The Evolution of Human Ethics and Morality

I don't believe in God. I just don't. I certainly don't believe in a personal God who intercedes in the lives of people. That said, for people of faith, I believe we should view the Bible as the inspired word of God, not the literal word of God. The texts of the Bible are ancient. They belonged to nomadic and agrarian cultures. The rules in the Old Testament were concerned with preserving Judaism and preserving familial lines. Early Christians were concerned about the survival of their new fledgling religion.

We must also view Biblical text in historical context. At the time of the Bible slavery was a part of the human condition. Humans who lived during the period of the Old Testament and New Testament believed slavery would always be a part of the human condition. Today slavery is prohibited in the Americas and Europe. No one today believes that slavery is a moral and ethical part of the human condition. All right thinking individuals believe slavery should be abolished. We no longer condone it as a part of the human condition.

The Bible provided a lower station for women than men. Women were never to be leaders of men under the Bible. A woman's place was subservient to a man. At best a woman was the property of her father of her husband.

Today most of us believe that women deserve equal opportunities for their lives as men. Today in nearly every democracy women have the right to vote. Women serve as leaders of men and women in corporations, society, schools, the military and government.

These were not Biblical values but an advancement of human ethics and morality.

We must see the Bible as reflecting the society and culture from which those texts rose.

Law enforcement and legal punishment were harsh in the days of the Bible. Capital punishment, corporal punishment and dismemberment (removal of a hand) were common punishments for most serious transgressions including adultery.

Few of us today would support execution for adultery. Yet in the Bible execution is the punishment for a woman who has sex with any man other than her husband and execution was the punishment for any man who had sex with another man's wife or fiancée.

Similarly the Biblical rules of war were harsh by today's standards -- the victors in a war were to kill all the men, all the boys and any non-virginal women. Virginal women were to be spared to serve as sex slaves for the soldiers of the victor.

Few would defend such practices today.

If we accept the Bible as the inspired word of God, then we make room for human errors in the text.

If we view the Bible in historic context, then we recognize it reflects the morals and ethics of an earlier age of humanity that was more violent and more savage than our own.

It isn't that humans cannot find inspiration in the Bible, it is that human ethics and morality have evolved and while the Bible can inspire us, it cannot be our only source of inspiration.

The concept of Universal sexual consent -- that each of us has the right to consent or deny consent is only a few decades old. Previously the ability to deny consent was based on gender, race and wealth. Men always had the right to deny consent, especially wealthy men. White women, especially white women of status had the ability to deny consent to men of lower status or a man who was not her husband. The idea that a woman had the right to tell her husband "no" is about three decades old. The idea that a poor non-White woman had the right to deny consent is also a newer concept. Our morality, our ethics have evolved in a way not reflected by the ethics and morality of the ancient texts of the Bible.

We must see the Bible as divinely inspired and thus potentially containing error. We must see the Bible as reflecting the morality and ethics of a more savage, more brutal and more violent culture than our own.

_{Text authored by Peter Eldritch (Peter Jirak)
First posted to Facebook on September 13, 2013}

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