Tag: RE

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Essay Plan – 2002 no 4 – Ethics

(a) Outline at least two religious teachings on war [10]

  • Option 1
  • In the OT God was on their side
  • Delivered them from their enemies
  • As he’d promised in his side of the covenant
  • God is presented as a god of action
  • Goal was not destruction of the enemies of his people
  • Enemies were often instruments of God’s retributive power
  • War must be conducted under God’s guidance or it is rooted in human greed and selfishness.
  • Struggle between Israel and her enemies is seen as the cosmic battle between good and evil under the Messiah.
  • Or option 2 – the just war
  • In Christian times the church has viewed it as a duty sometimes to fight for justice
  • (though Jesus’ own teaching of pacifism before an aggressor began to take hold on the public consciousness during the first world war)
  • Indeed the Christians’ unwillingness to fight in defence of the Roman Empire was weakening its defences
  • So Augustine responded with the Just War theory
  • It holds that while life is sacred it may at times be taken to protect or defend the lives of the innocent and in the divine cause of justice
  • 6 principles of resort to war – jus ad bellum
  • 3 of conduct in war – jus in bello
  • None of which guarantee that their lofty principles will be up held but at least they try to limit the damage.
  • Or the third option – pacifism
  • Rooted in the Sermon on the Mount – do not resist evil, turn the other cheek, love your enemies and pray for your persecutors
  • Jesus was the model for this behaviour – led like a lamb to the slaughter to be crucified
  • Conrad Grebel a leader of the Swiss Brethren of the Peace Churches – ‘true Christians use neither worldly sword nor engage in war.’

 

 

(b) ‘An individual’s conscience is of little significance in the context of fighting to protect one’s country.’ Examine and comment on this view. [10]

  • Pacifists believe in the individual’s inalienable right to refuse to fight
  • Plenty of famous people have refused to fight even for their country
  • Pacifism is a more acceptable stance nowadays
  • What is one’s country fighting for? There must be plenty of Americans in Iraq at the moment who wonder!
  • Does it depend on the issue at stake?
  • Surely one’s conscience does make a difference to the level of commitment you might make
  • Enough soldiers who returned from Viet Nam were so shocked and appalled by the horrors and atrocities they witnessed or even took part in that their consciences were so overwhelmed by their actions they suffered from PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder)
  • Many of us do give care of our consciences into the hands of the authorities in the belief that they know best; the shock is when they prove not to.
  • Theoretically one’s country does have the right to call upon you to fight and at least Augustine’s jus ad bellum and in bello principles should ensure a just cause.
  • But if conscience is indeed an innate and /or God-given faculty, to allow an outside authority to decide for us what is right and what is wrong is to abdicate our natural responsibilities.
  • And Aquinas and Butler both saw it as sinful to act against conscience.
  • And Butler said only obedience to it will make us truly happy
  • All mankind was made in the image of God so to kill others even in the so-called legitimacy of war is still wrong.
  • Aquinas viewed the purpose of human conscience was to ensure we act to seek the highest good the summum bonum and in so doing we were unlikely to do a wrong action
  • An individual’s conscience must not be of little significance – indeed it must be of the highest importance, for this way it is less likely that war will always be the resort and the more individual consciences that are listened to the more likely an alternative solution will be found.
  • If we do not have free will then the outcome of our actions is pre-determined and it does not matter if we fight or not, however if we do have free-will then we have responsibility for our own actions and obeying our consciences is a good guide to right behaviour.
  • Of course conscience can make the wrong decisions and convince us of the rightness of wrong things. This corrupts the conscience and is worse than the subsequent sin itself.
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June 2009 Cosmological Argument Exam Questions

i. Examine the central ideas and strengths of the cosmological argument for the existence of God. [28]

ii. Comment on the effectiveness of the criticisms made against this argument. [12]

 

(i)

Central ideas include:

What the argument is actually stating – cause -> effect -> conclusion: must be a cause of everything -> state as premises and conclusion

Whose ideas are used in this argument? I.e. Aquinas’ first three ways and explain them

Other central ideas e.g. Leibniz’s Principle of Sufficient Reason …

And the idea that God is the only necessary being and why he is necessary this then includes rejection of infinite regress but also explanation of contingency vs necessity…

And why is there something rather than nothing?

Strengths include: (but examine means you also need to look at the flaws in those strengths.)

Logical – however – logic doesn’t make it the only reason

Experience – our experience is limited to this one planet… We see trees fall in gales, floods occur after heavy rain etc. things born then die

Why isn’t there nothing? We wouldn’t know any different! It just is!

This argument does explain that.

How else do we explain the features of the universe like regularity? – God is not the only explanation, and maybe it’s not as logical as it seems

This argument explains this

 

(ii)

Other criticisms include:

The laws of nature are not rigid, we don’t know them all yet, we keep adapting the law to fit the evidence.

Rejection of infinite regress just because of our experience, doesn’t make it so.

Hume’s criticism that this argument is a ‘leap too far’ is like the teleological argument in that it draws a parallel from the specific to the general from the known (our world) to the unknown (the universe) is fair – we don’t know, to suggest God is the cause in place of our admission that we don’t know yet is to make him fill ‘the gaps’ in our knowledge.

The argument is undermined if we assert that everything needs a cause and, then, having posited God as the cause, say that God doesn’t need a cause!

Ultimately – faith can be strengthened, however atheists will remain unconvinced. Even Aquinas realised his arguments would not prove the existence of God.

 

NB Aquinas is regarded as the central proponent of this argument historically, but David Hume is regarded as having demolished it in the 18th Century. However in the 20th century Richard Swinburne has revisited the argument suggesting that though as one argument in the arsenal of theists it may have its weaknesses, added to the other arguments the combined case for the existence of God is made stronger. (Remember the cement analogy!!)