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Originally Posted by guito411
I would like to propose other factors that determines ethics (as inspired from reading Paul Tillich's Courage to Be)...
1) Anxiety of Fate and Death. Society's anxiety eminating from the fact that we are all finite beings. (Anxiety caused by the threat of non-being)
2) The Anxiety of Guilt and Condemnation.
3) The Anxiety of Emptyness and Meaninglessness
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These anxieties are reasonably and rationally addressed by membership in a religious group.
All of these anxieties are reasonable and rational reasons for opposing any kind of societal change.
Ergo, religious groups are the main sources of opposition and conservativism towards societal change.
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Originally Posted by guito411
We (All of humanity) suffer from this looming anxiety, not able to identify the exact object that causes us this constant fear, so we cope with it using various devices. A culture's ethics are determined by that culture's particular coping device. The coping device may be a theistic religion, or super nationalism. Ideally, individuals accept this anxiety by finding what Tillich describes as "the courage to be" or self actualizing, but hardly anyone ever accomplishes that.
For Example:
A Christian society attempts to bypass the threat of non-being with the tenement of everlasting life. However, the dogmas of Christianity are a false idol, an attempt to mass produce individualized self-affirmation. It is not the dogma, but the task of defending the dogma that proves to be all too effective in being a scape goat for the culture's anxiety.
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If a culture masks this anxiety with theistic religion than, depending on the level of anxiety, it will violently react to any defiance of it's dogma. If everlasting life is a hoax, the anxiety of non-being must be confronted.
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I object to selective obsessions over particular anxieties. There is no basis for asserting that the three anxieties listed in the beginning are the ONLY substantial or important human anxieties. There are other anxieties that may have the opposite effects, but they are ignored here.