Right and Wrong
Today's passing thought...
If there is a distinction between good and evil, how do we know it? How are we able to tell the difference?
Well, morality has been inherited over time. But to strictly say that all of what we know is simply a product of some sort of moral evolution process seems to me at least to relativize and trivialize that there are indeed clear distinctions between good and evil.
Nor will I say that we have our morality simply by inheritance of edicts from the past (i.e. the Ten Commandments). I imagine that both killing and stealing were unpleasant before Moses came down from the mountain.
What I suspect is that our internal knowledge of good and evil come from an archetype, an imprinting in all human beings of the true standard by which we are intended to live. We may not necessarily live up to this standard, but it remains the same and unchanging.
For the Christian, God has created Man in his own image, the internal standard in all humanity by which we are able to discern the good from the bad. The standard is actually embodied in the person of Christ, who is not simply the archetype, but the prototype human being.
If there is no concrete standard of right and wrong, good and evil, than I don't see how one does not end up reasoning himself away into a relativism (well you may want that). However, since even atheists believe in at least some moral universals, there simply must be a foundation upon which these rest.
-Steve K.
If there is a distinction between good and evil, how do we know it? How are we able to tell the difference?
Well, morality has been inherited over time. But to strictly say that all of what we know is simply a product of some sort of moral evolution process seems to me at least to relativize and trivialize that there are indeed clear distinctions between good and evil.
Nor will I say that we have our morality simply by inheritance of edicts from the past (i.e. the Ten Commandments). I imagine that both killing and stealing were unpleasant before Moses came down from the mountain.
What I suspect is that our internal knowledge of good and evil come from an archetype, an imprinting in all human beings of the true standard by which we are intended to live. We may not necessarily live up to this standard, but it remains the same and unchanging.
For the Christian, God has created Man in his own image, the internal standard in all humanity by which we are able to discern the good from the bad. The standard is actually embodied in the person of Christ, who is not simply the archetype, but the prototype human being.
If there is no concrete standard of right and wrong, good and evil, than I don't see how one does not end up reasoning himself away into a relativism (well you may want that). However, since even atheists believe in at least some moral universals, there simply must be a foundation upon which these rest.
-Steve K.
posted by street theologian @ 8:30 PM
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