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Exploring Ethics (Cahn): Cahn--Morality and God

In this powerpoint, I discuss Cahn's claim that even if God exists and is all good, it does not entail that morality is objective for humans.

BrianGlenney
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Exploring Ethics (Cahn): Cahn--Morality and God

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  1. God and Ethics Steven Cahn

  2. From last class… • Ethical questions are ‘objective’ in nature. • Any attempt to answer moral questions based on “personal” or “social” or even “religious” answers ends up being invalid. • The good is something indefinable yet knowable….

  3. …to this class 1) Moral Authority is often founded on a god. 2) However, just because one believes in a god (Theism) does not entail that the god is a moral authority. 3) Thus, there is no necessary connection between God and morality.

  4. CAHN’S PREMISE 2 MORALITY GOD GO GOD

  5. God as Perfect • God is absolutely perfect in power, knowledge, goodness, and presence.

  6. IF God is Perfectly Good…. ….then God is a good candidate for a moral authority!

  7. CAHN’S PREMISE 2 MORALITY GOD

  8. Problem: knowing the good • Even if God is Good (perfectly), we do not have full knowledge of God or his property of Goodness. • It might be that murder is actually good, but because we misperceive (we see things upside down, for instance) God’s property of good, we believe that murder is wrong. • We similarly misunderstand nature: geocentrism/heliocentrism, absoluteness/relativity, asymmetric causal interaction/quantum mechanics

  9. Response: Theology Theology is the discipline engaged in knowing the properties of God. Theologians claim that we CAN discover the moral standards of God because God provided us with the mental faculties to do so: 1) van Inwagen: We have a “moral” sense 2) Paley: We see the good in God’s creation

  10. Problem: Multiple Theologies There are numerous religious beliefs that contradict between religions and within a single religion.

  11. Multiple Theologies in Christianity (MEAT) YES! ACTS 8:4 Therefore concerning the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that there is no such thing as an idol in the world, and that there is no God but one. 8:8 But food will not commend us to God; we are neither the worse if we do not eat, nor the better if we do eat. NO! ACTS 15:28-9 For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these essentials : 29 that you abstain from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication ; if you keep yourselves free from such things, you will do well. • “As for the Gentile Christians, all we ask of them is what we already told them in a letter: They should not eat food offered to idols, nor consume blood, nor eat meat from strangled animals, and they should stay away from all sexual immorality.” (Acts 21:25) • REV 2:14 But I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality. • REV 2:20 But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. • Didache6:3 But concerning meat, bear that which thou art able to do. But keep with care from things sacrificed to idols, for it is the worship of the infernal deities.

  12. Bigger Problem: God’s Goodness is bizarre Socrates’ Argument: “Euthyphro Dilemma” I. Is something good because god says it is good or does god say it is good because it is good? II. HORN 1:If something is good because god says it is good, then anything may be good, even the “wrong.” III. HORN 2: If god says it is good because it is good, then being good is greater than god. IV. So, either the good is arbitrary or good is greater than god.

  13. What to do? • The Ten commandments ARE a moral code upon which Western civilization is built • The ten commandments are just a reinterpretation of the laws of King Hammurabi • What role does religion REALLY have in morality? • NONE! (Cahn) • SOME! (Glenney) • ALL! (Most Religious Believers)

  14. Conclusion: Role of Religious Morality • The “urgency” of a moral life in enabled by religious belief. Hence, while we may not know ‘what’ is moral by way of religion, we do know ‘why’ we should be moral. • In sum, religion is an incredibly powerful moral motivator!

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