Morals?

The overlapping of religion and society. Most people do fallow the Ten Commandants.
Almost everyone in jail have no morals, that is why society put them in there.

I don't think they can be separated. I think that our own personal morals are formed by our upbringing, which is influenced by the morals of the faith we are raised in and the society that we are raised in. I believe that a societies morals are shaped by the personal morals of the people who make up that society. The morals of our faith, whatever it is, is also influenced and evolves over time as it's influenced by society (for example, how many churches thought it was immoral for women to cut their hair in the early 1900's, as opposed to the early 2000's...).

I think the three are so interwoven and overlapping that you can't really separate them.

If the three can't be separated how do we explain major shifts in morals? What change made it acceptable for women to cut their hair? Do you believe it was the mixing of cultures, perhaps an increase in immigrants from a society in which hair cutting was acceptable slowly changed the overall morality of the society? Also, how do we explain groups or individuals that set up a set of morals for themselves that in many ways clash with the morals of the society in which they live (mobsters for example)?

I am not arguing that the idea of them being inseparable is incorrect, just further considering some of the issues that idea raises.

I don't take what you're asking as an argument, just as a discussion (though I might not be able to make a lot of sense with my answers - it's 1 am here on Halloween night and I'm getting ready to head to bed :-) )

But to answer your question, I think that what happens is that there are people who are willing to push the envelope so to speak as far as what is considered morally right, whether because they disagree from their own convictions or from their own (differing) societal standards, and then the rest of us, as individuals and as a society and in the boundaries of our faiths, start to look at it. Some, we, as a society, reject, because the majority of us disagree with it because it clashes with our own personal mix of our personal morals, what we view as important in societies morals, and what we agree with from our religious teachings (such as polygamy in Western Society), and some

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And some, such as cutting hair, enough people find that they don't personally find it to be so bad after all based on the same standards mentioned before, so it evolves into being something that is considered to be morally / socially acceptable. I don't think it's a change overnight.

For example, I used the hair cutting as an example because my great grandma, who died 13 yrs ago, was born in 1899. She was a "rebel" - she insisted on getting an education, and she taught in a one room schoolhouse. This wasn't common where she lived. Once she married, she didn't teach in a school anymore, but she still taught Sunday School. The flapper movement finally reached her area, and her church and her society said that "good Christian women didn't wear makeup or have short hair". Well, she was also vain, and she thought that was silly, so she got her hair bobbed and bought bright red lipstick and rouge

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She wore them and sat in the very first pew at church, and,as she put it "I sat there and dared any of them to tell me that I wasn't a good Christian woman." Because the people in her church and her community KNEW her, and KNEW what kind of person she was - a very smart, funny, loving, feisty lady with good moral character, they started to re-think their views on makeup and short hair. But, it took time before it was considered a commonly viewed morally acceptable thing.

lol - does this make sense? As I said, it's late here and I'm on my way to bed :-)

That makes sense. It certianly bears out that in the Middle Ages & Enlightenment it was theologians & philosophers that challenged the morals of the society & influenced the changes. Now it is popular culture & our pop-culture icons that tend to influence changes. Perhaps it is simply education & questioning that stimulates change.

Or rebels (which I think most of our pop-culture icons would fall under).

I think that religion provides for a fixed set of morals and rules where by we govern our life. I think that society based morals and peer pressure, have a fluidity in them which may prove to be detrimental in the long run. If morals are fuid and can move in with time, where are they going. I think we under estimate the effect religious based morals have on our socities , even for those who arent religious to provide something solid by which we can compare other morals to. And provides an easliy understandable base line for the basic morals.

Answered at 2:32 PM on Oct. 31, 2009 by: zanzeebeel I think that religion provides for a fixed set of morals and rules where by we govern our life. I think that society based morals and peer pressure, have a fluidity in them which may prove to be detrimental in the long run.

Than how do you explain the many profound changes that popular Western religions have undergone in the recent past? Just the last century has seen huge shifts in morality. Can fixed mean holding on to detrimental rules as easily as fluid can mean moving towards detrimental rules?