Rather than bury it in comment...

please clarify the "heart/mind/society" idea.

Well, it's been touched on by both Stan and Kate. In the writings of Plato's Socratic Dialogs with Phaedrus, we read the following : "What is good Phaedrus, and what is not good? And need we anyone to teach us these things?"

They were arguing that there is an innate instinct in man which can tell him what is "good". Abusing a child? Not good. Giving food to a hungry man? Good. But there are plenty of instances in the real world, particularly in dealing with man-made morals and values, where society plays a huge role in telling the individual what is moral.

A lot of "moral" behaviour can be learned by a child with no moral or religious background at all. Why? Because it's what society (and by that I mean those around you) are comfortable with, and expect. And these things differ, from society to society. I'll list some examples of what you might consider moral or immoral behaviour, but which are strongly rooted in what your society deems acceptable.

Public urination? (There are pissoirs in Holland for this precise purpose)
Smoking in restaraunts? (Rapidly becoming a taboo in the States, accepted still in many places)
Smoking marijuana? (Again, not a problem in Amsterdam and other places)
Showing the soles of your feet? (A definite no-no in parts of Asia)
Blowing your nose into a hanky? (Don't do this in public in Japan)
Showing public displays of emotion? (Also a no-no in Japan)
Public nudity? (Go to a nudist beach or nudist colony, to see where people don't have a problem with it.)
Nudity on television? (In many European countries, people are more concerned about exposing kids to violence on tv. A little nudity never hurt anyone)
Women showing their face in public? (There are countries in the Middle East where this is not allowed. And it's not considered a "repression". It's a cultural norm.)

Many things which you think of as immoral, only occupy that part of your mind because someone else taught you that they were immoral. As human beings it's very hard to break the conditioning we receive in our early formative years. But it can be done. And generally is done, by each new generation.

And this is a good thing.

In other words, can what is "wrong" or "sin" change over time?

If so, I think you have to acknowledge the eventual death of morality.

Dear lord, no wonder you're a creationist.
What you are doing here, is taking a trend, out of context, and extrapolating it to an extreme. Creationists do this when they say things like "The sun is slowly decreasing in size. If you follow the trend backwards, a few million years ago Earth could not exist. Therefore the universe is not a few million years old"
This is not a valid argument, for the obvious reason, that you cannot extrapolate a short term trend in such a manner. The sun has not been shrinking at the same rate for all that long.

Yours is also not a valid argument.
What is "wrong" or "sin" can change over time. But you cannot extrapolate from this to the death of morality. Why?
Because it goes BOTH ways.

I know you've said your knowledge of history is pretty poor, so let me reassure you on something. Societies morals go back and forth over periods of time. The swing tends towards more conservatism after periods of war, for example. Modes of dress, for example, become more formal. It's swings and roundabouts. What were the children of the free-love 60's like? They were the ultraconservative yuppies of the greed-is-good 80's. They got 12 years of Reaganomics for that, but that's another story. Swings and roundabouts. I know quite a few people who think the U.S. is in a stage of becoming more conservative at the moment (2 Republican terms, shitstorms over Janet's nipple, etc..)

The fact is, somethings, especially the values we are taught, need to be challenged. And that is how a society evolves. We used to have the guillotine in Europe. We eventually realised (or decided) that this was immoral.

As Stan and Kate also pointed out, if it wasn't for the changing view of what is moral, we would still be living in a slave culture, for example. Would you approve of this? What about mixed marriages? Burning witches at the stake?

So it should be obvious that morals are not absolute. But that is not to say there are NO moral absolutes. Or that there are NONE.

In my opinion, some things will always be wrong. Some things will always be right. But those black and white areas have an awful lot of grey seperating them.
posted by Manchild at 1:45 PM