And for morality to require God in such a way, there must be a direct link between the two. I believe that morality is defined by God, therefore immoral actions are wrong solely because God forbids them. Similarly, the “rightness” of moral actions is only because God has commanded them. In today's world things are defined as “right” or “wrong” or “moral” and “immoral.” This is because God, is the one that has allowed us to even understand what morality is. I believe that God is the creator and sustainer of all things, and that we would not even be self aware, let alone aware of right and wrong, if God had not created within us his image, and therefore the ability to make moral distinctions.
The Divine Command Theory is the view that moral actions are those that conform to God's will. Charity, for example, is morally proper because God endorses it, and murder is wrong because God condemns it. But, where does God get these moral values? If they come from a still-higher power, he
In Christianity, Divine command theory can be easily observed as too rigid for moral decision, as it is absolutist, and is based purely upon the word of God. According to Divine Command theory, an act is morally right when God says it is, and morally wrong when God specifies so- Right and wrong are therefore solely decided by God’s will and commands. As a result, it is no longer a moral decision- just following the word of God- personal thoughts and emotions, as well as the outcomes of the action God promotes are completely irrelevant- God’s word is to be followed, with no exception. This can be too rigid in many cases, for example in the situation of condemning one person to death in order to save many more- if, in a storm where a ship has sunk, a full lifeboat comes across a struggling member of the crew trying to climb in (risking tipping it and putting everyone in the water), then the Word of God states that, as we should not kill, we should help them in- however, this would mean others dying as a byproduct of this action. The best action would be to leave them in the water, to preserve the most lives- showing that from what we can see so far, and in the case of Divine command theory, the ethical teachings of Christianity are too rigid to be applied universally to moral situations.
“Explain what Fletcher understands by ‘Christian love’ and its role in the moral decision-making process of situation ethics” Situational ethics is an ethical theory that was created by an Anglican priest named Joseph Fletcher. This ethical system believed that all humans should make moral decisions based on what is the most loving thing to do. Fletcher didn’t mean any random type of love, he meant the love that is unconditional that divine authorities such as Jesus have displayed. Love that isn’t romantic or sexual but can be from one stranger to another as well as love between two people who know eachother. Situation ethics does have rules and principles to abide by.
When Biblical scholars debate this they lose the true meaning of the text. They become more focused on proving it to be factual rather than looking at the scripture for what it is. The scientific theory is backed by better evidence and is more likely to be true, there is too much evidence to ignore it, and therefore it should be accepted for the most part. Then Genesis can be used as a metaphorical story that allows us to understand more fully who God really is. Genesis 1-2 can show us that God is all-powerful and all-loving.
As previously stated, in order to be a KoF, you must be willing to nullify the ethical standards you are most accustomed to in order to comply to the declaration of God or any other divine or spiritual medium. The definition of a Tragic Hero, (TH) is quite easy to understand. A TH can also be a good or bad guy, also depending on your religious stance and how you view the biblical accounts of the story of Abraham and Isaac. The TH is the person who will never defy the moral ethics of
For example, Exodus 20 – The Ten commandments, these are ten rules sent from God to humans, they are moral standards and when obeyed help human’s to live a morally good life. This shows that the reason God makes rules isn’t just because he has power but that he wants his creation to also be good. God gave all human’s free will but these rules limit what humans can do without disobeying God. So maybe these rules were created to stop us from using our free will. Against this statement is that God did not create so many rules to stop us using our free will but to influence and set standards to use our free will for the morally good.
He suggests that evil has an instrumental value in developing human virtues, he believes that sins are necessary many good things would be taken away if God permitted no evil to exist, ‘for fire would not be generated if air was corrupted’ therefore evil has some sort of good. For Aquinas God is good and knows about evil in the world however does not predetermine it. The world is not perfect but it is the best it can possibly be, God can still be omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient and still
Just like a religious believer who states “god loves us” but can’t explain the contradiction of evil in the world, believers qualify their statements by explaining god’s love is not like humans love he calls this “death by a thousand qualifications”. Therefore religious language is meaningless. However religion has responded to the falsification principle. R.B Braithwaite argued that the falsification principle explains religious language as cognitive when it if in fact non cognitive and therefore cannot be falsified, religious language is therefore still meaningful. Hare also responds to the falsification principle, showing that religious statements are meaningful even though they cannot be falsified because they have a significant impact for the people using the statement.
The word “good” in reference to God is meaningless as we cannot know what this entails; it is completely different from saying “the man is good”. According to the Via Negativa, to say “God is good” limits God’s goodness because it puts a human idea of goodness in our minds. Similarly if we talk about God being all-knowing, we can debate what this means but ultimately we cannot know for certain what it means to be all-knowing. The only things we can be certain of about God is what God is not; for example God is not evil. There are strengths to this theory, for instance it prevents us from making anthropomorphic statements about God, meaning we are not left with an inadequate image of God.