Where Do Good and Evil Come From?

HZB3M – Mr. Raso

Philosophy – The Big Questions

Where Do Morals Come From?

•Morality refers to what is right and what is wrong

•Where do your morals come from?

• Is a moral code an essential part of every human being?

Do Right and Wrong Come from God?

• Some philosophers link moral principles to God

• To be morally good is to obey God’s will

•God as the one who gave people a moral standard to live by

Colonialism and Racism in Canada

• After the arrival of the Europeans, First Nations peoples were subjugated to rules and regulations created by the Europeans

• They colonized on the belief that they were “Christianizing” the “savage” Natives

• Forced Aboriginal Canadians into Residential Schools

• Forced them to only speak English, dress like a “European”, and pray to the European God – eliminating First Nations’ traditions and practices

“White Man’s Burden” - Kipling

• Rudyard Kipling wrote the “White Man’s Burden” a poem 1899

• For the white man to colonize and rule other nations for their sake

• The policy as a noble enterprise

• Eurocentric Racism and ideas to dominate the developing world

Are Right and Wrong Separate from God?• Plato – wrote a dialogue, The Euthyphro,

to address the issue of morality an the Gods

• Explores ideas through conversations between people

• Socrates asks Euthyphro whether the Gods live what is good because it actually is good, or whether things are called good simply because the Gods love them?

• Morality if either something that exist independently of the Gods and discovered by them, or it is created by the Gods

• Both cannot be true at the same time

•St. Thomas Aquinas – didn’t believe in Greek Gods, but did believe in God

• Faced with a similar dilemma

•Believed that God endorsed a moral standard that God discovered

•God instilled this moral standard in human beings when God created them

•William of Ockham (1285 – 1349)

•God invented standards of what is good and what is evil

• People should obey them

• People chose to obey or not to obey of their own free will

•Known as the Divine Command Theory

• If God is the creator of morality, and then decided to change the rules at whim, God would allow murder or theft on some days, but not on others

• If morality does exist somewhere outside of God, then there must be rules that God must obey

• If God had to obey rules, God’s power would be lessened

If God Exists, Why is there Evil?

• “A line which I often thought was a very plausible one, that as a matter of fact this world that we know was made by the devil at a moment when God wasn’t looking. There is a good deal to be said for that, and I am not concerned to refute it.” – Bertrand Russell

• If God is all-powerful and all-good, and if God witnesses evil, does God have an obligation to stop evil?

• Human beings have the free will to make choices

• God does not intervene with personal decision making, however, people must live with the consequences of their choices and actions

• Morality can only apply to rational beings that make choices

• Bertrand Russell said that a God cannot allow someone to suffer, it is either that God permits evil, or God does not exist!

Does Being Good Just Come Naturally?• There are various ideas for the

origins of morality

• The capability of human reason is a special thing

• Instrumental in constructing human moral codes and behaviours

• Moral Rationalism – term that describes moral theories emphasizing the use of human reason to discover moral truths – two such theories are:

1) natural law theory and 2) best reasons approach

Does Morality Come from Reason?• Natural Law Theory – the standards

that govern human behaviours are derived from the very nature of human beings

• Human thinking processes produce moral beliefs and judgments

• Since you know what pain feels like, you know not to inflict it on others (reason tells you this)

• Human reason produces the same results among all people

• A similarity of moral codes within various religions, cultures, and individuals

Does Logic Produce Perfect Morality?• Best Reasons Approach –

maintains that human reason can lead people to moral behaviours

• Moral actions are the consequences of people thinking about questions

• People act accordingly with what is the most rational thing to do (best reasons)

• Since human reasoning isn’t perfect, moral errors occur

• Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804)

• The moral worth of people depends entirely on their doing their moral duty

• You do not need to know someone’s motives to know whether they are doing their duty – all you need to know is whether they are acting in accord with the moral rule he called the categorical imperative

• “act as though the maximum of your action were by your will to become universal law of nature – allows for no exceptions”

Universal Morality or Relative Morality?• Protagoras (490-420BCE) from Greece believed

that morality is relative

• A custom that can change over time or from place to place

• James Rachels believes that morality is universal, there is a core set of values that are common to all societies, and they are necessary for any society to exist

3 Main Universal Moral Values:

• Care for your children

• Tell the truth

• Do not murder

A Global Ethic