What does it mean for a society to be moral?

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Many religions and societies have a shared core of moral precepts. For example, the Dalai Lama writes on this topic:

All religions teach moral precepts for perfecting the functions of mind, body, and speech. All teach us not to lie or steal or take others' lives, and so on. The common goal of all moral precepts laid down by the great teachers of humanity is unselfishness. The great teachers wanted to lead their followers away from the paths of negative deeds caused by ignorance and to introduce them to paths of goodness.

A common moral intuition has been posited (with some decent evidence) by some researchers; see Marc Hauser's Moral Minds for an example. You may not agree with his interpretation of his data, but it is at least clear that a certain subset of morality is widespread (hereafter "common-morality") even among people who profess different beliefs.

Because of this commonality, there is a sense in which we can judge societies as moral or immoral without having to adopt any particular religion (which will unsurprisingly judge societies where different religions are prevalent as relatively less moral). You can ask--at least vaguely--whether a society promotes as a matter of course and achieves in practice broad adherence to common-morality. Furthermore, one can ask whether the society (including government institutions) treats its members as if it were an entity that followed common-morality.

For example, one can make a pretty strong case that the sub-societies of Somali pirates or Mexican drug gangs are not particularly moral (obviously: they induce people to kill and steal). Fine distinctions are probably difficult (is Japanese society more or less moral than Finnish society?).

Upvote:3

Without morals being somehow based on a common rule of law, such as the Bible, then there can be no true rule for morality unless leaders of a society set the guidelines for morality.

In most modern day societies, morals are basically the same as in the Bible. Thou shalt not kill and steal are just two examples. But without a true basic morality structure such as the Bible, then no one can truly say one thing or the other if something is moral or not.

Basically, if one society has a different set of morals than another one, each society will always believe the other society is immoral.

From the comments below ~Richard

Essentially, only members of the society can actually declare a society as moral or immoral, since people who are not part of that society do not have enough perspective to determine the morals of the given society. Even minor differences in geography or religious separation can lead to huge moral gaps. Therefore, no one can validly judge the morality of a society unless one is a member of that society.

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As a Christian, I tend to define morality based on the Bible. Can this same gauge be used for societies? How can I apply this metric to societies that are undeniably non-Christian?

In almost all societies, it can't. Perhaps the only societies where this can be used is those where by definition those societies genuinely use the Bible as their moral compass, for example in a monastery.

In most other scenarios, perhaps it is more meaningful to look at the law (in comparison to international / humane law), and how that law is applied (for example: is the application of the law itself horribly corrupt). Now, law (and it's application) vs morality are slightly different topics, but it is perhaps the best indicator we have. You can of course look beyond that into the zeitgeist of the population, but that is much harder to measure accurately.

Coming back to the Bible in the context of morality; the point I would make here is that in many cases, a significant portion of both the in-group and out-group do not accept the morality of the Bible; the most obvious glaring holes here would be things like the Bible's aggressive stance on h*m*sexuality and gender issues (I know that record is old, but they are important). I know very many Christians who have absolutely no issue with h*m*sexuality, and know of others that are fire-brand against h*m*sexuality. To me this simply proves: if different people in the in-group can't agree which way that moral-compass points, then that moral-compass is broken.

To borrow from another answer:

In most modern day societies, morals are basically the same as in the Bible.

Again, I would turn this around: In most modern day societies, the Bible happens to be (give-or-take) basically the same as those in the society. One does not need the Bible to know that stealing and murder is a bad thing, for example.

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