Resolving Moral Conflicts, I

Let's begin with prayer. Lord, we joyfully and gratefully acknowledge our dependence upon you for every breath that we draw. And for all spiritual good that it comes from you, we recognize our dependence as we study your word. And we pray for the grace and blessing of your Holy Spirit as we approach the borderline cases of ethical conduct. We ask that you will give us wisdom and humility, enable us to not depart from your word to the right or to the left, but to be aware of your our dependence upon you and of the need for your guidance that we may be truly your representatives in this fallen world. Bless us to that in we pray for Jesus sake. Amen. Now, the topic today, the resolution of moral conflicts, that the situation is this, that in an ethic that poses multiple principles of obligation, such as the Ten Commandments, there is the liability that in certain complex cases and particularly emergency situations, it may appear that the commandments come into conflict and that you can obey both. And the classic, and I think that the most difficult to most pressing example of these, is when we have a duty to protect innocent life and also a duty not to communicate falsehood, that's where we feel the tension, the greatest. Now, the borderline cases ought to be put in perspective, these emergency situations that folks have sound character, folks that are sensitive to scriptural truth and what proper conduct is, intuitively resolve them in the emergency situation. And some have some feel that we ought to just leave aside the theoretical aspects of the emergencies and not try to articulate a theory of that because it is so difficult to get an adequate theory that maybe we should just concentrate on the cases where they clearly do apply. Gordon Clark took that position, the American evangelical philosopher in our reformed circles, the Feshrip that was presented to him at the end of his life, one had a critical article and said that he never addressed this issue of the conflict situation. Well, maybe this is a lacuna, a gap in my thinking, but maybe it's not so serious since the commandments obviously apply most of the time. And I think that there is some sense in that, since the 60s there has been an over emphasis on borderline cases with the situation ethics debate, then this became what ethics was all about. In particular, in courses at very introductory level, the borderline cases were the way of giving instruction in ethics and you left the impression that not that they're just difficult answers to hard cases, but they're no really good answers at all, unless you have been trained in the areas where the commandments clearly apply. You're really not prepared to deal with the conflict situation, unless you are trained in the value of truthfulness, unless you're used to telling the truth, unless veracity is one of your personal characteristics, you won't see the dilemma when protection of innocent life is at stake. If you lie every day for convenience, then it's certainly not going to be a problem to lie for some beneficial purpose. So it's only people who have been trained in veracity and truthfulness who, when they in emergency situation or face with this dilemma, is it a dilemma. Now, the Holocaust produced many examples of this particular dilemma. I've chosen as an example of the villages of Lichembonne in France, and I'd like to say something a little bit more about that. These folks were, who hid Jews during the, not the occupation of France, were the towns people were French, we're French reformed church, we call them Huguenots. People in the outlying countryside were darbius, we know them as Plymouth brethren, and it's interesting to, this is a wonderful cooperative effort between these two Christian groups. Both of which were either persecuted or marginalized in terms of their history. You know the Huguenot church in its persecution, how it was scattered abroad, it remained a tiny minority in France. Part of that history prepared them for identifying with those who are in suffering. The Plymouth brethren, with their dispensational theology, had a very positive view of Jews. They welcomed the Jews. The opportunity to minister to God's chosen people was through them at the light. So you have a rather unique situation in terms of that. But the book where this is narrated, it's now in paperback, less innocent blood be shed, is really worth reading for instruction in ethics. This, it shows what ordinary Christian people, whose characters are formed, it shows them doing good, really the moral excellent thing in the crisis situation. And they don't regard it as heroic. It's just what you do. It may be a duty to protect these people, but they don't consider it in terms of duty. They consider it in terms of privilege. They consider it in terms of providing hospitality for folks who are going through a commendous suffering even under the threat of death. The article that I had you read was written, written later, before the paperback edition came out. Part of it's incorporated into this paperback edition. But I want to read apart from the original prelude, the original introduction to the book. In the article I gave you, he talks about tears at one point. The tears that are expressed as he discovers moral excellence, he discovers goodness when he's been studying cruelty and is burdened down with that. He, at one point, is over, he's overblooded with tears of joy. Well, it's, he describes that incident in more detail in this book. You know that he has been studying cruelty, especially institutional cruelty for a number of years. On this particular day, he writes, I was reading in an anthology of documents from the Holocaust, and I came across a short article about a little village in the mountains of southern France. As usual, I was reading the pages with an effort at objectivity. I was trying to sort out the forms and elements of cruelty and of resistance to it in much the same way a veterinarian might sort out ill from healthy cattle. About halfway down the third page of the account of this village, I was annoyed by a strange sensation on my cheeks. The story was so simple and so factual that I found it easy to concentrate upon it, not upon my own feelings, and so still following the story, and taking about how some of it fit into the old patterns of persecution, I rushed, I reached up to my cheek to wipe away a bit of dust, and I felt tears for my fingertips, not one or two drops. My whole cheek was wet, all my sentennial mind told me you're losing your grasp on things again, I shut the book and left the college office. When I came home, my operatic Italian wife and my turbulent children, as they have never failed to do, distracted me noisily. I hardly felt the spear that had gone through me, but that night when I lay on my back and bed with my eyes closed. I saw more clearly than ever the images that had made me weak. I saw the two clumsy khaki-colored buses of the Vichy French police pull up into the village square. I saw the police capped in facing the pastor of the village, and warning him that if he did not give up the names of the Jews, they had been sheltering in the village, he and his fellow pastor, as well as the families who had been caring for the Jews, would be arrested. I saw the pastor refuse to give up these people, who had been strangers in his village, even at the risk of his own destruction. Then I saw the only Jew the police could find, sitting in an otherwise empty bus. Then I saw a 13-year-old boy, the son of the pastor, pass a piece of his precious chocolate through the window to the prisoner, while 20 Jean-Darm, who were guarding the lone prisoner watch, and then I saw the villagers passing their little gifts through the window until their regifts all around him, most of them food in those hungry days during the German occupation of France. Lying there in bed I began to weep again, I thought, why run away from what is excellent, simply because it goes through you like a spear. That night I decided to try to understand all this. I decided to understand it so that I could hold it more firmly than can one hold a tear or an image. Since I was a student and teacher of ethics, I would use what I had learned about man's standard of ethical excellence to help me understand the blessing, at least for me, of Le Shambon. Those involuntary tears had been an expression of moral praise, praise pressed out of my whole personality like the use of a great. But if I was not going to make Le Shambon an example of goodness or moral nobility, I was not going to use this story to explain some abstract idea of ethics. I was going to use the words of philosophical ethics only as a means for achieving the goal of understanding or to be more accurate. I was going to use the words of ethics to help me understand my deeply felt ethical praise for the deeds of the people of Le Shambon. As we look at the conflict situation through their eyes, I don't want us to miss that wider context of what is going on there and all over Europe. There were individuals who responded that way. Not thinking of themselves as heroic. It's just doing what God in His provenance has placed before. Yes, there's risk to it, but it's what you do. And the thing at the end of the article that I handed out for you, the last column, one of the reasons institutional cruelty exists and persists, is that people believe that individuals can do nothing. I think that's a remarkable statement when you read it in context. And there were individuals also in Germany. There was in the February 11th New York Times magazine of this year an article on Germans in Germany who sheltered Jews. They don't get the affirmation that have been given to those in other past places, but a couple of paragraphs from this article. I asked Ursula Meisner now 77, living in Geneva with her husband, why she had given a fugitive family shelter even though she didn't know them, almost shocked, she answered, what else could I do? Had she realized the risk she was taking, I didn't think of the risk. It's just something that you do. There has been a flood of psychological studies trying to understand why people risk their lives to save total strangers. But these studies missed the essential point. Ursula Meisner's response was no different from that of hundreds of others rescuers acting in other countries and under other circumstances. They weren't unaware of the dangers, but they thought first of the needs of those in danger. Now what that it proposed in terms of in the way I introduced this and for our topic is when you in order to protect the Jews, they had to deceive the authorities. One of the first things that they did was to counterfeit ration books. You could not survive. If you were going to protect Jews under those circumstances, it was not just what you would say when the police came to the door, are you hiding in any Jews here, you have to develop a whole system of deceit, beginning with counterfeit ration cards. And the pastor's wife, when she looks at those ration cards, she's depressed. And because of a life of veracity, a life of openness, a life of non deceit. But she says, what could we do? Jews were running all over. We had to help them. We had to help them quickly and unfortunately we had to lie. Now that is the emergency situation. Either conceal or expose them to harm. Our question is, were the falsehoods justifiable under the circumstances? And if so, on what grounds? And it's with some trepidation that approached this topic, but there are cases of conscience, some kind of resolution, one way or the other. If we can reduce the level of conflicts, if we can reduce or limit the amount of uncertainty for the sake of conscience and system, even though we may not be able to totally explain what we intuitively know is the right way. Our inability to articulate adequately a reason for these circumstances in the emergency situation doesn't mean that no absolutes exist. It only means that they're harder to define than we originally fall. So I think that hard cases need to be kept in perspective. Hard cases test the basic postulates of an ethical system and different methods of resolution reveal different conceptions of morality. It's the way you go about resolving these that test your system and it's important to understand a method of dealing with these things that doesn't undermine the application of the commandments and the ordinary circumstances of life. If you handle the hard cases, introduces a principle that undermines the ordinary cases, then you defeat the whole purpose. And so we're looking for, we're going to look at methods to see what method we can propose that can handle the hard cases, bring peace of conscience in the hard situations without opening the door to all kinds of immorality. And undermining the clear application of the commandments otherwise. Now in the book I make a point of saying that when we talk about the resolution of moral conflicts, we're excluding two types. We're not talking here about the internal conflict we feel when duty is difficult, when doing right entails personal sacrifice or suffering wrong. If the dilemma is to sin or to suffer, then there's no dilemma in terms of what we ought to do to accept suffering rather than sin. But what we need in those cases is the courage to do the right thing, not a resolution of some theoretical contest. Note theoretical issue there, though there is an existential one, resolution in that case requires moral courage, not more knowledge, not more theoretical knowledge. Also not an issue or choices that have to be made because of limitations of time and resources. We can't do everything all the time. And so we have to set priority. Sometimes we have a conflict between duty to family, duty to church, duty to business. We perceive that as a conflict, but that's not that doesn't demand a breaking one commandment in order to obey another. It means that we have to discern how to balance the fulfillment of all of these responsibilities. So what we're talking about is where there is an issue that appears to set before us the breaking of one commandment in order to carry out another one. The idea is that the commandments come into conflict. Now I think I've got about five different methodologies of dealing with these. First is consequentialism. Consequentialism. The Supreme Principle, this proposition is in the book. The Supreme Principle of a consequentialist theory of ethics is that an act is right if it is intended to produce a greater balance of good, over evil than any available alternative. In other words, acts are right or judged to be right solely. Please underline that solely in terms of the good consequences that are expected or intended. Now this is a common view in humanistic ethics. For example, just to give you some illustrative material, Corlus Lamont, in his book The Philosophy of Humanism, repented many times, for humanism no human acts are good or bad in and of themselves, whether an act is good or bad is to be judged by its consequences. And Paul Kurtz that we've been introduced you to before in his book The Fulness of Life, moral principles are not absolute. The decision must always be guided by considering the long range consequences. Now we need to be clear that a plausible theory of ethics for any ethical theory to be plausible, goodness or badness of expected consequences are at least one source of important moral reasons. The question is whether that's the only standard for what is right. We're not saying that a regard for foreseeable consequences is ruled out. That's one feature of moral action that must be taken into account. The question here is not whether expected consequences are intended good consequences or part of ethics is whether that's the only principle. And for the for utilitarianism as it's also called in Roman Catholic theology, it's called proportionalism in Protestant circles, it's called situation ethics. In all of these, I've lumped these together as consequentialists, not just myself but this is a standard classification, whatever particular form in terms of philosophical or religious ethics it takes, it is the idea is that what is right is determined solely by its consequences for the individual in society. Or as Paul Kurtz puts it, it's long range consequences. Now the form in which this is most familiar to us is in situation ethics of Joseph Fletcher. In Fletcher's view, there is only one biblical absolute, the law of love. So that act responsibly in love is the single ethical command. And apart from this, there are no unbreakable rules. So there's only one absolute act responsibly in love. Now in a sense we can agree that that is the summary absolute act responsibly in love. But the question is whether there are other absolutes that in which a love is expressed, whether responsibly means to embody the principles that are expressed in absolute in addition to the summary of the law. Now everything turns on whether love to be responsible must be embodied in actions that conform to the universal moral norms. And I think that it is hard to live with this theory. So by the way, I note this in the book but insert this now, when Fletcher first identified his situation ethics, the absolute principle with agape, Christian do you a love. But when he was pressed on that, what do you mean by love then it became clear that it was utilitarianism. Love agape was equated with utility. And that clarified the position for a lot of people because then it put Fletcher's ethics in a wider context of utilitarianism for which there has been a growing literature of criticism since it was introduced. But it was so hard to live without introducing an absolute at some point that even Fletcher at one point wrote no unwanted or an unintended baby should ever be born. Now that's just that is absolute as you can get no unwanted and unintended baby should ever be born. So in spite of the idea that there's only one absolute there's no it's hard to live that way without thinking that there are other other principles. Of course we reject that as a principle we should say that no baby born or unborn should be unwanted that would be the proper way of putting that into its context. Now the there are four problems with the let me give you five objections to consequentialism these are not in the book that I have the way I put them here. But let me let me give you these five objections to consequentialism also known as utilitarianism also known as situation ethics number one it wrongly sets persons against rules. A lot of the lot of the appeal of situation ethics is that rules seem so impersonal and love seems so personal but it leaves aside the the fact that rules such as the ten commandments at least the second table define the rights and responsibilities of persons. It's wrong to set persons against rules the rules are there for the protection and guidance of persons. You should not kill as a significant personal application or relevance it's there to protect persons human lives from wanting to describe destruction so the it's wrong to a situation ethics wrongly sets persons against rules. Secondly it depends upon an impossible calculation of consequences your judgment is Paul Kurtz says is long range consequences in the words if if the principle is the greater balance of good over evil you have to know a lot more than just what happens immediately you have to know the effects of that on other actions other events and so on. Really properly stated it would be in the universe as a whole a greater balance of good over evil in the universe as a whole who can know that. So it depends on impossible calculation of consequences consequences especially long range consequences are unpredictable with certainty and so there is an element of uncertainty in the principle itself. Long such persons against rules depends upon an impossible calculation of consequences thirdly it reduces to subjectivism it is not subject to criticism because it lacks an intrinsic standard of judgment it's not subject to criticism because it lacks an intrinsic standard of judgment it's what the individual judges will be. It is will be for the greater balance of good over evil and if an individual makes that judgment there just as to act responsibly in love and the individual determines what is responsible in terms of balance of good over evil there's no way to criticize that. Even those who put Christ to death that they thought that that was for a greater good. Typhus rationale it's expedient that one man die that the whole people perish not. Ironically what he said was true but not in the sense that he intended it was what he says is an innocent man we you know we can't make a case against him but it's for the sake of the protection of the people it's expedient. That an innocent man be put to death that greater good the protection of the others be there without an objective principle of justice that it is open to all kinds of obvious injustice. Gordon Clark says he's certainly right the greatest good for the greatest number is a principle for tyrants and totalitarian governments are always using that as their argumentation for the sake of an ideology a greater long-range good people can be put to death. And that is you know worked itself out Hitler Stalin Mao just a name three ideological consequentialist arguments have produced a terrible harvest of shame in terms of persons who are killed in this in this century it is the bloodiest century. And I think we should remind ourselves that Nazism has slain its millions but communism has slain its tens of millions. There is a book called quite a stir in France it's now been translated into English Harvard University press 1999 that documents the atrocities of communism. The title of the book is the black book of communism I don't particularly like that title but the documentation of the horrendous numbers of death through ideologically imposed famine in both Ukraine and China it's it's it's horrific. Now Nazism has a special evil because of its genocidal implications and its anti-Semitism but in terms of quantitative murderous justified in terms of an ideology that was supposed to bring in a greater good communism has the figures. Number four situations are not so unique as to eliminate classification situations are not so unique as to eliminate classification the idea was in situation ethics that every situation is unique and we have to decide in the situation of what is going to be for the greater good. Well every situation is unique but there are certain features that they have in common and so we can classify them we didn't see where a particular circumstance fit that description for example in the case of terminal decision making decision making times of terminal illness that kind of their case each situation has to be judged in the light of what the facts are in that situation you have to take. You have to take into account the facts and whether where the treatment is going to do the patient any good whether non-treatment is the appropriate care so that depends upon the facts but you can classify the cases as we will do as we get into that in terms of what what constitutes say a rationale for non intervention under those circumstances and so every situation has its own particular facts that be taken into account but after those facts of discern they fit into certain classes of cases and we distinguish between euthanasia and non intervention of medical treatment and sometimes non intervention is culpable and sometimes it is the right thing to do. We have criteria that that in able us to judge then the fifth fifth point is in consequentialism there is a I would say the tendency towards self serving antinomianism the tendency towards self serving antinomianism is inevitable in a fallen humanity. This is not only a principle for tyrants this is a principle for self justification the tendency toward self serving antinomianism is inevitable in a fallen humanity. What I mean by that is the if there are no principles of justice that apply universally if it's all situational and relative to the situation then I will take advantage as a center I will take advantage of that and use it in a self serving what I'll give you two examples to claim falsehood in the national interest. That's sometimes done but it's sometimes done in self interest when you examine it the national interest is not at stake the political interest is at stake to claim a falsehood for the protection of the family is in reality often turns out to be for self protection. You see how if there's no universal rule that sets the standard then what's in one's personal interest is often clouded under what's in some some wider interest it's in consequences that's almost inevitable in terms of a fallen humanity that once you introduce a principle that only consequences can that it will be used in a self serving way. At least I think that that proposition. Now this is this is one of the the great dividing lines in ethics in this country consequentialism in effect resolves moral conflicts by removing universal principles reducing everything to the one principle of good consequences then there no conflicts. If you only have a single rule that's consequences for good the greater balance of good over evil you you remove moral conflicts by removing traditional morality in terms of universal principles of right and wrong. We get this in our when we come to specific cases we'll see how this how this is affected so much of our society in the case of the anticephalic child that was born in Florida of the which the parents wanted to since the child was soon going to die the parents wanted to donate her to take her body parts while they were still usable and really to put her to death in order to that those parts might be used for some others. This quote from the newspaper one demonstrator this this was a four or five years ago now but the kind of thinking goes on one demonstrator said baby Teresa was a gift from God she was not created by God for spare parts. Another the baby's maternal grandmother saw it differently taking one and helping two three five that's pro lie. The issue is you know may you take one lie in order to help two three five it sounds it sounds good don't we want to do good consequences. Well it good consequences are something we should aim at provided there's no injustice which in this case would be discrimination against the handicap killing an anticephalic baby in order to help someone out. If you introduce the principle that it's all right to kill in order that good may come you have undermined a principle of justice and it opens to all sorts of obvious injustice. Okay any question about the consequentialism. Okay evangelicals have pretty much critiqued consequentialism and rejected that the next options are all held by evangelicals in one form or another. I think that when consequentialism appeared on the scene we weren't very well prepared for the ethics text that had been written up until the 60s in the evangelical circle didn't address the hard cases. And I think that we we we we were caught off guard in that respect and various proposals have been adopted by evangelicals one is goes by the name of tragic morality or deposit the idea of the tragic moral choice. We live in a fallen world the theory says and in such a world is this we may be face with a choice between alternatives both of which conflict with some absolute principle of duty. So tragic moral choice posits absolute unlike consequentialism that has only one absolute tragic morality says yes there are multiple absolute and they do sometimes because we live in a fallen world come into conflict with each other and when they do then we should choose the lesser of two evils. But we need to confess our sin for having done evil even though we were caught and we had to do evil in one either the lesser or the greater was the best thing to do under the circumstances. But you're still hell guilty for that and there are some prominent evangelicals who've taken this position J.I. Packer not to be dismissed has has taken that position that the absolute come into conflict and we should do the right thing and do the lesser evil. But even so we are held guilty for that now I have a problem with this even though you know person such as the stature of J.I. Packer take that position and I think that what's going on here is the respect for let's say saving life and telling truth both of those equally valid in terms of principle. Universal principles of duty intuitively recognizing in such a case as you have been providing refuge for Jews under the Holocaust that you would provide the refuge even if it meant telling falsehoods and yet still feeling that that has broken an absolute principle of duty even though it's the right thing to do it's wrong you know that's the but it's not as wrong as letting them go but it's still wrong. And so your conscience is not not perfectly free. I think that there's some problems with this though we we should I think it's too easy away I mean not that it's easy but it it it it ought to be more articulated if we're going to take that as a position after all if the absolute is to tell truth then we may not you know that's something we have to take up with with God and you need at least not I've never seen a defense of why telling the truth or telling falsehood is a lesser sin than allowing somebody else to take another person's life it ought at least be articulated but here's my problem to choose the lesser of two evils evil is ambiguous if it's physical evil that we're talking about things are physically less than ideal then that's a different thing if you've got it's bad not to have both arms but if one of your arms is got gangering then you better amputate the arm in order to preserve your life okay and that your purpose is not to name your purpose is to heal ordinarily if it weren't for the circumstance of the gangrene you would not taking take cutting off somebody's arm would be mainly that person but you accept the lesser evil physical evil of being going through life with one arm against the greater evil of dying as a consequence of the gangrene. Now what we're talking about here is between two things that choose between two absolute things that God is commanded to remind ourselves that we're talking about the lesser of two sins and then it becomes harder theoretically to justify this because we're saying that God has placed us in a situation in which we're going to have to sin and we should choose the and God and God would going to choose the lesser sin but we're still responsible for confessing our sin you see the call this the tragic moral choice because it derives from Greek tragedy the idea in Greek tragedy sometimes in that polytheistic culture you got God's giving you different commands and your face with a choice of if you obey one God you disobey the other God and you got the tragic moral choice so you choose the lesser evil that is you choose to disobey the God that you can think can do the less evil to you your damned if you do and damned if you don't you choose to disobey the God that can do the least damage okay so but in a in a world where there is only one law giver and judge this is in coherent it's God who gives the commands and moreover it is God who controls the providence in which he has placed us I think that we can say that God will not put this in a position where it's necessary for us to sin it's his law the answer comes back well in an unfallen world the commandments would not come into conflict that's certainly true however the commandments are given to us in a fallen world the commandments are for our guidance we need them because we live in a fallen world so I think that this is not the way to go making sin necessary under some tragic circumstances fall short of the of the biblical ideal and I have some sympathy with what people are doing here they feel that they can't resolve the problem they still feel guilty for that and they do the right thing even though they feel guilty and they rely on God's forgiveness so I you know I want to respect that subjectively they haven't resolved the problem but intuitively they do the right thing but I think if we can relieve consciences is our obligation to do so and this this category of seems to me to involve some difficulty in requiring remorse for having done the only right thing under the circumstances and there's a further problem that I've noticed that once you adopt this for emergency circumstances you've introduced a principle into your ethic that begins to multiply in its application and so you know that divorce is wrong but you also know it's good to live a fulfilled life and which is the lesser of two evils to not have a fulfilled life or to get a divorce that the argument of the lesser two evils is quite frequent when it comes to the issue of divorce without working it short circuits the process of working through the moral principles and their application and adopted for emergency circumstances it tends to multiply to other areas as well if you adopt as a matter of resolution to choose the lesser of two evils it's going to eat up your ethics just like consequentialism eats it up you know until virtually anything can be done so the lesser of two evils will allow you to do virtually anything as long as you feel half guilty about it that I see is the problem now there I want to make a distinction this isn't in the book but I think that we need sometimes the principle of of the lesser evil that we've been talking about here ought not to be confused with tolerating evil in order to promote a greater good we'll be talking about so far is doing evil that good make come doing a little evil and that a lot of good make come I think we're forbidden by scripture to do evil that good make come so if God is absolutely forbidden falsehood then we have to we can't we can't tell falsehood the evil not allow you to be tempted about what you're able but he will make a way of escape that you may be able to bear it I think that that although that refers to something different it is it is relevant to the idea that God's problems controls all events and God will not place us will he I think it is incoherent to think that God who controls all events will place us in the situation which we have to sin and that's making sin inevitable I don't think that it's we can say that sin is inevitable because that would make God the author of sin through arranging the circumstances in which it's inescapable it's inevitable that we that we sin I think so I think that there is but I would say we may not be able to articulate it as well as we would like to but I think that in principle I would say in principle there is a resolution in principle there is a resolution this I think doesn't doesn't give a resolution it remains with a problem because it hasn't resolved it's only said let's do the lesser lesser evil but the evil is still there and in a way you're doing evil that good good may come and you're saying that God's absolutes come into conflict but God it's God who command if I think we need to examine the absolutes and see what they really are before we I take it as an upright or I that what God commands will never be contradictory God is not, you know, a contradictory God he won't command us in things that we that conflict with his commands I think we can rely on the fact that there is some resolution I don't think consequentialism just act in love does it because that erodes all the things but I don't think this does it either because of that now it's distinguishing trying to distinguish this from another thing this idea refers to doing evil that good may come I wanted to distinguish that from tolerating evil in order to promote a greater good it is sometimes permissible to tolerate evil but never permissible to choose evil I think that you have that in the Old Testament with respect to arbitrary divorce God himself tolerated evil in order that women may have protection in that kind of society we may also tolerate evil but that's different from choosing evil this this came up at the time that that Dr. Coop was a surgeon general in which he had a universal mailing every American household had an address of with respect to AIDS and the self protection from AIDS he advocated the use of condoms many folks objected to that on the on the grounds that that was tolerating practices which were themselves evil but Coop's argument was the public health is my responsibility and there are some things out of concern for public health that you allow and tolerate and make available information to people of how to protect themselves in order for there to be public health there are some things that we tolerate that we do not approve but we tolerate them for the sake of a greater good so condom distribution would be one of those issues we can take a look at we're going to talk about when we get to sexual ethics we'll take another look at that but that is an example of sometimes the difference between choosing evil and tolerating evil I mean never choose evil that that a greater good may come but sometimes we may have to tolerate certain things that are evil for the sake of public health or whatever okay any other questions on this on the on tragic morality the question is how much has how much is this way of thinking affected our society that we choose to do evil that good good may come and I'm not clear about that this is more operative in evangelical circles who can't because we can't resolve the conflict society as a whole tends to be utilitarian or consequentialism but there but when you examine that it leaves minorities with little protection and you need a principle of justice that's that's it's for the sake of minorities that you must balance your utilitarianism with a principle of justice you can't just for the good of society deny folks their rights you must give everybody their rights a utilitarian that's the governing that's the governing philosophy I think that's the I would say that's the dominant philosophy in American culture some form of utilitarianism and so well there was I didn't get to watch it last night I videotape it to watch it later but 2020 had a program on the selling of fetal body parts using fetal body parts for profits and I haven't viewed that yet but that's the idea that a greater that's the idea of that there's a greater good here and without without thinking about what what what we're saying about the value of human life when we begin to sell fetal body parts and the and the the issue that does that compounds the motivation in giving them and and having an abortion if a person feels that some good will come from it they're more likely to have the abortion for altruistic motives at least somebody will benefit from this baby that I can't carry but you see how that that doing evil that good may come you know it sort of balances it out yes I think so I think that it is I think that's right I think that's that that helps with the decision if you can you know and you know you know there's this deep seeded feeling that it's not right in spite of all that we say about choice there's that there's a questionable aspect that doubtful aspect to get people over that home this works in such a way as to if they can think of a beneath the nephysic purpose then it helps them it's not just a total wipe out it doesn't seem to be so selfish a choice if someone else benefits that's why consequentialism is so dominant in our in our society if I can if I can project good consequences but you say good consequences need to be balanced by a principle of justice so that the rights of all even infants even unborn infants are protected I was thinking of something else oh I know what it is I think that I think as I as this lesser two evils is applied to the divorce it's also applied to the question of abortion that's also one one way of dealing without really resolving the ethical issue there it's short circuits the process of moral reasoning yes yeah the question is whether tolerating evil or are we not in some way culpable of that it depends on the circumstances that there are some evils that we ought not to tolerate and we try to remove them from the society in which we live clearly we're not talking about all tolerating evil just sometimes it is culpable to to tolerate evil but there's some evils that in order to try to stop them we create a greater evil as a as a result for example if one does not if one believes that the contraception is wrong to try to impose that upon a society can lead to worse problems than allowing folks to have access to contraception even though you believe it is wrong so you tolerate what you consider to be an evil in order to prevent a greater evil that might come about now that's an example that may or may not be you know the right way to approach that would that would be an example of tolerating an evil choosing in that tolerating a lesser evil the greater evil being the social chaos and the threat of abortion that might the temptation to abortion in the absence of contraception that's the greater evil in that case if you restrict restrict contraception then you tempt you tempt women to have abortions so you tolerate if you're opposed to contraception you tolerate contraception to prevent a greater evil that would be an example but obviously not all people we can tolerate and we ought to oppose them we ought to you know oppose racial discrimination for example that's not something you can tolerate yes sir Bill yeah good question is is the argument I just gave consequentialist in nature remember I'm saying that any ethical theory that's plausible have to have in good consequences is one component of it it's not that that's the whole of ethics we don't we're not anti-consequentialist we are we are against making consequences the sole criterion of what is right but we do have to consider good consequences it's obvious in the Bible there's simple example you know if if what you eat causes your brother to stumble then you ought not to eat it that your that has bad consequence I mean that's you know that's a simple idea of a consequential you got to take that into account take into account the facts that your actions have on other even though intrinsically there's nothing wrong so it's not that we're opposed to consequences what we have to balance them with the principle of justice I'm saying there's no sin in tolerating contraception with the goal of the greater good of preventing more abortions okay the other questions okay this is tough stuff and but I think I think it's important yes