@Zardoz,
Quote:Many people who are not members of a religious cult are good moral people and many people who are not only members but teachers in religious cults are convicted felony. So it is obvious to even the most dense that religious cults are not the source nor fountainhead of morality.
I don't think you can draw that conclusion from those premisses. "Many people" is a bit dodgy for a start. And those who are decent people and not members of a religious cult may be influenced by the mores of those who are members.
You also imply that those who appear to be members or teachers in a religious cult actually are members in a personal sense which they may not be. Their membership may be just a strategy.
The notion of "good moral people" derives from the usual situations in life where pressure is not particularly strong. It is a question of good moral behaviour under strong pressure that is important. Most people in prison are good most of the time. They, in the main, lapsed under some pressure. The weaker the morality is the more likely the lapses will take place under lesser pressures and then legality has to be applied if the behaviours are inimical to group survival.
Morality is right and proper behaviour. That varies considerably in different times and places. When we talk of morality we have to be meaning Christian morality because otherwise we have no basis for a discussion. The idea of public execution with torture, which persisted in our world into the 19th century, could be seen as moral because the intention was to deter others from the committing the same actions as the victim. Even now, in the USA, that is the main argument for capital punishment.
The NFL might be seen as immoral from certain points of view.
In the last analysis moralities are pragmatic. They are thought by those imposing them to be useful in terms of group survival. Suppose the ladies organised a fertility strike effectively. Could we morally justify preventing them organising one? And if not how long could we hold out against their demands? Aristophanes broached the notion in 411 BCE.
Would rape be positively encouraged rather than us dealing with the dire consequences of such a thing. Or compulsory AID and abortion illegal.
Morality, and the methods of imposing one, is a very complex subject. Attempts to impose moralities on the financial and media industries are exercising the great and the good here to almost the exclusion of anything else.
