Category Archives: Ethics

The moral argument for God’s existence

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The moral argument, stated at its simplest, asserts that moral facts, or imperatives, exist, and that the best way of explaining these is in terms of a supernatural moral Being (i.e. God).

In asserting that moral facts exist, the Christian apologist is on common ground with the majority of philosophers, including those who are not theists.

Fewer, however would accept that the existence of moral facts necessarily entails the existence of God.

Some would try to explain the moral impulse in terms of social pressure and cultural conditioning. …

The Hitchens Challenge

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Arch-atheist Christopher Hitchens repeatedly held out the following challenge to religious people:-

“Name me an ethical statement made or an action performed by a believer that could not have been made or performed by a non-believer.”

Hitchens seems to think that he has religious folk stumped.  “As yet,” he claims, “I have no takers.”

I am very far from wanting to defend ‘religion’ in general.  So I would respond by asserting that it is not difficult to find multiple instances of moral acts that would only be performed by followers of Jesus Christ, and others that would more prevalent amongst followers of Jesus Christ than among non-believers. …

Protecting the unborn child

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John Stott is his usual measured self when he speaks and writes on the subject of abortion.  So it is without hyperbole that he urges us to avoid euphemisms, and to speak of things as they really are:-

‘The popular euphemisms make it easier for us to conceal the truth from ourselves. The occupant of the mother’s womb is not a ‘product of conception’ or ‘gametic material’, but an unborn child. Even ‘pregnancy’ tells us not more than that a woman has been ‘impregnated’, whereas the truth in old-fashioned language is that she is ‘with child’.

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Assisted suicide? – no thanks

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Bishop Tom Wright opposes the idea of the government setting up an independent enquiry to look at assisted suicide.  Speaking recently in the House of Lords, he said that

‘Parliament is there not to bend to every media-manipulated public whim, but to take the larger and longer view.’

It is often the case that ethics debates taking on a special meaning when individual cases are considered.  Bishop Wright drew attention to

‘The old lady who last summer told me several times that she just wanted to go to sleep and not wake up, but who eventually made a full recovery and celebrated her 63rd wedding anniversary last month and greeted her sixth greatgrandchild last week. 

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The ethics of evangelism

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I found the following helpful outline of the ethics of evangelism in an unexpected source.

(1) We are Christians, called by God to honor Jesus Christ with our lives, abiding by biblically defined ethical standards in every area of life, public and private. This includes our efforts to persuade coworkers and others to believe the good news about Jesus Christ.

(2) Wherever we live and work, we seek to follow the mandate, motives, message, and model of Jesus, who still pursues and reclaims those lost in sin and rebelling against Him.…

Children need fathers

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A recent change in UK law means that women in same-sex relationships can now register both their names on the birth certificate of a child conceived as a result of fertility treatment.

Instead of the usual allocation of one mother and one father, one would suppose that the child would therefore have two mothers in the sight of the law.  However, this will not be the case: a birth certificate will be used which, instead of having a ‘mother’ and a ‘father’ section, with have two ‘parent’ sections.…

Is the Old Testament ethical?

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Is the Old Testament Ethical?

Here is an interview with Dr Peter Williams, Warden of Tyndale House.  With the criticisms of Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion, ch. 7) particularly in mind, Williams gives a cogent series of responses to some of the more difficult and pressing worries that we (whether we are believers or not) may have about the morality of some of the things we find in the Old Testament.

Of course, Williams cannot offer, in the limited time afforded by an interview, a comprehensive set of answers. …