Principles to Ethics

Objectivity is a core philosophical principle that deals with reality and truth. It refers to the quality of holding the truth even beyond the subject’s individual biases, interpretations, feelings, and imaginations. Objectivity in ethics also involves the capabilities of making judgment fairly in any situation without any partiality or external influence (Nahrin, 2015).

Ethics is considered as the ability to tell apart the good and the evil prompting one to act accordingly. Christians, especially from the Evangelical perspective, consider ethics as inseparable from theology as it is embedded in the character of God. Christian ethics in this sense thereby are effective in helping individuals to determine what matches God’s character and what diverges from the same. The Christian ethics are unique is the high placing of God as not all things are considered being similar to him. This writer-up will address two views that pose challenges to the objectivity of ethics as stipulated in the Christian Ethics.

Ethical relativism

This objectivity of ethics refers the doctrine that proposes that there do not exist absolute truth in ethics. This seeks to spread the notion that what can be considered as either morally right or wrong differs from one individual to the next. This can be said to be a suggestion on what can be considered as the status of moral beliefs of which none can be considered as being objectively true. This implies that with all the diversity, there are no means available for justifying any moral principle as being valid for all category of individuals and communities (Rachels, 2016).

Critic

Challengers to this objectivity of ethics consider that if this were to be held as the basis of what morally right or wrong, this would imply even the most outrageous acts would be considered as being morally okay in the eyes of the perpetrators. Relativism thereby denies us the basis of questioning the moral objections against backward customs provided that those customs are approved by the code of societies where they are placed.  This concept introduces a new requirement for the existence of harmony in the society which is tolerance. This in its way creates an issue, as tolerance as a value may be interpreted to imply different things.

Support for Ethical Relativism

From the Christian perspective, ethical relativism can be supported by ensuring understand more the concept of intuition, revelation, and authority. The Bible, where the Christians peg their ethic principles, teaches that the church operates just like the body. The body is comprised of many parts which together make the whole complete system. You cannot use the same measure to assess the eye as you would the foot. This explains the basis of ethical relativism. In the society, we all occupy different places and are expected to serve the community in different ways. What will be ethical for a doctor may pass as an unethical for a teacher? It is therefore important to consider the definition of what is right or good depending on the placing and expected roles in an individual.

Determinism

Determinism is a common phrase in the philosophy and religious field. Christians use the theological determinism to explain the proposal that God determines that occurrence of any event in the history of the world. The most claim spread by this objectivity to ethics is that “God is that which none greater can be conceived.”

Challenge for determinism

A major critic of the objectivity of ethics of determinism in the Christian perspective raises from the ability of human being of being free to made endowments. This one character unique to human beings. A human being can be self-aware as well as poses some imagination. The inner conscience among human beings helps them in differentiating the wrong and the right. This implies that determinism cannot be used as an excuse for an action (List, 2012). One cannot engage in murder and just point out that it was the will of God since He has deterministic power over the individuals.

Support for determinism

One of the key support points for the value of objectivity is the fact that from the Christians point of view, God holds the ability to know what will sometimes happen in the future. Various bible verses can be quotes from this include Jesus announcement on who would betray him and who would deny him. It for this reason that evangelical churches even have the prophetic sessions. If it is general knowledge that is well aware of the future, then the truth as held by determinism is that future acts must either or indirectly by God (Wayne, 2017)

Euthyphro Dilemma

Euthyphro asserts that the holiness is some that all god love and unholiness is what they hate. This ideology was promoted by Socrates.  Taking Christian perspective, God is considered as the possible things which in turn implies that all perfections attributed to God must be possible as well as their combinations. This concept ponders over a question, “Can God make the right to be wrong, or good to be bad?

God is considered as omnipotent implying that he has all power. This the cause of Euthyphro dilemma. If morality is gauged as per what God considers as right, what then happens to a situation where God will know what is now a moral wrong. By his power, the wrong becomes right. Therefore “what is morally right is oaky because God wills.” If then what is morally right does not depend on what God wills, then this implies that God cannot make what is wrong to be right. If a wrong action is to be made good, then God needs to align His will to something that is independent of him. This leads to the next notion that “God will what is morally right because of it already right.”

The two scenarios introduce a dilemma where it must either be one or the other. These two alternatives are however regarded as unsatisfactorily creating the phenomena called Euthyphro Dilemma (Lacewing).

Challenges posed by Euthyphro to Divine Command Ethics

The divine command theory of ethics has the basic foundation of morality as what is revealed as the will of God which can be traced in the commands of God as per the scripture. The Euthyphro dilemma attempts to justify whether a thing is right because God has dictated it as wright on it good because even God considers as good thereby implying He recognizes a moral code ever more superior to Him.

This divine command theory makes it possible to apply a non-voluntarism treatment of goodness and badness. In this case, God’s commands are not arbitrary thereby providing reasons to act as guides for his commands as per this goodness or badness. This introduces a concept known as ethical voluntarism. This introduces some conflicts with the Euthyphro dilemma since morality is the all dependent on God’s will. This implies that even if God has categorized acts such as murder, theft, and debauchery as being wrong, it must have first been that God willed it. And if an act was willed by God, it then automatically becomes right.

Responding to the Euthyphro dilemma.

Some proponents of the Euthyphro dilemma have moved to provide indications that there are some ethical obligations that are in existence irrespective of whether God commands them. Christians in the book of Apostle John have guided into the perspective that all things came into being through God. God is regarded as the word and the creator of everything in the universe apart from himself. Therefore any ethical perspective that considers that hold the view that an ethical position is in existence whether God commands it or not is a contradiction from that verse, and Christian acquired their guidance from the word from the Bible rather than some proposed theory. This, therefore, makes it justifiable for a Christian to oppose and reject the first argument on the Euthyphro dilemma on the basis that it forms a meta-ethical idea (Roach, 2014).

It is also important to observe that the nature of God considered being good therefore He cannot proceed to will for something that is not good. This would imply that everything that God will qualify automatically as good. In this bracket, there would also be things that might not seem as good to us. This leads to the question of how an individual would manage to establish that God had willed on not willed on an issue that was not good. Such an individual would be using subjective mechanism impeded by lack of infinite knowledge and therefore not in a position to rational question what God willed or did not.

References

Lacewing, M. (n.d.). The Euthyphro Dilemma. Routledge Taylor and Francis Group.

List, C. (2012). Free Will, Determinism, and the Possibility of Doing Otherwise. Wiley Periodicals inc.

Nahrin, K. (2015). Objectivity and Ethics in Empirical Research. International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications.

Rachels, J. (2016). Ethical Relativism .

Roach, J. (2014). The Good Grounded in God: A Response to the Euthyphro Dillema. Retrieved from https://sophoslogos.wordpress.com/2014/12/03/the-good-grounded-in-god-a-response-to-the-euthyphro-dilemma/

Wayne, J. (2017). “The Doctrine of Determinism’…What is it? :. Retrieved from Christian Courier.com.