Materialists sometimes become Moralist-Materialists and inadvertently reproduce Abrahamic logic in Secular form. For instance, take these two conflicting forms of morality in the bible:
>Exodus says God punishes people intergenerationally, for the crimes of their ancestorsversus
>Ezekiel says God punishes people individually for their crimesNow obviously materialists don't believe in supernatural entities like God, so it is up to humanity to catch and punish "crimes" but in deciding what "crime" is morality is created and conflated with legality. You can see this in the accumulation of unpunished crimes. Many if not most crimes go undiscovered, and the ones which are discovered may often go unsolved, and therefore unpunished. An unsolved and unpunished crime challenges the legitimacy of the law. People reinvent morality forms like Karma in secular form to excuse this systemic weakness.
For instance, the vast majority of slave owners died happy, fat, and unpunished. This distresses a great many people, even after slavery ended, so an Exodus style morality is created: intergenerational privilege passed down from abolished institutions becomes a crime in itself, not legally punishable, but morally punishable almost as severe as the crime itself, and the Exodus style morality is applied. Against this Exodus style morality comes the Ezekiel protesting "But I personally did not do anything."
There is an ever ending debate in humanity it seems regarding whether crimes are merely breeches of the law or of a sacred morality which is objective and above the law. There is a never ending debate whether children should be punished for the crimes of their parents, since they benefited indirectly from the spoils of those crimes.
But Exodus style morality can only apply to the crime which is discovered, but as yet unpunished. It cannot apply to the crime which is both discovered and unpunished. Therefore the Exodus style morality becomes an excuse to punish generations for the crimes of their ancestors, while excusing the crimes of individuals as long as they were sufficiently able to hide them and get away with them.
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