Why Young Americans Can’t Think Morally (Moral standards have been replaced by feelings)

Last week, David Brooks of the New York Times wrote a column on an academic study concerning the nearly complete lack of a moral vocabulary among most American young people. Here are excerpts from Brooks’s summary of the study of Americans aged 18 to 23. It was led by “the eminent Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith”:

● “Smith and company asked about the young people’s moral lives, and the results are depressing.”

● “When asked to describe a moral dilemma they had faced, two-thirds of the young people either couldn’t answer the question or described problems that are not moral at all.”

● “Moral thinking didn’t enter the picture, even when considering things like drunken driving, cheating in school or cheating on a partner.”

● “The default position, which most of them came back to again and again, is that moral choices are just a matter of individual taste.”

● “As one put it, ‘I mean, I guess what makes something right is how I feel about it. But different people feel different ways, so I couldn’t speak on behalf of anyone else as to what’s right and wrong.’”

● “Morality was once revealed, inherited and shared, but now it’s thought of as something that emerges in the privacy of your own heart.” (Emphases mine.)

Ever since I attended college I have been convinced that “studies” either confirm what common sense suggests or they are mistaken. I realized this when I was presented study after study showing that boys and girls were not inherently different from one another, and they acted differently only because of sexist upbringings.

This latest study cited by David Brooks confirms what conservatives have known for a generation: Moral standards have been replaced by feelings. Of course, those on the left only believe this when an “eminent sociologist” is cited by a writer at a major liberal newspaper.

What is disconcerting about Brooks’s piece is that nowhere in what is an important column does he mention the reason for this disturbing trend: namely, secularism.

The intellectual class and the Left still believe that secularism is an unalloyed blessing. They are wrong. Secularism is good for government. But it is terrible for society (though still preferable to bad religion) and for the individual.

One key reason is what secularism does to moral standards. If moral standards are not rooted in God, they do not objectively exist. Good and evil are no more real than “yummy” and “yucky.” They are simply a matter of personal preference. One of the foremost liberal philosophers, Richard Rorty, an atheist, acknowledged that for the secular liberal, “There is no answer to the question, ‘Why not be cruel?’”

With the death of Judeo-Christian God-based standards, people have simply substituted feelings for those standards. Millions of American young people have been raised by parents and schools with “How do you feel about it?” as the only guide to what they ought to do. The heart has replaced God and the Bible as a moral guide. And now, as Brooks points out, we see the results. A vast number of American young people do not even ask whether an action is right or wrong. The question would strike them as foreign. Why? Because the question suggests that there is a right and wrong outside of themselves. And just as there is no God higher than them, there is no morality higher than them, either.

Forty years ago, I began writing and lecturing about this problem. It was then that I began asking students if they would save their dog or a stranger first if both were drowning. The majority always voted against the stranger — because, they explained, they loved their dog and they didn’t love the stranger.

— Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist.

But.... It is a mistake to think that morality is not being taught to our children in our public schools.
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ALL education is profoundly religious, cultural, and political and **never** neutral!!!

It is impossible to have a neutral government school! ALL government schools have profoundly non-neutral religious, cultural, and political content and consequences.

If children attend godless government schools they **will** learn to think and reason godlessly. They **must** merely to cooperate with the classroom.

If children attend socialist government schools they will learn to be comfortable both with socialism simply by accepting tuition-free schooling, as well as the socialist indoctrination from their socialist-paid liberal/Marxist teachers. Well?...Why not rally the voting mob to get lots of other free things using government force?

Our government K-12 schools are a First Amendment and freedom of conscience abomination. We must eliminate them. Our colleges and universities are a disgrace as well!

What we face a deadly philosophy of godless Marxism here, **right now**, embedded in every one of our cultural institutions. Islam stands on the sidelines.

Benjamine Franklin said, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

I have a variation of that: We Christians ( Catholics and Protestants) and Jews march together or we will absolutely be marched to the cattle cars together.

So...Please take your anti-Prostestant drivel and go stuff it! Please stand aside and let the grown-ups take charge.

The following is for you, too, Natural Law:

What we face a deadly philosophy of godless Marxism here, **right now**, embedded in every one of our cultural institutions. Islam stands on the sidelines.
Benjamin Franklin said, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

I have a variation of that: We Christians ( Catholics and Protestants) and Jews march together or we will absolutely be marched to the cattle cars together.

So...Please take your anti-Prostestant drivel and go stuff it! Please stand aside and let the grown-ups take charge.

"We Christians ( Catholics and Protestants) and Jews march together or we will absolutely be marched to the cattle cars together."

You really don't want to go there. I have no problem with most of Protestantism and have dear friends and family members who are Protestant. I do accept that there are doctrinal issues and that there have been excesses by bad apples within the Church over time.

My problem is with those who masquerade as Christians and exist here in cyberspace only to vilify the Church. Those need to be identified and countered with the truth. When fellow Protestants begin to call them out and address the excessive statements, the flame bait and outright lies I will begin to believe this Kumbya thing.

And for the record it was the primarily the members of the Protestant Reichkirche loading Catholics and Jews into the cattle cars. It is estimated that as many as 8 million Catholics were killed in the Holocaust. In Poland alone there were 3 million Catholics and a significant percentage of their clergy killed by the Nazi's. As bad as that seems it pales in comparison the the numbers of Catholics killed within Britain and Ireland in the last 500 years for Catholic.

LOL. Dismissed. The usual retort someone yells over their shoulder when they run away from truth. Just rock on down that big, broad, roll your own religion, highway you're on, big guy. You now know you're deep into heresy and can no longer plead invincible ignorance. If you don't agree that Christ will simply "hide" your sin rather than purify you through justification then you disagree with Wycliff, Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin, to name just the earliest of the heretics, not to mention the thousands since then who have made their own little church, school, university, or whatever else they could talk people into giving money for while all along preaching whatever kept the money coming, not His Word.

I realize there are a few Protestants who are earnestly seeking to follow Christ rather than to just whip up their own religion and whistle past the graveyard but for the most part those are folks who know that they're not Protestant to begin with. The thousands of Evangelical, Pentecostal, Mega Church, "Sola Yourselfa", churches are all just keeping one another comfortable while they roll down the highway to hell. They're also just the current manifestation of the very "religious thought" that is the root and primary cause a society wherein everyone defines their own truth and their own right and wrong.

Unlike your average, "eye rolling dolt", though, such folks have studied enough to realize that beating on the Catholic Church is a big mistake now and breaking away from it rather than working within the One True Church was a huge mistake that has done more to aid the cause of Humanism and anti-Christian forces in society than it has to spread the Word to those who are lost. It's spread a word but only by redefining The Word to suit whatever trend the non-Catholic crowd wants to justify at the moment. Like abortion, queers preaching, queers being married, women preachers, etc., etc., starting with doing a 180 degree turn on contraception when preaching against it hurt the receipts and threatened the pastors salary. So, like Luther said, it was "sin boldly", especially when not sinning gets between you and a buck.

Lying? OH, you were lying. I knew that but it's good you finally admit it. Me lie? Nah, so why would deny something I haven't done? Roll those little peepers, now. How cute that is, the peeper roller grins and bats it's little eyes. Is that a blush? OH, how sweet..

You have a nice day now, ya' hear?

OH, in keeping with your approach, LOL, Har, Har, Bwaa Ha Ha, rolling eyes, sheesh, geez, and Party On, Dude.

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