Moral Decline

[divided sky]

This question is for Christians (and is open to all for discussion, of course).

It seems like we hear over and over (from Christian spokespeople) how there's a great moral decline in the United States. My question is what is the evidence put forth to prove this? For example, you may hear that the ACLU, gays, strip clubs, etc. proves morality is declining but what about these things prove it? Are stats put forward to prove the case?

 

[Phred]

"Moral decline," around here anyway, is a convenient way of saying, "people aren't taking religion as seriously as they used to."

What difference does it make if Bibles were read in schools if the schools were segregated? Is a society morally superior because they believe more fervently but have slaves? When I look at our society now and in the past I see progression, not decline. Women can legally vote today. So can African-Americans... our census no longer considers them 3/5ths of a person either. Schools aren't segregated. Kids don't work 12 hours a day in our factories anymore. Slavery is completely acknowledged as evil and reprehensible. We've made great strides as a culture from where we were fifty, one-hundred and two-hundred years ago.

Yet, here we are discussing the age-old claim that we're in a moral decline. People have always said that times are worse now than before. Plato complained about the next generation in words that make him sound remarkably like James Dobson.

Our society is one that thrives on the new, the different. As things are tried they are disgarded and that appetite is never abated. Things we may think are morally bankrupt our children find interesting. If you think about it the same can be said for you and your own parents. In the inexorible push to always go to the edge the edge itself moves. This is what makes people uncomfortable and spawns the claims of "moral decline".

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[ChristianCenturion]

For example, you may hear that the ACLU, gays, strip clubs, etc. proves morality is declining but what about these things prove it? Are stats put forward to prove the case?

One would think that an increase in frequency, number or something more openly expressed as being socially acceptable (as opposed to something someone might do in 'secret') would be THE indication that it is a moral decline.

What are you looking for?
Stats comparing the number of strip clubs now compared to say, 1950?
A showing of landmark events coupled with what was the status quo (then) in contrast to what was being advocated for being acceptable?
Did you have some sort of specific "proof" you were after?

 

[Mrs.Sidhe]

Yes.

Show EXACTLY how this is making everyones life in this country a bomtomless pitt.

morals are all relative. You don't have to have religion to have morals...and it seems the only people complaining about any "moral decline" are the religious right...

What have you helped?

 

[sinner/SAVED]

Our prisons and jails are overcrowded. That is an indicator of moral decline.
The number of children in foster care after being removed from their parents is another indicator of moral decline.
The number of alcoholics and drug abusers is an indicator.
The divorce rate is an indicator.
The number of children born outside of marriage.
The number of children born addicted to drugs.
The increased incidences of std's.
Racial hatred.
The amount of litter seen on the roadsides.
Road rage.
Increased need for mental health care due to pain and suffering caused by lifestyle choices.
Abortion rates.
People are just not friendly anymore.

 

[Mrs.Sidhe]

The divorce rate is an indicator.

What??? Proof?

The number of children born outside of marriage.

I hardly think that children who are born outside of marriage (which includes my own...Rest his angelic soul..) says ANYTHING about the moral decline. It means some people didn't put a rubber on..

Increased need for mental health care due to pain and suffering caused by lifestyle choices.

What lifestyle choices are these?

Abortion rates.

Oh please....Get over it. You don't like abortion fine. But its a LAW! If you don't like move to some other country that don't allow women freedom of choice.

People are just not friendly anymore.

Not when you try to tell them how to live they won't be...

 

[sidhe]

Every time I hear the phrase "moral decline" I think of someone rapelling down a giant 10 Commandments...

Anyway.

It would be very difficult to prove a moral decline, because morality changes. If you try to dictate a single morality for all people of all religions, you'll either have a lot of very angry people or have to play to the lowest common denominator. Or highest, depending on your view.

I feel it's far more moral to trust people to not get carried away with things than it is to legislate that they can't do them. Thus, the "loosest morality" is in my mind the highest.

 

[Scally Cap]

Our prisons and jails are overcrowded. That is an indicator of moral decline.

There are a ton of people in prison. No argument there. But there are a few other factors to consider that introduce some shades of gray into your argument. I'm not sure what your historical starting point is (i.e., what time period you're comparing the present to), but--the US population is considerably larger than it was, say, 100 years ago; crimes are on the books now that didn't exist then, such as marijuana possession; mandatory sentencing guidelines make jail the only option in many cases; enforcement is more stringent now for common crimes such as drunk driving; reporting and prosecution are up for rape and child abuse because we, as a society, understand more clearly now that these crimes do happen and deserve strict punishment.

The number of alcoholics and drug abusers is an indicator.

Are alcoholism rates now higher than any time in the past?

The divorce rate is an indicator.

The divorce rate has been declining steadily in the last 20 years. Link

Racial hatred.

Uh, that's been with us for quite some time. Thousands of years. And in this country from the beginning.

The amount of litter seen on the roadsides.

Again, not a new thing. Remember the "crying Indian" ads from the early '70s? If litter is a metaphor for environmental degradation, I'll cede you a point for recognizing an ongoing moral failing.

Increased need for mental health care due to pain and suffering caused by lifestyle choices.

Is it an increased need, or a decreased stigma associated with seeking help for mental health issues? People have been suffering forever; it wasn't until the past couple of decades that it became socially acceptable to do something about it.

People are just not friendly anymore.

Sure they are. I spent a month this summer traveling the midsection of the country with my son. The only unfriendly person we encountered was a rookie park ranger in Wisconsin who was a little too puffed up by his badge.

Notice I'm not discounting everything you say out of hand--just suggesting that not every attribute of society you see today is evidence that the sky is falling.

 

[sinner/SAVED]

I didn't say the sky is falling, but we don't live in a eutopia either.

 

[levi501]

The only thing that's declined is the percentage of people that are god fearing.
Morality and equality have only increased, especially in this country, over time.
I'm curious if part of this "moral decline" includes slavery, suffrage and the civil rights movement.

 

[Mr. QWERTY]

Our prisons and jails are overcrowded. That is an indicator of moral decline.
The number of children in foster care after being removed from their parents is another indicator of moral decline.
The number of alcoholics and drug abusers is an indicator.
The divorce rate is an indicator.
The number of children born outside of marriage.
The number of children born addicted to drugs.
The increased incidences of std's.
Racial hatred.
The amount of litter seen on the roadsides.
Road rage.
Increased need for mental health care due to pain and suffering caused by lifestyle choices.
Abortion rates.
People are just not friendly anymore.

Well, I disagree about most of your points. I think that they are not necessarily true to begin with, but how about a list like:

People are living longer, healthier lives. link
Incidents of violent racial hatred are down.
Serious violent crime is down link
People do not need to live in fear bc of their sexual preferences.
Women can get good jobs.
The divorce rate is down link
The chance of nuclear war has decreased.
The environment is getting cleaner.
We do not need to live in segregated neighborhoods.
Slavery no longer exists in the US.
More mental health care is available for those who want it, and it no longer has the same stigma it once did.
Flogging is down.
Debtor's prisons have been eliminated.


As you can see, it depends on what you want to emphasize, and many of your points (and mine too) are arguable.

 

[sidhe]

People do not need to live in fear bc of their sexual preferences.

That kinda depends on where you live...

 

[divided sky]

So, for those who think we're in a moral decline, what do you think the primary reasons are for this moral decline?

 

[Mr. QWERTY]

That kinda depends on where you live...

Well, true. How about people with enough money can choose to move to a city where sexual orientation is not generally discriminated against?

Not quite as catchy though.

 

[Maxwell511]

So, for those who think we're in a moral decline, what do you think the primary reasons are for this moral decline?

Secularism is my guess. I mean look at what's happened to my country because of it.

 

[SimplyMe]

Our prisons and jails are overcrowded. That is an indicator of moral decline.

This one you might have a point but we would need far more information to know for sure. What is the difference between the percentage of prisoners now versus various times in our history? How many prisoners are there based on laws that weren't on the books 50 years or 100 years ago? How has increased population density affected crime? There are simply too many variables to reliably draw any conclusions.

The number of children in foster care after being removed from their parents is another indicator of moral decline.

Again, how much of this is actually caused by better moral standards? How much is because we now vigorously defend the rights of children not to be abused?

The number of alcoholics and drug abusers is an indicator.

Again, is this not because society has changed for the better. I remember on the "Andy Griffith Show" that there was an alcoholic character, a town drunk, that was looked on kindly. No attempt was made to help him, to get him to quit drinking. How much of the alcohol and drug abuse changes are because society no longer tolerates them?

The divorce rate is an indicator.

This is a change in society, but again how much is because of worse morals? Fifty years ago it was frowned upon to divorce. It didn't matter if a husband beat his wife, if one of the spouses had an affair, it seemed that society viewed that as a failure of both partners to not be able to exist together peacefully.

The number of children born outside of marriage.

This is one that would be interesting to see debated. There is a difference in morals now, it is now considered normal to have sex before marriage. The question here is, what is morality in this instance? Part of why this is a question is because many Christians do not consider premarital sex a sin, at least as long as the two people are in a monogamous relationship leading to marriage.

The number of children born addicted to drugs.

I'm not sure this is true, either. Fifty years ago it wasn't uncommon for mother's to smoke their entire pregnancy, as the health issues were not fully understood, so it's possible a high percentage of babies were born with nicotine addiction. Further, it was not fully understood that a child would often have the same addictions as the mother was born, so many children would not have been recognized to have an addiction. You would also need to see the drug usage of pregnant women then versus now, something I don't think we really have statistics for.

The increased incidences of std's.

Again, what is morality? Also, how much of this is due to STDs that did not exist 50 years ago?

Racial hatred.

I guess you are too young to remember the race riots of the 1960's, and there were others all throughout American history.

The amount of litter seen on the roadsides.

Again, how much is due to increased population density. How much of it is due to new technologies, such as plastics and the fact that most states now do not have a bottle deposit? How much litter is there today compared to the amount of trash generated vs. other times in history.

Road rage.

Again, how much is due to increased population densities, not to mention an increase in the number of miles driven per year, per person, and the amount of time spent in a car.

Increased need for mental health care due to pain and suffering caused by lifestyle choices.

Lifestyle choices? Not sure exactly what you mean by that. As someone else pointed out, much of this is probably due to better morals in the sense that there is no longer a stigma attached to seeking help.

Abortion rates.

First, what is the difference between abortion rates? Second, how much of that is explained by it being legal now, as opposed to it being illegal most places 35 years ago.

People are just not friendly anymore.

I disagree with this, I don't think people are any less friendly. Three factors that likely contribute to it seeming like people are less friendly are an increase in the number of hours worked, especially when you factor in transportation times and that both parents now normally work; the increased number of entertainment options (Internet, television, live broadcast events); and a fear, partially due to an increase in communication, of crime and terrorism that makes us afraid of strangers.

 

[jayem]

Everyone should read the excellent book "The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap," (Basic Books, 1993) by Stephanie Coontz, professor at Evergreen State Univ. Exhaustively researched and documented statistics on how little family and social issues have changed in 200+ years. I'm relying on memory to reply to some of these points:


The number of children born outside of marriage.

IIRC, the current out of wed-lock birth rate is about 40%. Going all the way back to colonial New England, during Puritan times (no separartion of church and state then) available birth records indicated an illegitimacy rate of around 33%. Illegitimate births have fluctuated between 30-40% for most of US history.


The increased incidences of std's.

I have an old internal medicine book from around 1900. The incidence of syphilis in the US was then estimated at 10-15% of the entire population, and countless more were infected by gonorrhea. Far more than have HIV. Syphilis was so common, you may recall that many states required blood tests before marriage, trying to prevent congenital syphilis.


Racial hatred.

Remember lynchings in the south? All through the first half of the 20th century. True, maybe there were no Gay Pride parades, but in the 1920s, 40,000 Ku Klux Klansmen marched in Washington, D.C.


The amount of litter seen on the roadsides.

Read about what the streets were like in any city in the 19th and early 20th century. What with horses and dogs everywhere.

And re violent crime: the highest murder rate (and general crime wave) ever in the US was in the 1920s. With some ups and downs, it has been falling ever since. And the spike in the 20s was almost certainly due to that moralistic disaster, Prohibition.

 

[gwenmead]

I have to ask a couple of questions for clarification, which have already been brought up obliquely by a couple of other posters:

What time period are you talking about when referring to a "moral decline"? And what culture?

If you're talking about American morals within the past 200 years, it looks like jayem answered that one pretty well. If you're talking about a greater time period, then that starts a whole 'nuther ball of wax. Moral standards have fluctuated greatly within Western culture over the past several milennia. I appreciate that post #2 refers to Plato complaining about moral decline within his time too, much the same way that some folks complain today.

Then what if we leave Western cultures out of it entirely, and look at moral standards of other cultures? Are they in decline too?

I don't personally believe in "moral decline". I think that morality changes, it always has, and it always will; but I dislike attaching a word like "decline" or "improvement" to such things. Change in and of itself is neutral. Some people like it and some don't.

Food for thought. (Munch, munch.)

 

[Shane Roach]

It's funny. My grandmother, who lived through many of these times for which statistics are being bandied around, feels in her own first hand experience things are in moral decline. Looking into different cultures, we can see that pretty much any behavior can be normalized, from ritualistic killing of animals or people to sexual behaviors of every kind.

It's easy to dismiss it as different rather than declining morals, but when push comes to shove, some cultures survive and flourish where others do not. I think the discord and stress that comes with declining values concerning personal relationships and the responsibility between people has an eventual effect on how society can function.

The fact that many things that were once illegal are now legal, and hence shoved off to the side as something not even to worry about from a moral standpoint, is the main concern I have. Without even so much as the stigma of unacceptability to slow a person down from doing something, I think the acceleration of moral decline will become more and more measureable.

For instance, one statistic has a certain percentage of kids born illegitimately. For one thing, it shows indeed a moral decline in that we have more illegitimate births, no matter what the rate may have fluctuated up or down to or from, but what it fails to address is how those kids were eventually taken care of, and whether or not their birth resulted in later marriage and personal responsibility. Are we not simply refusing to hold people accountable for themselves and the results of their actions these days? It seems to me that we are.

 

[Mr. QWERTY]

It's funny. My grandmother, who lived through many of these times for which statistics are being bandied around, feels in her own first hand experience things are in moral decline. Looking into different cultures, we can see that pretty much any behavior can be normalized, from ritualistic killing of animals or people to sexual behaviors of every kind.

Could your grandmother be wrong? Biased? Not remembering the horse manure in the streets before cars?

The fact that many things that were once illegal are now legal, and hence shoved off to the side as something not even to worry about from a moral standpoint, is the main concern I have. Without even so much as the stigma of unacceptability to slow a person down from doing something, I think the acceleration of moral decline will become more and more measureable.

Many laws were bad. It used to be illegal for a white person to marry a black person. This is now legal, and good.