Religious Ethics

Building upon the premise of anthropogenic changes to earth systems, especially climate, this essay focuses on the significance of Catholic social teaching (CST) with regard to the central principle of the universal destination of the goods of creation and the concept of fundamental human rights. Particularly significant at the current moment are air and water, two compounds that are necessary for life on earth. Gleaning key insights from papal encyclicals and magisterial documents from 1967 to the present, this essay argues that the papal stance is prophetic and challenging in its specification that some goods are so vital as to transcend market value and in its assertion that these are right to life issues. These insights require that industrialized nations such as the United States fulfill various duties but, too often, such duties are unpalatable in the American context. If taken seriously, however, those teachings reframe right to life
issues and require changes to current economic systems.

I argue that the problem of evil can be a distinctively moral objection to theistic belief. The thesis has three broad sections, each establishing an element in this argument. Section one establishes the logically binding nature of the problem of evil: The problem of evil must be solved, if you are to believe in God. And yet, I borrow from J. L. Mackie’s criticisms of the moral argument for the existence of God, and argue that the fundamentally evaluative nature of the premises within the problem of evil entails that it cannot be used to argue for the non-existence of God. Section two establishes the moral objectionability of many responses to the problem of evil (theodicies). I discuss the work of the moral ‘anti-theodicists’, and support some of the key premises within their arguments via appeal to the moral philosophy of Raimond Gaita. I combine the claims of section one and section two, and conclude that theism inherits the moral objectionability of theodicy. In section three, I establish the plausibility of a morally motivated non-cognitive atheism, offering an example (Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov), before finally distilling the central claims of this thesis into the form of a slogan: God lacks humanity.

В статье производится попытка прояснить этико-теоретические основания  разделения  Гегелем  «моральности»  и  «нравственности».  Поскольку это разделение было произведено в рамках более общего проекта «абсолютной нравственности», формирование и детализация концепции «моральности» и «нравственности» реконструируются в контексте идейных инвариантов этических взглядов Гегеля.

The article aims to clarify the ethical and theoretical grounds of distinguishing between «Moralität» and «Sittlichkeit» in Hegel’s moral philosophy. Since this distinction was conceived as a part of more general research project of the «absolute Sittlichkeit» («moralitas absoluta»), the formation and elaboration of it are reconstructed in the context of conceptual invariants of Hegel’s ethical thought.

Kierkegaard in Fear and Trembling presents a reductio ad absurdum regarding the time-spans subject to moral evaluation. The text's classic dilemma depends on assuming that we only evaluate discrete, contextless instants. The pseudonymous author constantly seeks the single instant or moral “photograph” that indicates Abraham's status. Doing so, however, extracts scripture's moral legislation out from narrative, resulting in theological paralysis and thereby requiring an alternative temporal vocabulary for evaluating Abraham. Fear and Trembling contains an under-explored alternative that sets Abraham within the covenantal narrative's temporality. The paper explores the consequences of shifting from evaluating instants to evaluating narrative durations, showing that while Genesis 22 remains a challenging episode, it also offers a model of imaginative faith, fidelity to promises, and hope in the face of trauma that focusing on moral instants overlooks.

Inquiries into Sikh ethics emphasize the tension between human agency and divine will, wherein divine grace takes primacy over personal effort. To date, scholars have primarily drawn on passages from the Adi Granth as authoritative pedagogical sources for morally imagining the Good Life. Adopting the hermeneutical tools of reader response theory, I will suggest that the Janamsakhi literary tradition offers a heretofore-overlooked repository of theodical life-worlds that both supplements and complicates conventional teachings on the experience of Sikh discipleship. In particular, I will demonstrate that these stories do real ethical work on the reader by intending an imagined space and refiguratively calling forth ‘a way of dwelling there.’ Drawing on three particular sakhis from the Puratan anthology, I will examine the ways in which these episodes try to reach in front of themselves to shape the reader, thereby equipping her with ‘technologies of the self’ with which to navigate issues of risk, ambivalence and surrender. Finally, I will encourage scholars in the field of Sikh Studies to take this reception-based approach to the Janamsakhi tradition seriously as a middle ground between the contemporary hegemonic voices of etic historical criticism and emic apologetics.

New Atheists, particularly those who identify with Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, have gained a large amount of notoriety in their claims that religious faith is outdated and entirely toxic to our contemporary society. Yet despite this basic tenet, New Atheists nevertheless become tirelessly engaged in highly-polemical attacks on theists. Many of these scathing attacks on the faith on others do not adequately carve out an alternative value system to replace religious beliefs. Other attacks that do have a moral system in mind end up alienating themselves from their intended audience too much for them to be heard. The problem is that relentlessly pointing out the faults of an opposing position does not prove one’s own position’s validity. The ultimate result of constantly berating those who have religious faith is that New Atheists become just as dogmatic as those they refute and bash. New Atheists end up becoming polemicists at the expense of their supposed rational principles.
Using the works of both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, this paper will argue that New Atheism as exemplified by figures like Dawkins and Hitchens is a dogmatic and nonrational faith in reason and science. Both thinkers establish that the very root of religious faith is that it deals with what is beyond the limits of human reason. Faith is belief in a larger metaphysical narrative that one cannot determine through reason alone. New Atheists rest upon a faith in scientific positivism. They do not believe in God, yet they believe in the possibility of the revelation of an all-encompassing science that we can use to understand the world. Further, while New Atheists constantly evoke reason and science in their argumentation against faith, their dependence upon science seems too positivistic and devoted. Science is in and of itself not all-expansive, but is limited upon our own faculties of understanding. The claim that science can disprove the existence of God is a motivated claim that betrays the aims of objectivity. Skepticism can only claim validity in an inductive argument that rules out the probability of God through Ockham’s Razor, but not an absolute deductive claim that rules out the possibility of God entirely. The denial of God from this inductive argument is a leap of faith. When a one publicly attacks religion within one’s profession as a scientist, one pits all of one’s science as a dualistically-opposed answer against faith. This is occasionally admitted to as faith by New Atheists, even using the language of 'conversion', 'mission work', or 'proselytizing' when referring to themselves. Yet these admonitions are quite often in bad faith since they come hand in hand with derogatorily putting down the proliferation of common religion. While this cultural movement is clearly decentralized and could not be confused for an organized religion, it rather has the structure of absolute zealotry.
This paper will conclude in an ethical call for ‘newer’ atheists. Instead of attacking the beliefs of others, atheists should demonstrate a practical ethics if they want to bring in more 'converts'. If atheists want to ground their belief in the nonexistence of deities as a more moral claim than theism, then they should refrain from getting bogged down in pointing out the absurdities of faith. From a practical standpoint engaging in polemics against faith is ineffective and quite possibly a waste of time since dogmatism precludes even listening to an alternative viewpoint. Even if “God is dead”, there nevertheless is a dogmatically living quality to God’s adherents that New Atheists cannot breach. The polemics of New Atheists suggest that they are too self-indulgent and seem more interested in proving how clever they are than the moral issues that they claim to support. Atheists should make an attempt to 'transvaluate all values' rather than debunking the values of others. It is highly irrational to tirelessly dwell within polemics against those who ‘will not listen to reason’ as a means to defer them from their beliefs. What is more ethical and will bring in more ‘converts’ to atheism is to act upon moral principles and do good deeds. For atheism to be taken more seriously as a moral alternative to traditional faith, it needs less polemicists and more examples of those who rise beyond polemics in order to create meaning in the world.