Needing religion, laws, prison sentences, psychiatric help, etc., to understand follow basic rights and wrongs, each say something about the person.
As a species our view of what is morally acceptable has evolved and become more, for the lack of a better term, civilised, over the millennia. And it continues doing so – see the treatment of wives; in Finland only in 1996 it became against the law to beat your wife.
However, the ability to understand why something is right or wrong is very person specific; the grand majority did in fact not beat their wife still in 1995. Only the select few had to be stopped with a law, and some still haven’t stopped.
Now if you bring religion into this example, in many religions it gets rather fuzzy on the subject of how to treat your wife, so I’m just going to leave that right out.
I agree with you.
Needing religion, laws, prison sentences, psychiatric help, etc., to
understandfollow basic rights and wrongs, each say something about the person.As a species our view of what is morally acceptable has evolved and become more, for the lack of a better term, civilised, over the millennia. And it continues doing so – see the treatment of wives; in Finland only in 1996 it became against the law to beat your wife.
However, the ability to understand why something is right or wrong is very person specific; the grand majority did in fact not beat their wife still in 1995. Only the select few had to be stopped with a law, and some still haven’t stopped.
Now if you bring religion into this example, in many religions it gets rather fuzzy on the subject of how to treat your wife, so I’m just going to leave that right out.
I was using prison as an allegory for religion, not as a justification in and of itself, and certainly not as a rationalization for religion.