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<\/a><\/div>\nYesterday, I posted<\/a> an adaptation of a speech I gave at Yale<\/a> and promised to use it as a lens on why some Christian metaphysics is a good match for my ethics. \u00a0Here goes. \u00a0Questions welcome.<\/p>\n The first, and most obvious problem in the essay and in my views is that I have a pretty bad grounding for my virtue ethics. \u00a0It\u2019s hard to explain why exactly it is important that people not desire<\/em>\u00a0to harm others rather than we just prevent<\/em>\u00a0them from harming others through law or other barriers or\u00a0coercion. \u00a0I think this hope is more universal than people admit (would it really be a comfort if your child has intended to murder someone but found it unfeasible? \u00a0Or would your concern for him\/her be the same whether or not they acted?), but most people don\u2019t sign on to it as an ethical telos<\/em>.<\/p>\n If you recall, this is the same problem I talked about several months ago, when I was explaining how much I had liked Mere Christianity<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(\u201cHere I Am, Dressing Up as Christ<\/a>\u201c). \u00a0Wanting people to be better<\/em>\u00a0is a tough sell when that process will be cut off at some arbitrary point by death. \u00a0It seems more coherent in a Christian framework where death doesn\u2019t necessarily cut off moral improvement. \u00a0It works better with some source of Grace that can save people whose previous actions have warped their moral sense.<\/p>\n Without those additional elements, my system isn\u2019t just unsatisfying in its foundations, but unsatisfying in its conclusions. Plenty of people end up hurt and twisted beyond anyone\u2019s capacity to heal or are cut off from communities that are looking out for them. \u00a0Christians have an out, since Jesus can save, but I just end up with a bit of a bleak, high-stakes moral philosophy.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the big picture tension, but other parts of my speech and my thought are currently indebted to Christian ideas. \u00a0I spoke about shame as a way to heal others by using our own pain as a sign of love. \u00a0As several friends pointed out after the debate, I only would have needed to add a paragraph and tweak a few sentences to have a passable sermon on the transfiguring love of Christ crucified. \u00a0The idea of manifesting woundedness as the key to redemption tracks very well with the Christian story.<\/p>\n I live in a country and as part of a tradition that has been intensely influenced by Christian ideas, so I can\u2019t tell how Christian dominance of some of my ethical ideas and the language I use to describe it is the result of truth or just prevalence. \u00a0That\u2019s not helped by the fact that some of my ethical shifts and research efforts\u00a0occurred\u00a0around the same time I started reading Christian apologetics. \u00a0Still, I can\u2019t shake the feeling that my ethical intuitions slot very well into some Christian\u00a0traditions\u00a0and don\u2019t<\/em>\u00a0fit as well anywhere else. \u00a0So I\u2019m still looking.<\/p>\n Yesterday, I posted an adaptation of a speech I gave at Yale and promised to use it as a lens on why some Christian metaphysics is a good match for my ethics. \u00a0Here goes. \u00a0Questions welcome. The first, and most obvious problem in the essay and in my views is that I have a pretty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,176,48],"tags":[147],"class_list":["post-214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism","category-conversion-2","category-morality-in-practice","tag-whence-moral-law"],"yoast_head":"\n