All very interesting pop-psychology, but I'd be interested to see any actual evidence you have for any of those assertions. I'm happy to list the titles of the several psychology textbooks I have here in the office, all of which pretty clearly state that modifying behaviour using fear of retribution is damaging to children and leading by example is a much more effective way to teach, but as I say, I'd be really interested to hear where you've got your data from.

You said that men could self-monitor, which requires that they 'know' what appropriate behaviour is in order to adjust theirs to it, right?

I argued that 'appropriate' behaviour was not a given thing, but something negotiated by all members of society at any given time and that such a negotiation was not taking place, but rather a series of accusations as if the negotiation had already taken place and men were simply wilfully ignoring the results.

You suggested that men did know what appropriate behaviour was because they exhibited it in their relations with other men who were not potential sexual partners.

I said that this does not constitute proof because we're talking here solely about what is appropriate behaviour in the relationship between people who are potential sexual partners. To examine this you would need to look at how gay men approach other gay men.

The straight ones anyway. — StreetlightX

Exactly, so its about attitudes to sexuality, not women, which is exactly what I said.

Additionally: Occam's Razor, please.
Are we required to make more assumptions by asserting that moral codes, which can differ vastly among countries, ethnicities, and even communities, are sets of taught acceptable behaviours and views, coupled with a genetic legacy for survival in social groups; or that human beings are somehow endowed from birth with a natural understanding of such abstract and hotly debated concepts as "good" and "evil," which somehow exist in the physical world-- perhaps as a field, like magnetism? — bioazer

Occam's Razor can be a dangerous tool in the wrong hands, what seems simple depends entirely on one's presuppositions. If we had to 'invent' a new force field to contain morality then I agree it would be much simpler to see if we could arrive at an explanation without it, but we don't. You even mentioned in your comment the "genetic legacy". How is that not 'innate' which is the exact wording of the OP?

Now what seems simplest? We have agreed that there is a genetic legacy that codes for some moral behaviour, we also know that the basics of morals are remarkably similar across cultures (prohibitions on the killing of innocents, proscriptions to help those less fortunate etc.). How is it not 'simplest' to assume this innate genetic code is responsible for all morality until proven otherwise?

You've made the same error that practically everyone opposing the OP has made despite it being pointed out in the thread already. There is a difference between Meta-ethics (what is good and bad) and normative ethics (how to achieve 'good' and avoid 'bad'). There is no 'hot debate' about whether murdering innocent children is 'good' or 'evil', none that I'm aware of. If you've spoken to even a single person who thinks such a thing is 'good' I should seriously consider having them seen by a criminal psychiatrist immediately.

What there is 'hot debate' about is how to achieve a 'good' society, there is also considerable debate around the edges of the definition, but that's just a sorties paradox. How little hair does a man need to have before you call him bald? How many sand grains constitutes a pile? We can argue about the edges of most definitions, but that doesn't make the definition is entirely subjective, we all know that someone with a full head of hair is not bald without having to know exactly how few hairs would be needed before we can call him bald. We all know what a pile of sand looks like without having to know at what point it would cease to be a pile should be remove one grain at a time.

Similarly we can all know that some things are 'good' and other things are 'bad' without having to have an answer to every ambiguous case.

Couldn’t men just as easily self-monitor? — StreetlightX

Of course not. To do so presumes that there is some universally known code of appropriate behaviour that men are simply wilfully ignoring when they make unsolicited advances and initiate unwanted contact. As there is no such code, I can't see how men could possibly self-monitor, to what would they be comparing their behaviour? If the me-too movement were saying that 'women' do not want to be approached or solicited in this way then 'men' could take that as given and adjust their behaviour accordingly. Unfortunately, one Twitter movement is not capable of speaking for the whole of women-kind and so such is not possible. I'm old enough to remember the considerable force within feminism some years back to stop calling women who expressed their sexuality 'sluts'. There was some resentment among feminists that men could sleep around and make advances and be seen as macho, but if women did the same they were discredited.

If the MeToo movement were quietly saying that a lot of women no longer appreciate this behaviour, then I would have more respect for it as a tool for social change, but it's not. It's saying that this view (somehow extended to all womenhood) is the way things always have been and men should somehow have known this all along, despite no-one having ever brought it up before.

It's odd in a society so invested in cultural relativism in other areas that such a movement is unquestioningly adopted as just 'the way things are'. Last I checked society could potentially have all sorts of attitudes to sexual advances ranging from the full-on free-love of the Bonobo's to the totally repressed Calvinist abstinence. We get to decide by talking openly about it what kind of society we want at any given time in our history, but the key thing is 'talking' about it, not throwing accusations and presuming that everyone should just agree with whatever movement happens to be fashionable at the time.

I honestly don't see how there possibly can be without proving that production is unequivocally a 'good' thing to do. Basically, if a person was truly intelligent, they have the capability to produce great works of art, science or engineering, but that doesn't automatically lead to the conclusion that they should produce such works. Take the archetypal university professor as an example. One might say he's a very intelligent man, top of his field, but it's well known that long-term sedentary jobs are not beneficial for health, outdoor work manual work has a lot going for it in terms of both health and personal fulfilment. Dedication to a project like academia can detract from one's investment in the family which is a source of great happiness, time spent just enjoying the sunset, playing with grandchildren, walking the dog, these are all well-known and verified sources of health and well-being. So actually, deciding to pursue a career in academia, as opposed to say, being a gardener, isn't actually that intelligent a decision (by one metric).

I'd argue that the most intelligent people are the ones we've never heard of, the ones who realised early on that just because they can produce great things, doesn't mean that dedicating their lives to doing so is the right thing to do.

Compassion is a most worthy thing, honored all over the world since time immemorial, more in the breach than in the observance. — Bitter Crank

Agreed, which means that Christianity isn't necessary as there are so many other sources of compassion.

So every reminder helps. — Bitter Crank

No, not when there are so many reminders which don't also justify genocide, misogyny, murder, homophobia, racism and child abuse. Why not just teach people to be compassionate without all the associated obedience to God? Lets leave the, at best, ambiguous types of reminder, ones in the first century where they belong.

Just because you don't agree with that, doesn't mean it can reasonably be left out of the discussion. — T Clark

You still haven't answered my question regarding this. What exactly does allowing that some people think it's the word of God look like? Apart from the fact that I didn't specifically mention that option in my list (which I considered to be included in 'philosophical texts'), what else have I not done to take account of this?

Similarly, what our hunting and gathering forebears knew didn't get passed down along with their genes. — Bitter Crank

Firstly, I think it's a little disingenuous to call my restatement that 1+1=2 teaching, maybe I've lead a sheltered life and am unaware of the nuances of meaning, but most of the people I speak to would call that a reminder, not teaching.

More importantly though, that's not the claim that was made. The claim was that Christianity taught us compassion. Christianity didn't teach compassion, Christianity taught that we should be compassionate in some cases, but where God wills it we may freely slaughter all men, women and children of our enemies. Furthermore, even (for some reason) just taking one aspect of Christianity and ignoring the rest, it certainly didn't teach us anything it didn't speak to everyone. At the very most some people who formed part of the works which collectively we call Christian texts reminded some people about compassion 2000 years ago, the rest of the world either knew it already or picked it up via the many other philosophies advocating compassion. A far cry from the claim that was made, in context.

Your intent is to discredit Christianity. — T Clark

I've tentatively concluded that Christianity has discredited itself by having such massive inconsistencies in it's guiding book. I'm not sure it's fair to conclude that must therefore be what I set out to do. If everyone had their conclusions seen as prejudiced simply because they are negative we would be quite restricted in our judgments would we not?

There is no way it can be legitimately discussed without including the fact it is the primary document founding and guiding the Christian religion. The fact you don't recognize or aren't willing to acknowledge that undermines the credibility of your argument and, in my opinion, shows you aren't willing to address the issues we're discussing directly with an open mind. — T Clark

I'm not sure I understand what any of this means. What would it mean to include "the fact it is the primary document founding and guiding the Christian religion."?

A good portion of the discussions on this site are either about, or mention, some religion. If someone claims, as they did in this thread, that Christianity is or has done some thing or other, I think it's reasonable to counter that argument, otherwise we are held mute on any topic involving religion, which hardly seems fair.

So, if we, as non-religious people are to counter an argument from religion, how may we do so objectively? We cannot simply defer to whatever the proponent says their religion is. That would deny us any right to present our own subjective view of the world. So if someone brings religion into an argument that involves people who are not religious, it is unfair to expect that we only examine their claims on their terms.

As far as I believe, the bible is just a book, and it's one that influences a lot of people. As a person with a vested interest in the state of the world, I think I have as much right as anyone else to raise my concerns about the content of such a book. I would do so with any influential book that I felt might contain a harmful message, I don't see why a religious book should be any exception.

Purpose, useful, etc... Consciousness does something. It cause something. — bahman

Does the 3D image cause something, just because it is useful? If I hallucinate a bridge where there is none and plunge down the chasm, does the hallucination become real just because it caused something?

The only point of disagreement that I'm sensing might still be there between our two positions is that the collection of acts must be coherent in themselves in order to justify a collective term 'moral acts'. It would be objectively wrong for such a collection of acts to be unconnected, even if that's what society wanted.

For example, let's say a particular culture decided it was immoral to wear a hat, walk upstairs two at a time, and eat fish. I would argue that such a society was objectively wrong for classifying those things as immoral even if every single member agreed on such a collection.

It defies meaning to say that an unconnected collection of objects/concepts all belong in the same group just because we say they do. That's just not how meaningful communication works.

So whilst it is society's values which define the requisite properties for items in the group, society owes its members a degree of consistency and coherence in their definition and I think it is objectively justified for anyone to call out inconsistency in this regard.

Third option - As many Christians believe, it is the revealed word of God. The fact that you don't even mention that says a lot about where you are coming from. — T Clark

That Christians might believe this is irrelevant philosophically and this is a philosophy forum. On a forum about politics, or theology, that option might be relevant, but I don't see how if figures here. I am intrigued though as to what it would have 'said' about where I'm coming from.

Christianity cannot be responsible for teaching us something we already knew. If I tell you now that 1+1=2 am I rightly to be described as having taught you arithmetic?

The evidence from anthropologists indicates that we already knew these virtues, Christianity may have extolled them, but it didn't teach them.

As I've asked in two posts so far, what point is the scientific philosopher trying to make? What are the implications of the terrible things he says the church has done? Why can't he, or you, answer my question. — T Clark

I have answered your question. I wrote "If we're going to do the latter (as it seems we are here), then the first thing we look for is consistency, that's pretty much philosophy's number one tool to interrogate any theory. The fact that the bible/Christians advocate a system which simultaneously preaches both love and genocide then becomes extremely relevant to any philosophical interrogation of its ideas." That is the point. The Bible is inconsistent, ironing out inconsistency is a purpose of philosophy, this is a philosophical forum.

So, you've gone back and checked my posts since I joined in April? — T Clark

No, the comment I made was generic, aimed at the site in general, not you personally. It was intended to illustrate my point that the Bible is taken as a philosophical text and so deserves to be interrogated as one. One task in that interrogation is to explain it's inconsistencies.

With regards to the suggestion that your comment was directly aimed at the fact that the OP had not specified what his point was, rather than an assertion that there could be no point (which is how I read it), then I can only apologise profusely for missing the point. You are entirely correct hat the OP's failure to specify what exactly he wanted to discuss is remiss, as is his failure to engage further. None of this changes the fact that an interesting discussion can nonetheless be had on this topic.

I was referencing your response to Erik, and the quotes about hunter-gatherers, not the Bible. — Bitter Crank

My apologies, I misunderstood. In that case the answer to your question is, yes, absolutely we should be prepared to believe what these books say, not uncritically, but we're not going to make any progress in understanding the human condition if we just dismiss any evidence we don't like the sound of on the grounds that it 'might' not be true.

If you want to make an argument that the morality of hunter-gatherers does not work with larger numbers, I'd be completely in agreement with you, but that's not what Erik was arguing.

His assertion, initially, was that Christianity was responsible for teaching us things like equality and compassion for the less fortunate. The investigations of anthropologists have clearly shown this assertion to be false.

With regards to the Bible, I agree it has been used to serve many different purposes, but that doesn't prevent a rational investigation as to whether any of them are useful, accurate, philosophically sound or morally good.

Are we supposed to believe that all the stories you read in these books are true? — Bitter Crank

Have you not heard of Religion? That is pretty much the deal. There are literalists and there are those who think the bible is just metaphor, but you're really clutching at straws to suggest that the several genocides, beatings and abuse are some kind of metaphor, for what exactly?

So, as I said above, either the bible is a philosophical text, in which case it needs to be examined as such (i.e what is meant by the various acts of genocide?), or it is a work of meaningless fiction, in which case the discussion (from a philosophical point of view) would be why so many people in philosophy consider it relevant to refer to it.

In neither case are the points made the the OP irrelevant.

This is a philosophical forum; the implication of your dismissal is that there is no philosophical discussion that results from the immorality of the bible (either that or you were just being belligerent and trying to ruin someone else's legitimate discussion just because you're not interested in it).

So why no similar interjection on the many threads discussing other aspects of the bible? Either we take the bible to be a load of irrelevant nonsense (my preferred choice), or we examine it as a philosophical text. If we're going to do the latter (as it seems we are here), then the first thing we look for is consistency, that's pretty much philosophy's number one tool to interrogate any theory. The fact that the bible/Christians advocate a system which simultaneously preaches both love and genocide then becomes extremely relevant to any philosophical interrogation of its ideas.

We either take the bible as a whole or we pick each idea we like from it and ignore the ones we don't. If we do the latter then the bible need not be mentioned aside from a brief credit as to the origin of the idea, if we do the former then the atrocities it condones need to be accounted for by normal moral standards.

In either case I can't see any situation in which they are irrelevant to philosophical discussion.

What is the reason for labeling this group of acts as morally right? — SonJnana

None. There's no more reason to the label than there is to the label "flat". You might as well ask "why do we group all things which are not curved or very bumpy together and call them all 'flat'?

What I've been trying to say right from the start is that there is a very important distinction between the identification of a set of similar behaviours (which is objectively verifiable) and the actions that one 'should' take as a result of such identification which are two separate things, in philosophy we call them Meta-Ethics and Normative Ethics respectively.

Yes, the reason why we've chosen those particular features to call 'good' and the opposite set to call 'bad' is to some extent an opinion, but it is no less an opinion than whether the earth is flat. 'Good' things all have similar traits, they seem to result in a particular type of human well-being (a long-term, stable sort of happiness). So to call the murder of innocents 'good' would be objectively wrong, it does not seem to result in any sort of long-term stable happiness like the other things in the group.

If I were to assert that grass was blue, you would have no trouble proving I was wrong, not because there is some universal dictionary written in the stars at the beginning of time to which we can refer. You would prove me wrong by lining up a whole load of things which are blue and noting that grass sticks out like a sore thumb.

It's no different with 'Good' and 'Bad'. You can line up all things already in the category 'Good' and see if your contested behaviour/thing fits with them or sticks out.

It's not your assertion that "murder of innocents is wrong" derives from the values of a particular society that I object to, It's your assertion that this is in some way categorically different from "the earth is flat", which, in exactly the same way, derives from a particular society's opinion about what 'flat' means. Neither come from some outside source, but neither are entirely subjective either, anyone trying to argue that a ball was flat could be countered by showing that a ball is unlike all the other things which we agree are flat; someone trying to argue that murder was good could be countered by showing how murder is unlike all the other things we call good.

What do you mean with useful? — bahman

Serves some purpose.

In the case of the 3D image, the purpose is to help our imagination get a more accurate picture. In the case of conciousness it would be to help our cells reproduce, but I don't think it's valuable on a philosophy forum to get tied up in exactly what conciousness might have evolved to do.

One can never establish what a feature evolved to do. The Black Crane uses it's wings primarily as a cowl to lure fish into the shade, but it would be ludicrous to suggest it evolved them for this purpose.

The point, from a philosophical perspective, is the the arm movement experiments give us a question to answer about concious decision, we know the answer can't be that we (the concious self) decide to do something and then instruct the rest of our body to carry out that something. We speculate that conciousness might well be an illusion. A counter argument to that theory would be if illusion served no purpose in evolution.

We've demonstrated that it could serve a purpose, and so removed that particular counter argument. What that purpose actually is is a matter for evolutionary biologists, not philosophers. Philosophically, it is sufficient that such a purpose could exist.

Could consciousness be causally efficacious? It is mere illusion. — bahman

No. That's pretty much what this whole thread's been about isn't it? Consciousness clearly doesn't 'cause' the arm to move. If it did, the subject would be aware of the intention before the computer wired to the subject's brain, but the evidence shows that they are not.

That doesn't mean it's not useful. The artist's 3D rendition is useful (it helps us imagine the object in real life) but it's an illusion, it's not actually 3D.

Illusion cannot have any functioning. — bahman

Sorry, I have no idea what that even means.

Cells can, rocks can't, I really don't understand what the problem is. Aeroplanes can fly, cars can't; batteries can turn chemicals into electricity, postage stamps can't. What is special about creating illusions or seeking to optimize reproduction that makes you so convinced a collection of cells can't do it?

What is creating the illusions?

What is trying to speed things up?

What is presuming?

What is trying to optimize?

What word are You trying to avoid using? — Rich

Cells

I really don't understand what you're unhappy about with the explanation I've given. If my fingers tell me there's a rock there but my memory tells me there isn't, that is a discrepancy. In order to produce the response to the rock that my cells have evolved to produce it is advantageous to act as if the rock were either there or not, not as if the rock were both there and not there. In reality, we just have two signals and no reason why they shouldn't be different, the illusion of self speeds up decision making by presuming they shouldn't be.

Does Thinking require Proofs? — Harjas

Yes, otherwise philosophy is just a collection of 'stuff people reckon'.

Exactly what (it is not a whom) is interested in the concept of discrepancies? — Rich

Nothing is 'interested', any more than the rock is 'intetested' in getting wet when it rains, it just does.

God is the greatest thing we can think of. — Harjas

Where is your proof for this premise?

Things that exist in reality are always better than the things that only exist in our imaginations. — Harjas

Likewise, your proof for this premise?

God in reality would be better. — Harjas

Again, proof for this?

Finally, even if you proved all of this, you would have proven that a thing which you call God exists. You will not have demonstrated anything about the properties of this God, nor what we should do about his existence which are the real questions of Theism.

So what is the point of consciousness? — bahman

As I said above, the point is to highlight potential discrepancies in stimuli. If we're expecting all our stimuli to be coherent then we are more able to spot when one might be in error. It allows us to shortcut thought processes that might otherwise consume too much energy "what shall 'I' do next?" is quicker than "let's just consult all the various influences that might have a view on what this body should do next". Being able to predict other people's behaviour is also useful and much quicker if we think of people as individuals. There's loads of potential advantages, but they're all just using the conscious self as a shorthand sketch of what's really going on, it's not accurate.

So you entirely believe that conscious activities have no role in our lives? — bahman

No, I believe that conscious activities do not exist. Deciding on a course of action is not something that a single unified process does and it's certainly not the process that we're aware of.

Deciding on a course of action is done by several competing parts of the brain, some of which we are aware of, others we're not. After the resultant message is sent to the muscles, the bit of the brain responsible for the sensation we call consciousness tells us a story about how 'we' decided to do it, as if 'we' was some unified thing.

Read Bruce Hood's The Self Illusion, it's a real eye-opener.

And yet... The Bible is a book almost exclusively designed to elucidate God's intent and to exhort his followers to act accordingly. — charleton

Yes, it's odd that isn't it? For a book that's supposed (according to numerous other threads) to lead directly to sound moral guidance, it incredible that 2000 years later we're still discussing what the hell any of it actually means.

The key thing is that the adults are not reprimanded, they are ridiculed, or ostracised (in extreme cases). Children are treated the same way (except ostracisation, of which I have come across no examples involving children). It is a responsive justice, not a retributionary one, individuals are not forced to conform, they may do as they please, but so may the rest of the tribe, including ridiculing and ostracising.

Not that this is the place for such a discussion, but the key difference is the means of survival. Without land ownership, any individual has the means to their own survival, they can choose, should they so wish, to abandon the tribe and just wander around hunting their own food. Land is not owned, food is not owned. Thus a person is actually 'free' to do as they wish. Membership of a tribe is voluntary in that no member of a tribe actually creates a situation which restricts the ability of any other member to fend for themselves. This is contrasted with modern society where membership of society is not voluntary. The members of a society (through force of arms) create and maintain a situation where it is not possible for a person to abandon the tribe and fend for themselves. All land is owned, hunting is not free. The function of any social coercion to conform is therefore radically different in a society where one actually has a choice, than in one where one does not.

Individual rights as enshrined in our political constitutions. Specifically things like freedom of speech and the freedom of conscience as developed in liberal democracies, the Reformation idea that each individual stands in a relationship to God alone and does not need a mediating clergy, a language in which concepts like individuality and "self-consciousness" seem to posit an inner/outer split that is probably not as "natural" or obvious as it now seems to us, etc. — Erik

I'm still not seeing where you're getting your data from. You've said rights are enshrined in our constitutions, but not provided any evidence that they were not similarly enshrined in the unwritten social codes of early hunter gatherers. What evidence do you have that freedom of speech was ever restricted in hunter-gatherer societies, any more than it is today? I've just provided examples of how freedom of conscience is held in very high regard in hunter gatherer societies, I'm not seeing any contrary evidence that any such societies ever disregarded it.

I think possibly, as Charleton earlier suggested, you may simply be coming at this with modern society's prejudices about hunter gatherers, or am I still missing your point?

Maybe you could offer examples of what forms of "autonomous individuality" were commonly embraced and practiced in those early hunter-gatherer societies. — Erik

Certainly.

1. Hunter gather tribes almost never tell their children what to do, there are no schools, no formal education and children are free to do exactly as they please. From Gosso, "Hunter-gatherers do not give orders to their children; for example, no adult announces bedtime. At night, children remain around adults until they feel tired and fall asleep.… Parakana adults [of Brazil] do not interfere with their children’s lives. They never beat, scold, or behave aggressively with them" Contrast this with the forced education of modern societies.

2. You could look at Shu Nimonjiya's work with the Mlabri of Northern Thailand where she concludes "...personal autonomy is an important social principle among the Mlabri. In fact, they said, “For us, ‘freedom’ is to think alone and do alone”.

3. Robert Moïse concludes after living with the Bayaka "individuals [are] deeply committed to personal autonomy are able to produce an enduring social order based on extensive cooperation and a "dense" sociality. He argues that this is achieved though a decision-making process which approaches each decision by maximising the ability for each participant to do as they please.

I'm not sure how many examples you want, but I'm happy to dig out as many as you're interested in reading.

an emphasis on the primacy of subjectivity and self-consciousness, a "rich inner life" and social contract theory grounded in atomic individuality, — Erik

Sorry, I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about. Perhaps you could provide me with some examples of behaviour which might demonstrate some of the above traits that is common in modern society but absent in hunter-gather society. That might help to clarify things.

... the much more benign examples offered up by the writer, like "boasting" and "putting on airs." — Erik

I thought I had just explained how, in hunter-gatherer society, these are far from benign, is there something you don't understand, or disagree with.

So then how do we decide if things are similar enough in to be in the group of morality? — SonJnana

We have discussions like this one. I used to sit on a board of ethics and we have discussions like this all the time. The point is we don't just throw our hands up and say "anything goes", we are defining, ever more carefully, where the boundaries of the definition are. Sometimes it became necessary to refer to 'popular opinion', but also arguments can be made by virtue of similarity alone.

What do they even share in common that makes them similar? — SonJnana

By 'they' I assume you mean definitions of morality in common usage? Haidt and Graham for example identify five common threads; Care, Fairness, Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity, but others such a Bernard Gert list them as avoiding being the cause of death, pain, disability, loss of freedom, loss of pleasure, in that order (i.e, you might unavoidably be the cause of the later ones on the the list in order to avoid being the cause of the earlier ones).

The point is, whatever list you chose, you will not find murdering innocents on any of them, absolutely no-one thinks it is moral and they are right to think that because it is absolutely unlike everything else we have ever called 'moral', in just about every aspect. It doesn't matter if one quibbles over the exact nature of the similarities, that's what ethical discussions are about, but it would be quite a stretch to suggest there are no similarities.

I would assume (perhaps erroneously) that the mere notion of individual autonomy could only arise within a fairly sophisticated moral and intellectual framework. — Erik

I'm curious as to why you would assume this, perhaps you could expand?

How does putting intense pressure on each member to conform to the egalitarian values of the tribe square with their ostensible valuing of the autonomy of each individual? — Erik

Pretty much in the same way as any respect for egalitarian values must. We cannot just let murderers murder out of respect for their autonomy, because it interferes with the autonomy of another. Tribes living from hand-to-mouth recognised that if one tribe member got ideas of grandeur that could literally be deadly to the tribe's survival, relying so heavily as it does on co-operation. At least, that's the theory.

Is this because we have redefined the word morality in a way where that act is morally bad now even though it wasn’t in the past? — SonJnana

There are two issues here that are completely separate.

1. What people claim they think is morally acceptable because it confers membership of a social group to which they wish to belong, and what people actually think is morally acceptable are not always the same thing. Not all claims that a behaviour is moral can be trusted to be honest. A staunch Conservative might claim they believe low taxes to be an economic stimulant, but in reality, they don't care if it stimulates the economy or not, they're just being greedy. I suspect a good number of people stoning homosexuals probably knew full well it was wrong but did it because everyone else was doing it.

2. Notwithstanding the above, there are obviously still cases that are as you describe. In such cases we have indeed redefined morality slightly in that it includes something it previously did not, but the important thing is that we have not done so randomly. An argument has been made that stoning homosexuals is much more similar to all the things we call 'immoral' than it is to the things we call 'moral'. You cannot reasonably make such an argument about just anything.

Things like compassion for the less fortunate, the equality of all souls before God, and the inherent value and dignity of all human life seem to have their origin in the NT, right? — Erik

No.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6236/796
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201105/how-hunter-gatherers-maintained-their-egalitarian-ways
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22071-inequality-why-egalitarian-societies-died-out/
https://www.zmescience.com/science/anthropology/early-human-societies-sexual-egalitarian-90534534/

I could go on.
There's absolutely no evidence that any of the values Christianity claims were instilled by Christianity. Every single one can be seen directly in pre-Christian societies and can be seen having been eroded in heavily Christianised societies, it's absolute nonsense to say that Christianity has anything to do with these values.

We only have one history so we cannot possibly use that fact that things turned out as they did to justify a belief that they can only have been the result of influences around at the time. Unless we can re-run history without those influences it is nothing but idle speculation.

No, the words 'right' and 'wrong' are defined by the things that are in them. Think of them like groups to which certain things belong. The word didn't come first, the group did. So to say "The words themselves mean the same thing in both cultures" is meaningless unless they define a group of behaviours which are all similar in some way. To be wrong about a definition does not require any pre-existing knowledge of the criteria. If I presented you with a collection of objects all of which were green balls made of plastic and told you they were all "bandersnatches", you would have no trouble providing me with a justified true belief about whether the red jelly-like substance I present you with is a "bandersnatch". The more you are presented with things which are called "bandersnatches" the more justified you will be in deciding if a new thing is similar enough to fall into that group. At no point in time have I had to tell you what a "bandersnatch" actually is.

So, to answer your direct question, it depends on what the behaviour is. If it is something which can arguably be shown to be similar to all the other behaviours already in the group "moral behaviour", then it is a reasonable argument. Others might disagree, but we can have such a discussion based on arguments about similarity. If, however, the culture tries to claim that something belongs in the group which is entirely dissimilar from everything else in the group, and provides no argument as to what it is about this behaviour which they consider similar, then they are objectively wrong, just as wrong as they would be if they decided to just randomly call thing 'car' based on no similarities at all.