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> Because dirt exists all over the world all clothes are in need of washing at some point Being gay this one made me really laugh. People can hardly agree on w

> Because dirt exists all over the world all clothes are in need of washing at some point Being gay this one made me really laugh. People can hardly agree on what dirt is, and when they do, they often change their mind 100 years later anyway (or wait 500 years to apologize, as was the case with the Church's treatment of Galileo). Society is built on social contracts, compromises we make to optimize our interactions with society as a whole. As an individual you have freedom to ascribe meaning, value, and take stock in whatever moral beliefs you see fit, but it is dangerous to assume that you are "correct" or that there is some ideal set of values that will be correct for all of eternity. Culture evolves, technology evolves, morality has to evolve with it. When morality fails to evolve as fast as culture or technology, we get things like wars, things like apartheid, things like conversion camps, genocide, etc., etc., and there is no greater damper on moral progress than religion.

mrtranscendence 5y ago
> When morality fails to evolve as fast as culture or technology I'm not sure you've understood the position of most moral realists. Why we should (say) support LGBTQ rights in 2021 is not that morality itself has evolved, which implies that it may have been morally permissible not to support such rights in 1921. It's that when society failed to respect such rights it was making a moral error. To put it another way, is there a culture or level of technology at which it would have been permissible to ostracize and punish gay men and women? To enslave as the spoils of war? To protect molesting priests over the children they victimized? That's not to say that religion isn't a damper on moral progress, though I don't think it's fair to say that there is "no greater damper". Abolitionism often had a religious component, for example, while barriers to racial progress in the 20th century were maintained irrespective of religion. Or in terms that I've been thinking about recently, famous TERFs are often nonreligious.

mrtranscendence 5y ago

> When morality fails to evolve as fast as culture or technology I'm not sure you've understood the position of most moral realists. Why we should (say) support LGBTQ rights in 2021 is not that morality itself has evolved, which implies that it may have been morally permissible not to support such rights in 1921. It's that when society failed to respect such rights it was making a moral error. To put it another way, is there a culture or level of technology at which it would have been permissible to ostracize and punish gay men and women? To enslave as the spoils of war? To protect molesting priests over the children they victimized? That's not to say that religion isn't a damper on moral progress, though I don't think it's fair to say that there is "no greater damper". Abolitionism often had a religious component, for example, while barriers to racial progress in the 20th century were maintained irrespective of religion. Or in terms that I've been thinking about recently, famous TERFs are often nonreligious.