As I have mentioned, the origin of
moral standards is religious, that is to say, they are set up by a deity, with
other words, a system of acts, omissions, and thoughts displeasing to the
current god of the culture, while according to non-religious beliefs norms are
categorical imperatives of humanity. Thirdly, judgments of sins and virtues can
be pragmatic, that is, it is good and bad that is necessary for the success of
society and human coexistence. Nowadays, these concepts do not determine human
behaviour in a clear, separate way, but of course they all determine it
together. For instance, the "don't kill!" Biblical command
discourages someone from murder, not only because the Bible forbids it, but
also because society still severely sanctions this act in the secular world.
And since there are different societies in the world with different religious backgrounds,
the concepts of applied sins can be very different as well, therefore people
think differently about them. Accordingly, what is considered to be obligatory
or an accepted benchmark in certain circumstances tends to change, so does what
is considered to be a violation of moral standards or sin. Sticking to murder,
the most typical example is a special kind of murder called honour killing,
when a parent kills a child because he or she has an affair with a person with
different religious background or is homosexual. For society, this is an act of
violation of laws, but according to religion, this brutal act is a moral deed, for
which many examples can be seen even today. Another typical example is in
connection with sexuality or female orgasm, which had previously been
interpreted as almost a sin, and then in the Victorian England, orgasmic
medical "sex" massaging was considered a completely natural treatment
carried out by doctors, and a long line of wealthy women would wait for their
doctor to get sexual satisfaction finally with the play of massaging fingers.
Of course, this type of therapy was not an overt sexual service at that time,
but an established method of treating hysteria, which has clearly proved that
sexual dissatisfaction has negative impact on the health of human mind.
Interestingly, sin can be not only an
act or omission, but in some religions the sinful idea itself as well, even if
it does not manifest into action, for example, the sight of a beautiful female
body provokes sinful thoughts in the amazed observer, because of which the
devout would fear from them like from the devil in the Middle Ages. However,
the guilt of thought and the need for sanctioning it by power also appear in
modern societies today, not only in the great book, the Orwellian Dystopia of
1984, but also in the imperative of political correctness and the censorship of
social media and the exclusion of others with different opinions.