Friday, November 01, 2002

thoughts on morals

Thoughts

Our society is built on laws and morals that are tied directly to religion.

Historically

Laws, mores, socially correct behavior were based on the prevailing belief of the time. What may have been held as acceptable in one society may be viewed as reprehensible in another.

In am somewhat open society as the U.S., U.K., western Europe and other socially progressive areas, you see a wide array of social ideas.

Marriage, Swinging, Monogamy, Bigamy

The idea of married or unmarried couples swapping partners, or engaging in a threesome is viewed as healthy and fun by those who participate in such. But such is scorned as an assault on the "normal" marriage/family by others. Those others usually being of a religious persuasion of some stripe.

Same sex unions are free and natural to some, but intolerable to others.

Intergenerational relationships that are practiced and encouraged in other countries are punished with prison-time in this country. The same is true with Bigamy.

Digression: In the mideastern Muslim countries, men still take more than one wife. This was true in Biblical times with the Israelites as well. Modern Christian prohibition of having more than one wife is a misinterpretation of the new testament instruction by Paul to Timothy, when he wrote that a bishop or deacon in the church "must be the husband of one wife". This admonition was merely to say that men who have more then one wife are not suited to the ministry because their attention will be on family and not the needs of the congregation. This was not a prohibition of taking multiple wives. There actually is no such prohibition in the Bible. When the Mormons began taking multiple wives, they were condemned by a society that had its mores and laws fashioned by centuries of application and misapplication of Christian thought. That Christian thought being a distillation and evolving of years in the Dark Ages, where illiterate peoples who misunderstood the original message of Jesus. These people came to religious/political power with no spiritual intentions...but only lust for power.