Ethics in Religion Commons^™

A Review Of James P. Byrd's A Holy Baptism Of Fire And Blood: The Bible And The American Civil War, Michael Payne

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

There has been a surge in interest regarding Christianity's role in the American Civil War. James P. Byrd capitalizes on this interest in A Holy Baptism of Fire and Blood: The Bible and the American Civil War. Unlike other historians who attempt to evaluate the morality of the war itself, Byrd delves straight into how the Bible both affected and was used by both sides. He argues that the Bible saturated the Civil War, both combatants and non-combatants alike. It was the Bible that they turned to repeatedly to justify their cause and provide comfort during hardship. Byrd’s book …

Morality And The Personhood Of God: A Moral Argument For The Existence Of A Personal God, Stephen Scott Jordan

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The concept that God is personal is an important part of religious belief. If God were not personal, it would be odd to think of him as moral or loving; it would also seem counterintuitive to speak of him as One with whom humans can have a personal relationship, One who can be trusted, cares for the people he created, listens to their prayers, acts on their behalf, has their best interests at heart, and so on. In short, to talk of such matters in a sensible manner and to experience them in everyday life seemingly requires that God is …

An Examination And Critique Of The Compatibility And Coherence Of Brian Leiter’S Naturalized Jurisprudence With The American Legal Framework, Michael L. Keck

Masters Theses

In this thesis I argue Brian Leiter’s vision for a naturalized jurisprudence stands in problematic tension with critical facets of objective morality presupposed by the American legal system. Leiter makes the case for the naturalization of jurisprudence through adherence to his version of a naturalistic epistemology. Though Leiter explicitly rejects moral realism—and embraces elements of legal positivism—he acquiesces to the notion that judges sometimes utilize non-legal, “moral reasons,” when deciding cases. Leiter suggests that any moral “knowledge” that may influence the process of adjudication should be delivered by the hard sciences. I suggest Leiter’s epistemological naturalism is incapable of providing …

Buddhist Error Theory, Javier S. Hidalgo

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Few philosophers have systematically examined what Buddhist commitments imply for metaethics. In this paper, I explore the status of normative reasons in Buddhist philosophy. I argue that Buddhist commitments entail an error theory about normative reasons. But I also make the case that this is a defensible position. I show that the Buddhist argument for error theory is plausible and that Buddhist error theory can overcome key objections, such as the objections that Buddhist error theory is incoherent, self-defeating, unbelievable, and incompatible with prominent schools of Buddhist philosophy. Furthermore, I argue that Buddhist error theorists can accommodate Buddhist ethical commitments …

Parallels Of Morality: Wilde And Nietzsche’S Challenge To Social Obligation, Amzie A. Dunekacke

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

This thesis explores Irish author Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray in relation to a selection of texts by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. To demonstrate the similarities between Wilde and Nietzsche’s challenges to European morality, this work considers these themes, which are present in the ideologies of both Wilde and Nietzsche: the body and sensual pleasure, social construction, and the hypocrisy of altruism. Both radical thinkers castigate Platonic notions of the body as ignoble and weak, and they mock European propriety’s shyness of the body. In addition, Wilde and Nietzsche offer similar criticisms of social laws, adopting a …

Christ And The Cradle: The Explanatory Power Of Christian Theism For Basic Moral Sensibilities On The Ontology Of Children, Jeffrey Robinson

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

We have excellent reasons to take moral intuitions about the moral treatment of children seriously. In fact, this gives us excellent prima facie reason to believe in God as the best explanation of, say, the inherent dignity of people, including children. But when we look to the past, we see that often children have been horribly treated and not accorded worth. And today, still, there are lots of disturbing trends as to how they’re treated, which invariably reflect deficient worldviews. Ultimately, it’s not just theism we need, but something more, arguably Christian theology, which makes great sense of our best …

A Taste Of Armageddon: When Warring Is Done By Drones And Robots, Brian Stiltner

Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Discusses the increasing use of drones and weaponized robots. Argues that the international community must put firm ethical guidelines in place before the technology becomes rampant.

Freedom Of Conscience As Religious And Moral Freedom, Michael J. Perry

Faculty Articles

In another essay being published contemporaneously with this one, I have explained that as the concept "human right" is understood both in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in all the various international human rights treaties that have followed in the Universal Declaration's wake, a right is a human right if the rationale for establishing and protecting the right-for example, as a treaty-based right-is, in part, that conduct that violates the right violates the imperative, articulated in Article i of the Universal Declaration, to "act towards all human beings in a spirit of brotherhood." Each of the human rights …

Moral Foundation Theory And The Law, Colin Prince

Seattle University Law Review

Moral foundation theory argues that there are five basic moral foundations: (1) harm/care, (2) fairness/reciprocity, (3) ingroup/loyalty, (4) authority/respect, and (5) purity/sanctity. These five foundations comprise the building blocks of morality, regardless of the culture. In other words, while every society constructs its own morality, it is the varying weights that each society allots to these five universal foundations that create the variety. Haidt likens moral foundation theory to an “audio equalizer,” with each culture adjusting the sliders differently. The researchers, however, were not content to simply categorize moral foundations—they have tied the foundations to political leanings. And it is …

Law, Psychology & Morality, Kenworthey Bilz, Janice Nadler

Faculty Working Papers

In a democratic society, law is an important means to express, manipulate, and enforce moral codes. Demonstrating empirically that law can achieve moral goals is difficult. Nevertheless, public interest groups spend considerable energy and resources to change the law with the goal of changing not only morally-laden behaviors, but also morally-laden cognitions and emotions. Additionally, even when there is little reason to believe that a change in law will lead to changes in behavior or attitudes, groups see the law as a form of moral capital that they wish to own, to make a statement about society. Examples include gay …

Tapping The Wisdom Of Our Ancestors: An Attempt To Recast Vodou And Morality Through The Voice Of Mama Lola And Karen Mccarthy Brown, Claudine Michel

Trotter Review

In this essay, I demonstrate that morality is culture-specific and contextual. To illustrate this point, I focus on Vodou, a religion that has been almost entirely misrepresented in the West, foremost because of its African origins, and that is perceived as having no legitimate basis for morality. I attempt to interpret morality in Vodou by presenting a model of ethics construction based on the true meaning of the religion rather than on the exotica of its myths and ritualizing. My analysis is based on the fact that Haitians seem to have turned to their ancestral religion and to their African …

Wittgenstein And The Recovery Of Virtue, G. Scott Davis

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Modern, scientific, man doesn't see miracles, only odd phenomena that call out for more thorough study. Ethics, like the miraculous, doesn't defy scientific explanation; it just doesn't exist. In what follows I hope to do two things., On the one hand, I want to embrace Wittgenstein's rejection of ethics as theory, in the sense of a systematic body of knowledge about the world. On the other, I hope to suggest that this rejection opens up conceptual space for understanding ethics as a critical human enterprise.

From Biology To Consciousness To Morality, Ursula Goodenough, Terrence W. Deacon

Biology Faculty Research

Social animals are provisioned with prosocial orientations that operate to transcend self-interest. Morality, as used here, describes human versions of such orientations. We explore the evolutionary antecedents of morality in the context of emergentism, giving considerable attention to the biological traits that undergird awareness and our emergent human forms of mind. We suggest that our moral frames of mind emerge from our primate prosocial capacities, transfigured and valenced by our symbolic languages, cultures, and religions.

Portions of this article were given by Deacon in a paper at the forty-ninth annual conference of IRAS, “Is Nature Enough? The Thirst for …

Moral Value And Market Values: The Impact On Africa In An Era Of Global Capitalism, Charles Stith

Trotter Review

In the era of global capitalism, the perennial tension between market and moral values has acquired new form and meaning. Ambassador Stith attempts to unravel the issues of morality within the context of a global market in recession, stagnated economies of the developing world, ever-changing technology and the reality of terrorism. Stith contends that the church has largely failed to reconcile the morality that it teaches, with the market in which it operates. He makes the argument that moral values are not just desirable; they are necessary for long-term survival of both the developing and developed world. The key, is …

Religious Naturalism And Naturalizing Morality, Ursula Goodenough

Biology Faculty Research

I first offer some reflections on the term religious naturalism. I then outline how moral thought might be configured in the context of religious naturalism. It is proposed that the goal of morality is to generate a flourishing community and that humans negotiate their social interactions using moral capacities that are cultivated in the context of culture. Six such capacities are considered: strategic reciprocity, humaneness, fair–mindedness, courage, reverence, and mindfulness. Moral capacities are contrasted with moral susceptibilities, fueled by self–interest, and brought to the fore in times of stress and humiliation. The essay is in two parts. I first respond …

Mindful Virtue, Mindful Reverence, Ursula Goodenough, Paul Woodruff

Biology Faculty Research

How does one talk about moral thought and moral action as a religious naturalist? We explore this question by considering two human capacities: the capacity for mindfulness, and the capacity for virtue. We suggest that mindfulness is deeply enhanced by an understanding of the scientific worldview and that the four cardinal virtues—courage, fairmindedness, humaneness, and reverence—are rendered coherent by mindful reflection. We focus on the concept of mindful reverence and propose that the mindful reverence elicited by the evolutionary narrative is at the heart of religious naturalism. Religious education, we suggest, entails the cultivation of mindful virtue, in ourselves and …

Tapping The Wisdom Of The Ancestors: An Attempt To Recast Vodou And Morality Through The Voice Of Mama Lola And Karen Mccarthy Brown, Claudine Michel

William Monroe Trotter Institute Publications

The focus of this Research Report is on morality as a culture-specific and contextual phenomenon. It argues that Vodou, as a religion, has largely been misrepresented in the West and has been portrayed as having no legitimate basis for morality mainly because of its African origins. This paper attempts to interpret morality in Vodou by presenting a model of ethics construction grounded in the history of the people and based on the true meaning of the religion. It argues that Haitians have turned to their ancestral religion and to their African past to survive isolation and ostracism from the West …

Bumper Sticker Morality: The Ethics Of Feeling, Nick Van Til

Pro Rege

No abstract provided.