Absolute Morality/Natural Law?

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So?


Morality isn't reduced to value, though. Why value anything at all? There really aren't any naturalistic explanation for that, other than MAYBE it's useful as a survival instinct. But, as you more or less put it, morality is complicated.



It's not baseless at all. Why take a stand, especially regarding things you assign values to? Merely asserting that it's a baseless assertion doesn't answer the question.


Irrelevant. You can't seem to answer the question why people value things to the point they'd cry injustice if they felt violated.


Agreed.


Some things. Or, rather, some values don't HAVE to have anything to do with morality. I'm not concerned with random food preferences. I'm concerned about whether one feels it is right to eat certain things or if they consider the consequences others face for their actions--whether we're talking about food choices or something else.


Yes and no. Is it right to eat certain things for certain reasons?


If it is good for me to stay alive, then what should it matter what I do to sustain myself? In other words, what harm am I doing? Now, is it right for me to harm myself? If I value myself, then it would be morally wrong to eat or drink anything that might harm me. I would take care to eat things I knew to be sustaining food rather than questionable fruit/berries or things I knew to be poisonous.


I'm more concerned about instinctive or intuitive unseen/unwritten rules that seem to govern normal behavior. I'm not unaware of anomalies that exist for any number of root causes.


And why is it desirable? Why value something because it is "desirable"? You're still placing a value on something for being "desirable" and suggesting it is somehow "more right." People like myself tend to thrive better in solitude than as part of society. Are you suggesting that by isolating myself every chance I get is somehow wrong?


Again, you're placing value on something--peer-reviewed journal. One man's peer-review is another man's mutual admiration society.


But you can't explain why people put so much value on something that is irrational. I think the answer is obvious: They place the value on what "feels good" because they believe it "right" to do so. Not that all that "feels good" is really "right," of course. But the amoralist position is just an extremely weak one that fails to explain any of this.


OK, so attempt to explain it and let's see how easy it is.

Part of the problem is if one lacks a moral obligation, they have less of a motivation TO do something. It's not that one cannot do "right." It's just, why would one want to?


Well, relevant in the sense that certain things are trendy and delivered in such a way as to garner more public appeal. Americans wouldn't eat asian food, for instance, if it tasted "too Asian." Personally, I enjoy variety and am not offended by a piece of kimchi in my bulgogi. For some westerners, the smell of kimchi alone is enough to avoid it.


Well, OT justice was essentially a "jury of one's peers," that is, a council of judges or Sanhedrin who could both identify with the accused and also understand the law in order to effectively make decisions and render appropriate justice. So, there you go: Due process. "Local elders" means that a judiciary body serves to determine whether the alleged wrongdoer ought to be punished and judge the extent he should be punished if he deserves punishment. The OT law established that someone actually witness the crime and that the witness be verified through at least one other witness. You can't just say somebody did something wrong. That ideal seems to hold even in South Asia and China. Even if a "legal definition" doesn't exist, the question is one of whether the Chinese and South Asians just let people run wild killing each other. This simply just does not happen. I would, on the other hand, be intrigued if there is any present-day documentation of indigenous or aboriginal people who do NOT have an explicit prohibition on murder.


Where do laws get their authority? From themselves, or from the people who make and enforce them?


It's not question begging. More like stating the obvious. People really do believe that unjustified, intentional acts of taking life are wrong. People label this crime as "murder." You can call it what you want: Unjustified Homicide, or whatever, but a rose by any other name... Political correctness about something does not make it something else.

In a sense, written law is simply an agreement of what we all recognize as rules that ensure the safety of those moral things we value. They are "in writing" those things which we cannot see. If people agree that the unjustified and maliciously intentional taking of life is "wrong," then they may apply the label "murder" to a specific form of homicide and in a straightforward manner declare that THIS an offense and is punishable. So, yes, murder IS by definition "unjustified, intentional killing" and people agree that it is "wrong." A worldview that does not acknowledge morality doesn't make judgments on what "unjustified" means in terms of "right" and "wrong." There are no "right" and "wrong" to even discuss, merely emotions attached to an illusive, non-existent value. The problem being, of course, that we even attach values to the emotions themselves. Do you prefer to have "happy" feelings or "sad" feelings, and why? Regardless of the preference, you would seek the emotion you value the most and you would instinctively find any interruption to your pleasure-seeking, whatever that entails and whatever that means, to be unfair and disruptive. It would offend you. But it wouldn't offend you if you didn't feel some right to whatever it is.

Without morality, you couldn't seek revenge on someone. You couldn't seek justice because there's no such thing as "unjust." That doesn't mean you couldn't "return the favor" so-to-speak, but you'd be returning the favor for its own sake.

But that doesn't match up with reality. Sometimes people have a knee-jerk reaction to injustice, especially if circumstances don't allow for slow reaction time. Someone acting in self-defense, for instance. If someone's own life has no value, there is no reason to protect it. But if it is, then one may make a judgment call as to what is acceptable in order to protect it. If there is no morality, then there are no "rights," and thus no "right" to act as though there are.

To be more direct: Do you have any rights? Western legal codes suggest we do.

Too subjective, though. Is the striking workers' cause a worthy one?

Are the workers motivated by dirty union politics, and is the expensive vacation part of negotiations for a merger that could potentially increase earnings potential and create more and better paying jobs? Even if the expensive vacation doesn't benefit "the most people," is it an appropriate reward for someone who worked hard to make the company successful? If that's the case, perhaps he deserves the vacation and it is "good" that he goes.

It "sounds good," but I think it's just way to inconsistent to work.

No Good Deed shall go unpunished. ---Oscar Wilde--

ruveyn

Yeah, I see your point. It would seem that if you dig deep enough into any "Moral" act, you will find an "Immoral" act involved (and vice-versa).

"Greatest amount of good, for the greatest number of people, for the greatest duration of time" is the best that I can do in describing "Moral" behavior; but even then, I can not claim that my own behavior fits this definition.

I think this is interesting and let me preface what I write by saying that semantics are playing a large role in this discussion.

Morality and self-interest are highly intertwined. You may think that you act according to a moral code and that may be so, but you could also just be acting out of self-interest. You don't break societal laws because you don't feel it's right, but you also feel almost sick to your stomach when you think about breaking some laws because of the inherent pain and shame that will be brought on you. I'll elaborate more of I'm not being very clear.

Empathy is a beautiful thing, but it could also stem from this same self-interest concept. You can feel the pain, hurt, and shame that your actions may cause somebody else and thus you conclude that action is wrong, but at the same time you could be working out of self-interest in that you've learned that causing harm to others bring pain or shame upon yourself either from retaliation, punishment, or shame brought on you from others.

I've really been enjoying the debate going on in this thread and I think all sides have made some very good points. Please keep it up!

After thinking about it, I don't think there's absolute morality and I agree with a lot of what GoonSquad said on this.

The problem that I see with ultimate morality is that whenever you do a good action, ultimately someone or something else is getting the bad end and vice versa. Imagine you save a mouse from being killed by a cat (this may be considered a bad deed in our society, but that works just as well). The mouse has received a benefit from your deed and the cat has missed out on a meal and has gotten the bad end. The bacteria, worms, and whatever "gross" creatures that would eat the dead mouse have also received a bad deal. It's difficult for our human morality to extend to creatures and organisms that are very different than us or that we aren't fond of. Also, our human morality entails that the big picture is for us to survive and peacefully live and grow. Since we have a very human-centered view of existence, it's difficult for us to imagine a big picture that doesn't have us rising to the top. Imagine a cell in a body. If that cell has or could have consciousness similiar to ours, it might think that the goals is for those types of cells to continue flourishing and reproducing. But the cells can't see the big picture. Cancer cells grow and reproduce until their host has died. Perhaps if the cancer cells could see this, they might not reproduce so verociously, but maybe not. We humans are similiar to those cancer cells, but hopefully we'll be able to strike a balance on Earth or perhaps move elsewhere. But ultimately, we can't see the big picture. It could be that on a larger scale of morality than we're thinking, funguses should be the predominant lifeform on earth and will fight against us one day. To us, those pesky funguses would certainly be evil, but of course, the rest of the life forms on the planet might be better off if our population dropped about 90%. Above someone said morality is "the greatest good, for the greatest number, for the greatest length of time," but this is from a human-centered view: what's the greatest good for us. The cancer cells could metaphorically be thinking the same things from their POV.

But functionally, morality is important for us and our human-driven desires so that we can cooperate and move forward together!

BTW, I have very unclear writing and I jump around a lot, so if I don't make any sense to you, please let me know, so that I may have a chance to redeem myself and prove I'm not a (complete) loon.

Nobody is perfect, and decent human beings can admit that. To me, the difficulty is trying to assert that morals exist without acknowledging any objective source at all. I could try "arguing against myself" like I did earlier and suggest some naturalistic source such as survival instinct or some such, but that's inconsistent with the intuitive nature of emotion and feelings of conscience. There shouldn't even BE any feelings. If the instincts are naturalistic, survival instincts, then we should either all be competitive and at each other's throats or we should feel completely indifferent.

The most economical arrangement for reproduction is to have more of one sex than another, as an example. Since we know that human beings, at least in this society, tend to have multiple partners before marriage and may even have multiple cycles of marriage-divorce, it would seem that monogamy is less than ideal and that (as an example) there ought to be, say, one man for every 5 women.

But according to Fisher's principle, the sex ratio will always stay at a 1:1 ratio ultimately. Even in China where it's not unheard of to cull female babies (prenatal sex selection) to ensure that families will have a male child, sooner or later they're going to run out of women. Piece of cake--all the lonely men will eventually die out until the equilibrium returns.

One could infer that a moral law about monogamy might be derived from natural selection since that would ensure that equilibrium would be maintained and 1 man for 1 woman increases the likelihood of a stable household in which two parents provide the optimal protection and provision for their children. At the very least it promises evolutionary stability.

I'm not the one to make the argument, though. I think even my buddy 01001011 would waste little time in pointing out the obvious problems with it even if I can't, so I won't even bother with any defense of it. It does, however, raise the question of what, if any, correlation exists between Fisher's principle and the intuitive response to monogamous ideals. Even if our view of "love" and other relational values are misplaced, people DO still go through the process of making certain vows in the way of the marriage rite without considering the possibility of divorce. Even if they do end up divorced, they still tend towards monogamous relationships. Why is it such a value? I can't imagine why we'd even bother at all if it's nothing more than some fantastical man-made religious "ritual."

Possible. For what it's worth, though, I don't like playing word-games.


There is certainly a relationship between morality and self-interest. You admit that one may act according to a moral code. The idea I've been working from is whether one can say it's "right" to do certain things. One would not wish to act out of self-interest if one did not instinctively feel it was the right thing to do or, if not initially, find some justification as to why one should act on those interests.


It's interesting, isn't it? You have something like a physical or physiological reaction to moral values, like something is physically preventing you from doing something you (at least) suspect is wrong.


From a secular point of view, there's nothing wrong with that. From a Christian point of view, all self-interest motivations are inherently evil. Only motives that exist for the glory of God can approach a divine, if imperfect, goodness.

You could ask, however, whether one adopts Christian values because one fears going to hell is self-interest. Well, it IS self-interest, but God doesn't want anyone to go to hell either. One's values and motivations are aligned with that of the divine, therefore there is no need to fear divine retribution for wanting the same things that God wants.

I agree with a lot of what you're saying and I think some of these disagreements are because people are looking at morality from different cultures, lenses, etcs.

I'm interested in the idea of motivations and consequences. Like you said, someone could have a divine and godly motivation to do something good and someone else could have a self-interest motivation and do something with good consequences. I think this ties in somewhat to your ideas about subjective vs objective. What do you think about "evil" motivations that lead someone to take actions that result in good consequences?

This isn't necessarily so, though. Morality would seek to avoid "win-lose" combativeness.


But wouldn't peaceful survival then be a moral absolute?


Exactly.


Interesting points here. Are microbes and rogue cells really sentient, intelligent beings that can discern right from wrong? Given natural order, human beings seem to be the only creatures that have the gift of discernment and are thus the only creatures than can rightfully be held accountable for the decisions they make. You can't really make the claim that a pit bull is "guilty" or evil--it has a naturally aggressive demeanor. So we aren't responsible for how a pit bull "thinks," nor is the pit bull. But we are responsible for the behavior of animals under our care as well as our responses to vicious animals. We have a sense of duty to protect ourselves and others from violent animals, hence if someone gets attacked by a certain dog breed and doesn't manage to kill the dog, the proper authorities can confiscate the animal and put it to death so it won't harm another human being. A pit bull owner is knowingly in possession of an animal with violent tendencies and has a moral obligation to keep the dog confined to a safe area. It isn't the dog's responsibility that it behave well but rather the owner's.


Certainly.

A big problem with relative morality is it is ultimately self-defeating. Not morality itself, but how a person relates to it. You mentioned the big picture. I think, and I think you'll agree, that most of what we observe is clearly not the big picture but only a small part of it that we can see through the colored lenses of our own perspectives, together with our own biases and sharply limited views. I think we confuse the part with the whole and assume that we really are seeing the whole when we really aren't seeing very much of it.

"Thou shalt not kill." "Kill" can mean a lot of things, and we can provide a number of justifications for killing. And not all justifications match up cross-culturally. So does that mean it's ok for some to kill and not others? No. It means it is NEVER ok to kill. It also means that, even though it is never ok to kill, circumstances exist under which killing is unavoidable. You aren't compelled, for instance, to save your own life when threatened. You could just let someone kill you. You could also try to escape your own death through means that spares the life of your would-be killer, which I think is ideal. Or you could value your own life alone and justify killing your attacker because you felt you had no other choice. So while you technically violated "do not kill," you were forced into an unfair situation that demanded action on your part.

And so you discover the big picture "do not kill" along with the smaller, limited perspectives that together form the larger moral reality: You are justified in defending yourself. You are justified in providing justice (death penalty for murderers). You are justified in spelling out exactly what murder is and acting in accordance with the rule of law. You are justified in seeking refuge and protection from someone out for revenge if you were involved in an accident that caused unforeseeable death. But most importantly, the big picture is really that death must be avoided if at all possible.

We are prevented from seeing the big picture because our scope is too limited to see it for what it is. But if someone DOES see clearly the big picture, that person can identify what exactly that big picture is. And if there is a big picture to be identified, then one may safely say that moral absolutes do exist.


Have you read my posts lately? lol

Welcome to WP!

To the orginal question of the thread, absolute morality is a great goal for morality, but nothing can be stagnate as history has shown. The bible was created and told what was right and wrong and now we've progressed and think some of the commandments in the bible aren't really moral. Every cultures religion has different edicts on what is right and wrong. There is a lot of sameness in all of them and that's what should be focused on, but in the future there will be more progress. What we think of as in the range of loving your neighbor may one day be thought of as immoral.

My general point is that an absolute morality would be difficult in a non-stagnate world. But, here's to progress toward a more moral society!

Right



There are no such things as evil motivations that lead to good consequences. Or if there is such a thing, it is indirect.

Speaking from a Biblical perspective, I'd have to say that evil motivations may lead to subjectively good consequences--that is, what WE think is good--but never to objectively good consequences related to an objective (divine) standard. Can an atheist be moral? Yes, because atheists are human beings created in God's image. But the atheist rejects God and asserts that he does good for his own purposes. He is self-motivated instead of God-motivated. And because he relies on himself for his essential goodness, he drives himself further away from God. He might have gotten a few warm and fuzzy feelings, and he may even have momentarily brightened up someone's life. And all for what? He dies and his good deeds die with him because he is eternally separated from God. In the final analysis, there are no good consequences for evil actions. There are only evil consequences. "For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God."

Now, that's if you're tracing a straight line. The reality is slightly different. God wanted the Israelites to leave Egypt and return to Canaan in order to fulfill His promise to Abraham. But the Israelites had settled there and weren't pressed to move anywhere. So God allows a new Pharaoh to come to power to harshly enslave the Israelites, providing the Israelites with the motivation to leave. Pharaoh stubbornly refused. He had his own evil intentions. But what Pharaoh intended for evil God intended for good. Not only did the Israelites end up forced out of Egypt, they won an important historical victory. Even though the circumstances were evil, God even used that to influence a good outcome. Same principle with Joseph and his brothers, which landed them all in Egypt in the first place.

But wrong intentions, no matter how "good" everything looks externally, do not in any way get someone closer to God.

Can you show that absolute morality is antithetical to progress? I'd say it's essential to progress.

"Do not murder" is rock solid throughout the world.

From the Bible, the second greatest commandment is "care for your neighbor just as well as you care for yourself" (slight paraphrase, I know). Think about it: What is the goal of all human-founded law? To facilitate proper relationships among human beings. So "love your neighbor" would be a moral absolute, and this is supported every time a law is written that governs human relationships. As I've said before in my usual, long-winded way, moral absolutes are not like fixed, unbreakable physical laws. There are exceptions. What changes is never the big picture itself. It's our perspective. But perspective only observes an already-existing reality. Perspective does not create reality.

Thanks for the welcome.

I think absolute morality could be more likely if everyone had the same religion, experiences, culture, etc., but unfortunately not everybody is American, Christian, and lives by the same version of Christianity as you do. Even within the founding groups of the religion (small tribes or groups where everyone was on the same page) everybody didn't agree. The bible says thou shalt not kill, but in the same book of Exodus it goes on with commandments that lay out numerous occasions when to kill someone else. The commandments were really only for the people living within the group or tribe. The outsiders were pretty much fair game. Many cultures throughout time have frowned upon killing others in their own groups (but just like with Christians, there are exceptions, including ritualistic killings) but didn't mind and sometimes encouraged killing of other groups.

I respect your devoutness to your faith and maybe you'll be able to find some form of absolute morality to live by. But it sounds like you wouldn't be the type of person that agrees that someone who strikes their parents should be put to death or someone who works on the sabbath should be put to death. I only mention these to show that modern Christians morality doesn't necessarily come from their holy book. They've taken the things from the book that we as a society agree are moral and left behind that which isn't. I recall their being a quote in the bible roughly saying "take what is good, and leave behind what isn't."

It's kinda silly arguing about his though because it seems you're pretty set with your view of morality. Sometimes I wish I had a clearer of view of right and wrong. It would make decisions much easier to make! But I often see grey and can see the points of both sides of an issue.

Enjoying this conversation

I see what you mean here and I agree. But what I mean is that at some point some of those standards for morality become obsolete and need some revisions. Hence the religious revolution that has happened throughout history and will continue to happen because there will always be room for improvement IMO. One example of this in the bible is that of Jewish law. They had their on set moral code and Jesus came along, rebelled, and taught a "more moral" teaching. I'd call that progress and that's what I meant. Interesting that the bible goes on and on about rebels (for good reason!) but Jesus and his disciples were rebels. I think that kinda shows how morality isn't absolute. But of course there could be some absolute moral values for humans that we haven't realized yet and through progress we continue to reach that pinnacle, but I think for every pinnacle you reach, you find there are many more mountains that climb higher.

Edit: One more example of a potential progress of morality is of the Golden Rule. It's a very high moral teaching that one should do unto others as they would have others do unto them, but our ability to empathize has progressed a lot since then. Maybe now we could edit it a bit to say that you should do unto others as they would have done unto them. It may not even be an improvement, but my point is there will always be room for us to improve our application of moral laws as well as improving the laws themselves.

Unnecessary, though. Absolute morality holds regardless of what culture or religion you belong to. Moral relativity is an illusion because we are unable to perceive those absolutes as a 100% view of the entire picture. You don't have to be a Christian to feel that killing is wrong. You don't have to be Christian to feel justified in killing for specific types of reasons, especially if an instance of killing is unavoidable. The absolute here is that all human life must be preserved if at all possible. According to the Bible, if someone is killed in self-defense, it is that person's own fault rather than the person who is defending himself. What IS relative is the point of view. In America, we enact laws that we all agree to adhere to, those laws being derived from what we already perceive to be morally right and wrong. We aren't establishing right and wrong, since those things already exist. Written law just means that we all agree to recognize what's already there and carefully define what we think these moral absolutes are. Doesn't mean we're going to get it right all the time. And it doesn't mean things really are the way we imagine them to be. We perceive what we think reality to be. But reality doesn't change. We can't just dream up something and call it reality and make it so. We are all just seeing parts of a whole, and what we see is relative to our perspective and experience. The bigger picture never changes.


The prohibition against killing is a broad and general prohibition that emphasizes the sanctity of life. God knows the wickedness of man's heart and his destructive tendencies. Therefore, God executes His justice by allowing us to protect ourselves from the wickedness of our fellow human beings. This justice means that it is sometimes necessary to "kill or be killed." Thus the further commandments that allow for killing only serve as clarification for "Do not kill." Therefore, "Do not kill" should be read "Do not murder," with murder referring strictly to those forms of killing that are without justification and are done with malicious intent. On this there is near universal agreement, and you don't have to be a Christian to understand it or apply it.


This is true. Torah was written strictly for the Israelites, not for us Gentiles. It's only in the gospels that we get the "Great Commission" to spread the good news throughout the world. At the time, the Way was considered a Jewish sect. Many, especially Pharisee Christians, either opposed proselytizing Gentiles altogether or demanded that Gentiles follow in Jewish custom. Culturally Greeks thought of circumcision as shameful, not merely physically painful. The early Christians discussed this matter at length and found that the only circumcision that mattered was spiritual and not physical. For this and other reasons, one feature of Christianity is that one may maintain his cultural identity and is even encouraged to do so ONLY as long as this doesn't interfere with what Christians understand as moral values--to whit one must only worship God and no other god and abstain from all forms of idolatry and sexual perversion. Early Christians recognized that people of other cultures inherently recognized basic right from wrong, hence Christianity does not hold a monopoly on morality. All we did and continue to do is assert that God is the source of all morality.


If absolute morality doesn't exist, how can I find it?


That's a bit of a myth there. The word "child" refers to the progeny of parents and does not establish the age of a child. This only applies if the child is of an age when he can be held accountable by his society for his actions. It also only applies to a Hebraic theocracy, and I don't live in a Hebraic theocracy. Further, it doesn't preclude due process. A young man who is openly disrespectful to his father disgraces his father in public. This can damage the father's reputation and threaten his livelihood. Parents are the representatives of God on earth to their children, and thus a young adult knowing full well the implications of his actions who abuses his earthly father is by extension attacking God Himself. You can see how this would be intolerable in ancient Israel, right? And due process required at least two witnesses, so this doesn't refer to a private matter in the home. It refers to a public disgrace that might even be observed by a crowd of witnesses, not merely 2 or 3. If a young man is bold and defiant enough to abuse his parents in public, what is he getting away with at home where nobody can see? And finally, what kind of parent would allow something like this to happen in the course of raising his children? If you love your children and understand that their actions in the public eye could result in their death, would you not want to carefully teach and discipline them so that this kind of situation would never even come about?

As for working on the Sabbath: Again, only applicable in Israel and only to the Israelites (who would observe the Sabbath even if traveling outside Israel). First, to prosecute someone for working on the Sabbath, there would have to be witnesses. How would these witnesses know if one is working on the sabbath? Would they know because they were working, too? Looks to me like they'd have to be doing work to even notice! Work on the sabbath is only enforceable if it is done in such a way that one can't help but notice. The Talmud outlines many loopholes designed to avoid guilt for violating the sabbath. Since this is a direct affront to God, especially when done in such a way that those keeping the sabbath cannot help but notice, in a Hebraic theocracy the death penalty is justified.


Again, this is a bit of a myth or misunderstanding. Christians have a new understanding of the law such that we are free from it.

If someone keeps all of Torah perfectly and relies on his keeping the law for justification, can he be saved? No, because the grace of God is a free gift. If someone keeps the law, they boast in the law and, by their actions, tell God that they think God owes them something, that is, salvation through works. Does God really owe anyone anything? No, because all things are created by God for God's purpose. He owes us nothing. Therefore we cannot earn salvation by works of the law. We can only accept it as a free gift and are therefore justified only by faith. Through the law comes death. Through the grace of God, eternal life.

Should we break the law? No, because we have the law for a reason. But that reason is not to rely on for the safety of our souls. Jesus fulfilled the law by atoning for all sin forever, so there is no need for sacrifices. Jews, in fact, break the law because they do not sacrifice. They are prevented from sacrifice since they no longer have the temple, the only place at which to offer a sacrifice. There is no written commandment that makes breaking the sacrificial laws acceptable. But also, the prophets suggested that some laws only applied to an immediate situation and were never intended to be permanent statutes. Therefore, certain "written in stone" commandments like the Decalogue do apply generally and universally. They are absolutes. Great care must be taken in executing law to be sure that justice is fairly and equally served. Most importantly, there is no law, nor has there ever been a law against mercy.


Who isn't?


Ya know, grey is just a mix of blacks and whites. Dig enough and you'll find a universal principle that determines the underlying ethic of any given situation.


Likewise.


Whoa... Jesus wasn't a rebel. He kept and conformed to Jewish law. After He'd heal someone, especially if the healing cured a disease considered by Jewish law to make someone ritually unclean, He told them to ritually purify themselves according to the law and present themselves to the priests. Rebellion simply wasn't in Jesus' nature. What Jesus taught was that through the wickedness of mankind we are all living lives in rebellion to God. Jesus sought to set the record straight on the spirit of the law and not just the letter of the law and to show/provide a way that mankind could once and for all become reconciled with God. Hint: Man cannot reach up to God; only God can reach down. There is no reconciliation otherwise.


Notice that it was Jesus, not the disciples, who was treated like a rebel. Religious persecution of the disciples (as being rebels) only came later. But also notice how Jesus conformed to the law and Jesus was never put to death through due process under the law. Even false witnesses couldn't get their stories straight.

It doesn't mean that morality isn't absolute. It means Jesus knew and understood (heck, He "wrote the book" on it) what absolute morality was because He personally knew the nature and character of God (He IS God, after all). So if the nature and character of God represents what is absolute, then it is our perception and interpretation that is biased or incomplete. The Jewish leaders couldn't let go of their vision of what they thought the Messiah should be. They expected a victorious warrior to throw off foreign rule. What they got was Isaiah's suffering servant, a messianic attribute echoed by other prophets.


You can't really improve on the Golden Rule, though. Wouldn't the progress we've made in empathy just mean we have improved the ways in which we "do unto others"?

You can't really improve on moral laws, though. All you can improve on is your own perception of the truth, especially moral truths.