Values and Belief Ideas of Good and Bad

Values are beliefs about what is good and what is bad. Notions of good and bad vary from culture to culture. Values serve the culture that expresses them. Values reinforce the existing power structure Values reinforce the existing economic structure Values protect existing ideologies Political ideology Religious ideology

Values and Belief A value is the belief that an idea, or action or another belief is either good or bad; Right or wrong. Values are not usually negotiated in the short term, but rather evolve over very long periods of time. But new values can arise in subcultures, this can happen quickly under some conditions. Values are based in the culture, rather than the society which exists at any given time.

Ideas of Good and Bad Genesis 2 17 , Genesis 3 22, 23 • “But you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die. ” • And the LORD god said, "the man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. • So the LORD god banished him from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken • Values are very powerful because they involve judgment of others or the actions of others. Religious beliefs often warn against this judgmental part of human action. In Judeo-Christian belief it was the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil that got Adam and eve kicked out of paradise.

• Certainly disagreements over what is good and what is bad have brought many wars and much personal grief. • Sociologists don’t judge good and evil. We simply observe what others think is good and evil and try to figure out why they value what they value.

Right vs. Wrong Judgments of right and wrong are the basis for positive and negative sanctions.