The Importance Of The Nonnaturalist Argument

When there are many biocentric individualists appealing to extend the moral standing to the other creatures than human, they always focus their minds on the every individual in the system no matter whether this individual is either conscious or non-conscious. Like the Taylor argued, “conscious or not, all are equally teleological centers of life in the sense that each is unified system of goal0oriented activities directed toward their preservation and well-being.” (taylor, 210). Gary Varner, as one member in the group of the biocentric individualism, is also having the similar argument that every non-conscious and conscious entity should have the moral standing in the different way. In this essay, I will first dispart and reconstruct Gary Varner’s argument into four premises and then indicate how it contradicts with the Peter Singer’s argument whose view is deviate from that of Varner in terms of the required conditions with which giving one entity moral standing.

Naturalists also think that ethical statements are more than expressions of emotions, as they believe that ethical language is objective as it can be verified in the same way that scientific statements can. For example, they say that when you witness a murder, you see who was killed, how they were killed but also that it was wrong. There are two types of naturalists, theological like Thomas Aquinas, and hedonistic. They both claim that either pleasure (if you are a hedonist) or the word of God (if you are a theological naturalist) are evidence of goodness or rightness. Therefore by examining pleasure or the Bible you could verify ethical statements.

2. Atheistic Naturalism provides no hope for human life, whereas Christianity of founded on hope and redemption.

J.P. Moreland refers to one of the varieties of ontological ethical skepticism (a form of moral realitivism) as “ethical naturalism.” In my experience, this seems to be one of the more prevalent approaches to ethics today. Moreland expresses the idea saying that ethical naturalism essentially changes “loving my neighbor is good” to “loving my neighbor tends to produce pleasure rather than pain” or “loving my neighbor tends to enhance survival value” (Reading in Christian Ethics, 29). It could be argued that this parallels with the evergrowing modern humanism – it’s more about you and me than the divine.

As aforementioned, God is the foundation of values in Christian theism, but for naturalists, values are created by human beings. The problem is, without any transcendent standard of good or bad, how does one derive what “ought” to be from what “is”? Naturalists believe that all people have a sense of moral values acquired by intuition and authority or picked up from their environment. For them, good action is the action that promotes harmony and survival within the community. This is the view held by postmodernists as well, where society determines what social good ought to be. Ethics thus becomes autonomous and situational rejecting the need for any theological sanction.

Mere Christianity by C.S Lewis excellently challenges both Christian and non-Christian to think clear about the natural of law and morality. He started out Mere Christianity by taking a step back and lays out some structure for his audience to enhance their understanding, by simplifying concepts. In the first half, Lewis covers on the natural of law which is applicable for both Christian and non-Christian. He insists that one can get to know about God by internally examining one’s heart. Furthermore, he affirms that morality cannot be depending on culture.

Rachel Woznicki Short Paper 1 01/27/15 What Does Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism Say? Plantinga’s argument against naturalism is very engaging. He begins to state that a lot of people believing Darwin’s theory of evolution have misguided beliefs about naturalism. Comprehensively, he argues that the contingency of humans having stable “cognitive faculties” is extremely inferior.

The belief in Gods has always existed throughout human’s recored history. Whether it be the Greek Gods: Apollo, and Zeus, or the Judeo-Christian God, believed by Christians in modern day society. The belief of God has always existed among humans, however, assuming God does not exist, what explains the cultural evolution of such a false belief, namely religion? I shall argue that the reason this false belief is successful is because it manipulates human nature better than any other belief by these three points: an avoidance of death (the soul), a sense of worth (knowledge), and a sense, or need of belief (faith).

another flaw in the belief of naturalism is that there is no real thought or soul. Because of this there would be no need for ethics or morals because if we have no control over our own thought because they are not real than we cant be responsible for our own actions. If this is true than we should not be sending criminals to prisons because they did not truly commit the crimes themselves.

When people hear the term “ethics,” most of their minds turn to dilemmas discussed by figures such as Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, Aristotle, and other famous philosophers. These men debated what is considered to be morally good and how a person can become ethical. Operating under normative ethics, these philosophers did not question whether or not ethics even existed, but rather if they exist, what are they? The branch of ethics that questions the foundation of ethics and morality is metaethics. There are three standpoints when debating metaethics: moral realism, moral relativism, and moral skepticism. I will be discussing my argument for moral realism and contend that moral relativism and skepticism are inaccurate. I will prove the

These arguments were made by fictional Ima Relativist created by Harry Gensler. Ima Relativist believes that morality is about objective facts. There is more to these arguments that once they are well analyzed they are read differently with another meaning to them. These arguments are against objective values. “Since morality is a product of culture, there can’t be objective moral truths” (Shafer-Landau, P. 205). The problem with this quote is that what a culture produces can express truths about how people live. Everything we say and do is based off our culture and what we were taught to do, yet some express objective truths.

Thomas Nagel incorporates a non-materialistic view onto Darwin’s materialistic views of human nature, as Nagel elaborates on in his book that it would not be possible to demonstrate that mental states must follow from our brain states, or what kinds of mental states follow from what

Natural Law is a deontological moral theory (with several elements of teleological concepts) that determines the morality of an action based on the primary precepts, whilst also reflecting on human nature and rationally working out what leads us to happiness. One of the perceived strengths of Natural Law is the idea that is shares common human nature across the world. This means that we can uphold a moral standard that everyone must follow, rather than finding ourselves stuck with moral relativism or subjectivism. This is a benefit as if morality was subjective then any individual, such as Hitler would be able to justify his actions due to his interpretation of morality being subjective. Similarly, if morality is relative to a particular social culture, then what we think of being morally correct could simply just be a social construct, and we shouldn’t enforce this social construct onto others who follow their own moral law (an example of this is the Western Laws enforced in the Pitcairn trials). Because of a shared human moral code, Natural Law is one of the few moral codes that could state plainly and clearly that murder is wrong, without considering the time, place or scene. This argument, though having its merits, is a victim to what is known as the “is-ought” fallacy. This fallacy was introduced by David Hume and he said, “If something is a particular way by ‘nature’, it does not logically follow to conform. Therefore, even if we have a natural inclination to act in a

Evolution is the succession of inherited traits from generations that develop over time. Similarly, moral relativism is the process of expanding a person’s morals and beliefs during their lifetime. However, instead of advancing over generations based on proceeding genes, moral relativism focuses on changing because of the environment around them, or rather the surrounding culture. Therefore, understanding right and wrong is subject to a person’s individual decision dictated by personal and situational circumstances. Christians who hold a biblical worldview believe that ethics are derived from the revelations of God demonstrated in the Bible. Although, this basis comes from the character and nature of God, not necessarily what Christians should do in specific

In terms of writing and dramatic style, naturalism is a heightened form of realism. Naturalistic dramas generally follow guidelines created by Aristotle, the Greek philosopher. These rules are known as “the three unities”: action, place and time. The general rule is that the events of the play should take place in the same location over a single day. Naturalism was made popular by the French writer Émile Zola, and his principles were modified by the French for the stage in the late nineteenth-century. Zola’s rules, known as “the three principles of naturalism” formed the basis for the naturalist movement in theatre. The first principle, faire vrai, was that the play had to be realistic and be as close a study of the human condition as possible. The second principle, faire grand, was that the play had to be meaningful and each theme or event had to be of some significance. And lastly, the third principle, faire simple, was that the play had to be simple and the writer should not to clutter the play with unnecessary sub-plots or dialogue. Naturalism spread through Europe in the twentieth-century until it reached the USSR. Stanislavski, a Russian theatre producer, thought that melodrama was unrealistic and unbelievable. Therefore, he set up the Moscow Art Theatre, in which he created new rules for theatre which all of his actors had to follow. In naturalistic acting, characters had to be realistic and believable, and the costumes needed to reflect the different character’s