Now that is an interesting discussion I would enjoy. I don't know about our inner compass, more often referred to as our conscience.
I see people posting the most evil and heartless and bigoted things, about immigrants, alcoholics, suicides, and so on, all the time. Do they have a conscience to think that way? If inner compass is to be accepted as valid, do we need to accept their inner compasses?
Also, slavery, as seen in this discussion, was perfectly acceptable to Christianity (and all of the world's other religions too) for thousands of years. I have even seen it defended as a necessary evil when one doesn't have machines (although in fact it was the presence of slavery in so many cultures that held their invention back so long and why the Romans got just to the edge of an industrial revolution but never went there).
Slavery is easily seen as an evil now, as cruel, arrogant, vicious, so why did't even God see it for the evil it was back when the Bible was being written? Well of course that proves absence of divine inspiration in such books, as we have to presume God would have.
In short we cannot trust our inner compass. Usually it is a good guide, and in good people it is an excellent guide (although of course we all think we are good people).
Most of the time we can go through our lives living through habit and what others do, but sometimes we are faced with genuine moral choices, and we must then become mindful of what we are doing and ask ourselves if it meets rational ethical choices. Is it maximizing harm and minimizing hurt to the best of my ability to tell? Is it compassionate? Does it avoid "using" another person? Does it violate the Golden Rule or some equivalent (I prefer Kant's Moral Imperative as a better formulation)?
I see people posting the most evil and heartless and bigoted things, about immigrants, alcoholics, suicides, and so on, all the time. Do they have a conscience to think that way? If inner compass is to be accepted as valid, do we need to accept their inner compasses?
Also, slavery, as seen in this discussion, was perfectly acceptable to Christianity (and all of the world's other religions too) for thousands of years. I have even seen it defended as a necessary evil when one doesn't have machines (although in fact it was the presence of slavery in so many cultures that held their invention back so long and why the Romans got just to the edge of an industrial revolution but never went there).
Slavery is easily seen as an evil now, as cruel, arrogant, vicious, so why did't even God see it for the evil it was back when the Bible was being written? Well of course that proves absence of divine inspiration in such books, as we have to presume God would have.
In short we cannot trust our inner compass. Usually it is a good guide, and in good people it is an excellent guide (although of course we all think we are good people).
Most of the time we can go through our lives living through habit and what others do, but sometimes we are faced with genuine moral choices, and we must then become mindful of what we are doing and ask ourselves if it meets rational ethical choices. Is it maximizing harm and minimizing hurt to the best of my ability to tell? Is it compassionate? Does it avoid "using" another person? Does it violate the Golden Rule or some equivalent (I prefer Kant's Moral Imperative as a better formulation)?
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