Adam & Eve Expelled from Paradise Instructions: Please choose one of the topics

Question

Adam & Eve Expelled from Paradise Instructions: Please choose one of the topics listed below. Then write a clear, well-organized response explaining the ideas in the readings in your own words (70%) and critically analyzing a key idea or claim expressed in the readings (30%). Your total response should be double-spaced and at least 800 words. Your critical analysis section should be a minimum of 250 words. In the critical analysis section, do not hesitate to say what you think and the reasoning behind your point of view Assignments should be sent in the following formats: doc, docx, or rtf format. Deadline: This exam is due before 11:30pm, Friday, March 9.

Explanation / Answer

FOLLOWING ARE THE THREE ASSUMPTIONS REGARDING MORALITY AND RELIGION

1. Religious belief is needed to get us to do our duty.
2. Morality must be created by someone, and God is by far the best candidate for the job. God is the creator of the moral law.3. Religious wisdom is the key to providing us with moral guidance.

Following are the Shafer-Landau's objections to the above assumptions.

1. Religion doesn't always help us be better people, it depends on whether religious principles we believe in are morally right in the first place.

2. God may not exist, or may not command us to do anything if he does exist God must have known what was moral and immoral before deciding commands, or had reasons for what is right and wrong. This implies that morality did exist before he made commands and it is not his commands that makes something wrong, but the reasons behind what makes something right or wrong.

3. Religious wisdom could possibly offer moral guidance, but would have to depend on: Whether God exists and speaks to us and whether we can know which texts are divinely written.

DIVINE COMMAND THEORY

As the name 'divine' refers to 'God' and 'command' refers to 'laws'. Divine command theory also known as theological voluntarism is an ethical view based on theism or the belief that God exists. Followers of the theory accept that all moral judgment is derived from an understanding of God's character or his direct commandments. In other words, we can say that DCT states that "what is in accordance with God's command is moral and what is contrary to that command is immoral". Following are the two main ideas encountered in divine command theory:-

WHAT   IS   PSYCHOLOGICAL EGOISM

Psychological egoism is a doctrine about people’s ultimate or most basic motivations for action. It intends to provide an answer to the question: “Why did someone act in that way?” According to psychological egoism, there is a unique answer to all such questions: namely, “Because it was in someones’s own interest to do so.” Thus we can say that Psychological egoism is the view that humans are always motivated by self-interest, even in what seem to be acts of altruism. It claims that, when people choose to help others, they do so ultimately because of the personal benefits that they themselves expect to obtain, directly or indirectly, from doing so. Following are the two features encountered in psychological egoism:-

1. Psychological egoism argues that people are ego and selfish because people always act as what they desire to. This arguments state that people always act according to self-interest and every voluntary action are selfish.

2. Psychological egoism indicates that people act is ego because they wanted to gain benefits from their action. Psychological egoist states that people are ego and selfish because they always act to get the pleasure and satisfactory. This argument indicates that every action of the people is aimed to get a good feel or being satisfied or in simple words, people acted to get the good feeling which may be gained after doing this action.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE CLAIM THAT GENUINE MORALITY MUST BE BASED ON THE GOD OR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS

No doubt only by faith in God can we find purpose in life, loving God is the reason we exist. God will guide us, protect us, and care for us. This frees us from anxiety, and enables us to direct our lives towards genuine happiness by living according to the will of God in friendship with God. But at the same time it can be stated that morality cannot be dependent on the will of God .following are some points which critical analyze the claim that genuine morality must be based on the god or religious beliefs.

1. According to Nielsen in order to properly refer to some entity as “God,” we must already have an understanding of what it is for something to be good. We must already possess a criterion for making judgments of moral goodness, apart from the will of God. Put another way, when we say that we know God is good we must use some independent moral criterion to ground this judgment. So, morality is not based on God because we need a criterion of goodness that is not derived from God’s nature. It follows that God and morality are independent.

2. God's commands can be easily misconstrued. That is, how do we determine the correct interpretation of the sacred texts? When God states that we should not commit murder, does that mean murder is always immoral, or should we take into account the specific context in which God gave this command? During this process of interpretation, we are actually exercising our own sense of morality. We must rely on our own understanding of God's goodness and act on moral laws we deem consistent with God's commands.

3. If the genuine morality is be based on the god or religious beliefs then there would be no universality as it would not be applicable or the Atheists.

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse A
• Subjects

---

---

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.