Moral values
Soul of Britain, with Michael Buerk, 18th June 2000
Soul of Britain, written and presented by Michael Buerk was broadcast in nine episodes in June & July 2000. This BBC TV series explored what people in Britain today really believe. What is their attitude to moral issues? What do they think about Christianity? The BBC commissioned the largest ever survey of beliefs and attitudes for this series.
The episode on 18th June 2000 explored contemporary attitudes to questions of right and wrong.
Moral confusion
According to the Soul of Britain survey:
- 45% of us believe that the decline in traditional religion has made Britain a worse place
However
- 75% of us reject what traditional religions stand for, and say that there can never be clear guidelines between right and wrong
- 79% think that religious leaders are no help with moral decisions
Just as we are confused about beliefs, so also we are confused about moral values. (It seems very likely that the two things are related).
But at the beginning of this program, Michael Buerk asks whether we really believe this?
Moral consumers
Our society used to have:
- shared moral values
- a moral framework that was based on the Judeo-Christian tradition (i.e. the ten commandments)
Today this no longer applies. We say that:
- There are no absolutes
- The most important value is tolerance
We have become 'moral consumers', choosing our own moral positions
There is a loss of respect for institutions (police, government, church)
Moral changes - age related
Changes in people's attitude to moral values are age-related:
- 69% of older people think there are no clear guidelines about right and wrong
- 85% of under-24's think there are no clear guidelines
Presumably this trend will increase in the future
Useful questions
There are at least a couple of useful questions to explore in relation to our moral values:
- Is it even possible to have shared moral values in a society that does not have a shared framework of beliefs? It seems unlikely. If this is so, then as our shared beliefs disintegrate even further, things which are morally unthinkable today will become all too thinkable in the next few years.
- Do we really believe that there are no moral absolutes? That the Nazis were OK to kill six million Jews? That it was OK for widows in India to be burned on the funeral pyres of their husbands? That pedophilia is an acceptable lifestyle choice? No, we do not. All of us have some things which we do regard as moral absolutes. Yet, if we have no belief system, what reason do we really have to think that some things are right and others are wrong?