Letter to the Editor

Human morality must adapt

Part of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, states, "So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets." -- Matthew 7:12

Luke 12:47-48 quotes Jesus saying it is lawful to beat your slaves even when they don't know your will. The Law, Leviticus 25:44-46 NIV, quotes God saying you can buy slaves, bequeath them to your children and make them slaves for life.

When people, whose minds are uncluttered by religious dogma, read the assorted books of the Bible (66 books in the Protestant and 73 in the Catholic Bible), they observe an incompatible hodgepodge of moral and immoral concepts. This is to be expected since the books of the Bible were written by a hodgepodge of primitive authors, many of whom are unknown, for example, this from the Baker Illustrated Bible Dictionary: "Genesis (and the entire Pentateuch) is anonymous, though Moses is said to have written down certain traditions that were included in the Pentateuch." Pentateuch is the first five books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Also, the Anchor Bible Dictionary: "The Torah (Pentateuch) is the core work of the Bible. Not the work of any one person, it reflects a literary partnership in which the works of many individuals were brought together into a whole."

Much of human morality is instinctive and is a product of our evolutionary ancestry. Degrees of morality can be observed in all social animals with more nuanced morality being found in the higher social primates. Some scientists believe that bonobos are the most intelligent of the primates because they share many of our human behaviors, such as teaching their young social skills, using tools to get food and working together for the good of the entire troop.

Human morality is forced to change and adapt as the groups enlarge from families to tribes, to nations, and now to a global society. We either adopt a universal code of moral obligations, responsibilities and restraints for the good of all humanity as world population increases or we continue down the destructive path of incompatible immorality and morality to our own end. All religions must adapt!

Oren Piper

Siloam Springs

Editorial on 05/22/2019