crown as the predominant opinion of society, proving its evolutionary advantage over the opinion it supplanted. Does it then move from being immoral to moral due to having become the prevailing view?
Hogwash, all of it.
When it is understood to be a precursor to the social, it takes on a different meaning than a construct of the social. Something more explanatory and not at all capricious.
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