In their haste to jump to the aspect of the Paula Bennett and the beneficiaries story that best supports their political view, most commentators seem to be missing the fact that Paula Bennett, government Minister, arguably broke the law when she reached into her department’s records and made public the precise amounts of welfare each […]
Entries Tagged as 'Ethics'
Dr Glenn Peoples on Abortion, Morality and Law
July 27th, 2009 2 Comments
Canterbury student group Prolife UC have organised for Dr Glenn Peoples to deliver some free public lectures at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch on Abortion, Morality and Law. Thursday 30th July 7.30 pm“Chasing the Justificatory Goalpost: Public Justification and Religious Beliefs” There is a broad political tradition that we are a part of that […]
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Sunday Study: Abraham and Isaac – Did God Command the Killing of an Innocent?
July 26th, 2009 17 Comments
Perhaps the most infamous passage in the Hebrew scriptures occurs in Genesis 22:2, Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.” Of course, as anyone who […]
Tags: Abraham · Abram · Ethics · Genesis · Isaac · John Hare · Kant · Kenneth Kitchen · Killing Innocents · Louise Anthony · Old Testament Ethics · Philip Quinn · Robert Adams · Selection · Stephen Evans · Sunday Study
Sunday Study: Christ on The Prohibition on Homicide Part II
July 19th, 2009 10 Comments
This post is the second in my series on Christ’s exposition of the 6th Commandment, the prohibition on homicide, contained in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5: 21-26. In Sunday Study: Christ on The Prohibition on Homicide Part I, I looked at what The Torah taught about homicide, in this post I will […]
Tags: Homicide · Sermon on the Mount · Sunday Study
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong on God, Morality and Arbitrariness
July 17th, 2009 21 Comments
Is morality independent of religion? One common argument for this position is that denying it makes God’s commands arbitrary. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues, Let’s assume that God commanded us not to rape. Did God have any reason to command this? If not, his command was arbitrary, and then it can’t make anything morally wrong. On the […]
Tags: Atheist · Divine Command Theory · God and Morality · Philosophy of Religion · Walter Sinnott-Armstrong · William Wainwright
Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique Part II
July 16th, 2009 Comments Off on Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique Part II
In Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique Part I, I noted that a defender of the permissibility of feticide, who does not also want to endorse infanticide and who defends the sentience criterion, must “identify a reason for holding that the potential of a human brain is morally relevant after” the fetus acquires […]
Tags: Abortion · David Boonin · Don Marquis · Ethics and Medicine · Feticide · Sentience
Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique Part I
July 15th, 2009 3 Comments
This two-part series was originally published as: Matthew Flannagan “Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique” Ethics and Medicine – An International Journal of Bioethics Vol 25:2 (Summer 2009) 95-106. It is reproduced on this blog with permission. Abstract Defenders of the permissibility of feticide commonly argue that killing an organism is not homicide […]
Tags: Abortion · David Boonin · Don Marquis · Ethics and Medicine · Feticide · Sentience
A common objection to belief in the God of the Bible is that a good, kind, and loving deity would never command the wholesale slaughter of nations. In the tradition of his popular Is God a Moral Monster?, Paul Copan teams up with Matthew Flannagan to tackle some of the most confusing and uncomfortable passages of Scripture. Together they help the Christian and nonbeliever alike understand the biblical, theological, philosophical, and ethical implications of Old Testament warfare passages.
