Modern psychology is basically apologetics for the doctrine of moral relativism within the individual. The individual is seldom responsible for the shortcomings of his life, it's almost always some external culprit that takes the blame. Either it's the familial context, some structural social inequality, or an external event vapidly characterized as trauma. As a Psychologist I've seen this countless times, it's almost as if we are nursing the individual into the notion that no evil exists inside of him, which is an abhorrent and false idea. Evil does exist and we can't always brush it away with a sort of therapeutic language that characterizes every wrongdoing as a "disease" as if to say that people would be free from the consequences of their actions.
Discussion
Right on. That’s absolutely right on.
But also simultaneously we have to be skeptical of the opposite. ie Christianity or any other philosophy/religion can’t have the absolute moral guidelines.
I’m a moral absolutist but I don’t think any currently existing philosophy can’t possibly be the moral guideline. A combination of principles, ideas, practices, sure. One religion, one group, very very skeptical.
I think you are grasping the concept of the symbolic meaning imbued in religious traditions. From that point of view one can assume that there are particles of truth in the numerous traditions. However I would contend that there is a hierarchy among those traditions and that some, and specially one, is more truthful that the others.
In my view I don't think we can accurately judge the traditions (example, Christianity, Buddhism, Stoicism, different churches) per se and establish a hierarchy there. It's too relative and abstract.
But I do think there's hierarchies of groups of principles within any and all traditions.
In my view, principles are our best bet at creating any sense of understandment. In other words, I do believe some principles are MUCH more important than others, and there we can and should create a hierarchy of principles.
Christianity and Buddhism can be as evil as everything else. Principles > individuals > groups.