Ethics

It was way back on June 8 last year that we last revisited Plantinga’s repudiation of the common view that the reality of evil is at odds with the Christian affirmation of God as good, omnipotent and omniscient. Plantinga ends up with two propositions:
4. God is omniscient, omnipotent and wholly good.
5. God creates a world […]

Sartre’s The Reprieve covers eight days in the lives of various people in France before the signing of the Munich Agreement, soon followed by the German invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Frenchmen are being called up for military service. In this context Sartre invites us to overhear Mathieu’s conversation with his brother Jacques:
Mathieu returned and sat […]

The latest example of blatant cheating in sport is by French captain Thierry Henry, in which he clearly handled the ball, thus enabling a goal to be scored which meant that in this year’s World Cup playoffs Ireland was eliminated and France went through. Ireland’s pleas to FIFA for the game to be replayed have fallen […]

In his article “Untying the knot” in Australian Presbyterian (October 2009) David Palmer summarises some of the findings of the Breakthrough Britain report released in July 2007:

Nearly one in two cohabiting parents split up before their child’s fifth birthday, compared to one in 12 married parents.
Three-quarters of family breakdown affecting young children now involves unmarried […]

Christians know that for them ethics or morality boils down to living under the Lordship of Christ. So Paul, introduces a long section on Christian morality, by urging:
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God (Colossians 3:1).
This is another […]

In a recent interview Michael Horton made the point that modern evangelical Christianity often uses as a key ethical principle “What would Jesus do?” He sees this as a disturbing movement away from the Gospel’s focus on what Jesus has done for us.
My mind immediately flicked to Romans, where there is tremendous stress, often much underestimated, […]

This morning Kevin Murray preached on 1 Corinthians 7. It was great to be reminded how this passage, concerning marriage AND SINGLENESS, follows on so naturally from what Paul has been saying in 1 Corinthians 6.
From 1 Corinthians 6:12 -7:40 Paul concerns himself with issues concerning sexual immorality. As Kevin rightly pointed out Paul’s morality is grounded in […]

As I was requested to do, I’ve been preparing a sermon on Mark 12:28-34, which I will preach to a group of Indonesian Christians on Saturday.  This, of course,  is the passage where a teacher of the law asks Jesus which is the most important of the commands and Jesus goes back to Deuteronomy 6:4, […]

Scientific research conducted at the University of Southern California has resulted in the claim that fast-moving virtual games adn online news feeds may be encouraging indifference to human suffering:
In a media culture in which violence and suffering become an endless show, indifference to the vision of human suffering gradually sets in.
This research was published in […]

Bernie Power, a good friend of mine, gave me permission to reproduce this reconstructed transcript of his on air conversation with Jon Faine, host of the morning program on Melbourne’s 774 ABC. Here’s what Bernie emailed out to me and others:
Spindoctor segment on Jon Faine’s morning show on ABC 774 : Wed morning Oct 7th […]

Nigel Warburton, immediately before interviewing Marilyn McCord Adams, comments that there is no greater challenge to religious belief than the problem of evil. If there is an all-powerful, all-good God then why does he allow such terrible suffering in the world?
It is perhaps Warburton’s view that the problem of evil is the greatest challenge to […]

In James 5:12 we read:
Above all, my brothers, do not swear - not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. Let your “Yes” be yes, and your “No,” no, or you will be condemned.
Here James is simply quoting Jesus. See Matthew 5:33-37:
Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long […]

In Being and Nothingness. Sartre contends,
Values in actuality are demands which lay claim to a foundation.
He goes on to explain that:
[value] can be revealed only to an active freedom which makes it exist as value by the sole fact of recognizing it as such. It follows that my freedom is the unique foundation of values and […]

I’ve been reading K.K. (Khiok-Khng) Yeo’s discussion of “Paul’s Theological Ethic and the Chinese Morality of Ren Ren” in Cross-Cultural Paul (ed. Cosgrove et al.) and am finding it very difficult to understand how the concept of dao has helped mould Chinese culture(s). What follows are but ponderings.
Philosophical Daosim/Taoism is also termed daojia. Dao is […]

In the modern West human rights are often viewed as a means of achieving self-fulfilment and self-realisation. Along with this goes the idea that any social commitment is voluntary, the individual having the right or freedom to choose which of any such commitments he or she makes.
Paul warns Christians not to be conformed to this […]

In his study of Paul and American Individualism in Cross-Cultural Paul Cosgrove rightly sees the fundamental divergence between freedom as conceived by Paul and modern American (I would say largely Western) freedom as consisting in a basic difference over the purpose of a human life. However, this in turn is inseparably linked to a foundational […]

I must confess I have a lot of sympathy for Jeremy Bentham’s regard for natural rights:
Right… is the child of law; from real laws come real rights; but from imaginary laws, from laws of nature, fancied and invented by poets, rhetoricians, and dealers in moral and intellectual poisons, come imaginary rights, a bastard brood of monsters.
Natural rights is […]

Midgley rejects Dawkinism, which Dawkins erroneously assumes to be Darwinism, when Dawkins dismisses as preposterous the notion that there is any meaning or purpose to existence. Dawkins believes that there is no such thing as justice, no evil and no good.
Midgley argues that even in a purely naturalistic universe the terms “good” and “evil” have […]

In a stimulating article (”Wilde and Morality” in Philosophy Now 65 [Jan-Feb 08] 28-30) Peter Benson explores the relationship of Wilde’s classic The Portrait of Dorian Gray to morality. In the preface to this book Oscar Wilde provocatively claimed,
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or […]

In an extract from Tim Keller’s book The Reason for God the complaint is addressed that “those who believe in a God of judgment will not approach enemies with a desire to reconcile with them.” The argument here is that if “you believe in a God who smites evildoers, you may think it perfectly justified […]

On the way to work today I was listening to a Nigel Warburton podcast on Kant’s views on morality. Kant propounded a deontological, duty-based ethic. As we have noted in prior blogs Kant’s view of morality is reductionist, treating people as essentially rational beings rather than as full-orbed creatures. For Kant all that gives our […]

This morning as I traveled to work I listened to a podcast summarising utilitarianism. Some good points of criticism was made but I was struck by an illustration that was used which, it was thought, indicates some warrant for a utilitarian theory. The listener was asked to imagine that some had certain knowledge that a […]

In the July/August issue of Philosophy Now Matthew Pianalto helpfully summarises some of Aristotle’s thinking on virtue and happiness. Aristotle, along with other Greek philosophers, maintained that happiness involved the cultivation of moral and intellectual virtues. When it came to moral education Aristotle did not believe people could learn how to live virtuously in a […]

“Happiness” for many psychologists refers to “subjective well-being”, how a person feels his or her life is faring; how satisfying one’s life is. On this basis many people might be described as being relatively happy.
Greek philosophers are sometimes represented as also promoting the pursuit of happiness. However, the relevant word is eudaimonia, which is better translated “human […]

Lately, much of what I’ve been reading bears on what it means to be human. Angus Taylor, philosopher and author of Animals and Ethics, argues that consistency requires excluding some humans from the moral community and including at least some animals in it.
A ghoulish story serves as the launching pad for his argument. A Transylvanian Count was […]

He’s a former commander of the Special Air Service. He was awarded the Military Cross in Vietnam. A hard man rubbing shoulders with hard men. I would think that Michael Jeffery, Governor-General of Australia, has heard his fair share of crudity in his time. So it’s a bit of a wake-up call when such a […]

In today’s Good Weekend I was fascinated to read about brain scientist Susan Greenfield’s theory about the influence of IT on young brains. As explained by John Cornwell, she argues that
The more we play games the less time there is for learning specific facts and working out how those facts relate to each other. This […]

Traditionally, many have described Australian cultural identity in a way that stresses and often even encourages self-reliance. Russell Ward speaks of the myth of the “typical Australian”:
a practical man, rough and ready in his manners and quick to decry any appearance of affectation in others. He is a great improviser, ever willing to ‘have a […]

I recently came across a brilliant analogy used by C.S. Lewis. Observing the popularity of strip clubs he commented:
Now suppose you came to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let every one see, just […]

In today’s Sun-Herald Miranda Devine has written an excellent article entitled “Shaking the tree: flora and fauna v humans” (p69). She begins with an elderly woman reducing a child to tears when she railed against her for “damaging” a coral tree and threatened to call council rangers. The mother responded with letters to the paper […]