Theo 131 Discussion Questions

H     Study the following questions.    1) In what possible ways the Gospel help shape and form our moral life and the way we pursue our commitment to love and justice? 2) Differentiate the goals of moral life from the two perspectives or belief systems --  classical philosophy versus contextual-praxis Christian theology. 3) Explain the reasons (or basis) why some ethicians believe fetuses (or zygotes) are nonperson/nonhuman, while many Catholics share different views. 4) Explain the link between “integral evangelization” and the "kingdom of God" in terms of personal advances and raising the level of life among Filipinos. 

EXODUS ROUTE MAPs

EXODUS ROUTE MAP

MAP OF UPPER AND LOWER EGYPT (ANCIENT)

UPPER AND LOWER EGYPT (ANCIENT)

(STUDENT'S REQUEST: This set of questions constitutes our last quiz in Theo 111. Some students have asked their teacher to publish it for study. So here it is.)

1. This ancient tribe were known to be descendants of  Shem: Hebrews, Akkadians, Phoenicians, and Arabs. Who were they?

[a] Canites             [b] Semites            [c] Turks

2. Which story forms the narrative link between the Hebrew ancestors and their sojourn in Egypt?

[a] Abraham           [b] Joseph               [c] Moses

3.  What story embodies God’s “Uncreation” narrative?

[a] Fall of Jericho    [b} Ten Plagues       [c] Deluge

4. What story narrates God’s “Second Creation”?

[a] Noah                  [b] Isaac                  [c] Eve

5. What is Hebrew toledot?

[a] creation story    [b] secret writings  [c] generation

6. Who was the Hebrew vizier to the Egyptian Pharaoh?

[a] Isaiah                 [b] Joseph               [c] Jacob

7. Who was Moses’ wife?

[a] Rebekah                            [b] Zipporah                [c] Dinah

8. Who was Jacob’s wife?

[a] Leah                   [b] Rachel               [c] Haggar

9. The literary source of creation story (Genesis 1)?

[a] P-source            [b]  Novelle-source                        [c] J-source

10. Who is the brother of Moses?

[a] Joshua               [b] Aaron                 [c] Haran

11. What is the ancient name of present-day Israel?

[a] Palestine           [b] Kenan                                [c] Sinai

12. Who is the third son of Adam?

[a] Ham                  [b] Shem                 [c] Seth

13. Which of them is not a Israelite?

[a] Esau          [b] Mary Magdalene       [c] Moses

14. Which son of Noah from whom Jesus Christ would come?

[a] Japhet                                [b] Ham                  [c] Shem

15. Common birthplace of King David and Jesus Christ?

[a] Edom                 [b] Judah                 [c] Nazareth

16. What Mesopotamian epic narrates the story of Flood?

[a] Enuma Elish      [b] Gilgamesh         [c] Atrahasis

17. Who was the founder of the Mesopotamian empire (Gen 10)?

[a] Nebucchadnezzar              [b] Nimrod              [c] Tao I

18. What the “sons of god” described in Gen 8:1-10?

[a] nephilin             [b] Philistines          [c] titans

19. They were Asiatic (Semitic) tribes who ruled Egypt sometime in 18^th century?

[a] Amorites           [b] Hyksos               [c] Ptolomies  

20. Identify, in their proper order, the Ten Plagues.

(EDITOR'S NOTE: The following article is lifted from Contemporary Issues In Bioethics, authored by Tom L. Beauchamp and LeRoy Walters, pp. 215-221. The article tries to present an ethical analysis on the issue of Abortion and Personhood as well as theoretical basis (grounding) for any moral judgment about the matter in question. As many would expect, a purely philosophical approach to the morality of abortion will have its own limitations. It would seem that such controversies surrounding the issue such as human life, person, and right "to take human life" will continue to persist, and debates involving opposing views of ethicians, more often than not, could not find "full rest," so to speak. If, however, any Christian-inspired theories can help bring about more appropriate ways of understanding the morality of abortion and its social implications, then they should be presented in a contextualized manner.)

     

ABORTION

THE PROBLEM OF JUSTIFICATION

Among the many reasons why abortions are commonly sought are cardiac complications, a suicidal condition of the mind, psychological trauma, pregnancy caused by rape, the inadvertent use of fetus-deforming drugs, and many personal and family reasons such as the financial burden or intrusiveness of a child. Such reasons certainly explain why abortions are often viewed as an available way to extricate a woman or a family from difficult circumstances. But the primary ethical issue remains: Are any such reasons sufficient to justify the act of aborting a human fetus? An ethicist concerned to defend abortion seeks a principled justification where ethical reasons are advanced for one’s conclusion. It might be decided, of course, that in only some of the above mentioned circumstances would an abortion be warranted, whereas in others it would not be justified. Even so, such a decision presupposes some set of general criteria that enables one to discriminate ethically justified abortions from ethically unjustified ones.

The central moral problem of abortion may be stated in woman to the following general form: Under what conditions, if any, is abortion ethically permissible? Some contend that abortion is never acceptable, or at most is permissible only if abortion is required to save the pregnant woman’s life or for some other similarly serious reasons. This view is commonly called the conservative theory of abortion. Roman Catholics have traditionally been among the leading exponents of the conservative approach, but they they are by no means its only advocates. Others hold that abortion is always permissible, whatever the state of fetal development. This view is commonly termed the liberal theory of abortion and has frequently been advocated by those adherents of women’s rights who emphasize the right of a woman to make decisions that affect her own body, but again the position is advocated by others as well. Finally, many defend intermediate or moderate theories, according to which abortion is ethically permissible up to a certain stage of fetal development or for some limited set of moral reasons that is sufficient to warrant the taking of fetal life  in this or that special circumstances.

FACTS OF HUMAN BIOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT

Pregnancy does not begin with intercourse, since the earliest point at which it can be dated is during the fertilization of the female egg (the ovum) by the sperm of the male. Once fertilization has occurred, a new genetic entity results from the combination of the genetic contributions of the male and the female. This new unit is a single cell capable, under normal conditions, of a constant process of alteration and growth. This single cell has twenty-three pairs of chromosomes (each parent contributes one chromosome in each pair). It quickly divides into two cells, four cells, then eight cells – reaching sixteen at approximately the third day after fertilization. Organ systems gradually appear before the eighth week of growth, roughly the point at which brain waves can be detected. Between approximately the nineteenth and twenty-eighth week of growth, the fetus reaches the stage known as “viability,” the point at which it is capable of survival outside the womb.

There exists a small but useful body of terminology frequently used by embryologists and others who discuss human biological development. Conception is said to occur when the male sperm and the female egg combine; during this process, the resultant entity is spoken of as a conceptus and is referred to in this way until its implantation, at the wall of the uterus. It is also referred to as a zygote until the completion of implantation, which occurs roughly two week after conception. Thereafter the term embryo is used to designate the developing entity, until about eight weeks, when it is referred to a fetus. However, the term “fetus” is frequently used to designate the unborn entity in any state of development.

THE ONTOLOGICAL STATUS OF THE FETUS

Recent controversies about abortion focus on ethical problems of how we ought and ought not to treat fetuses and on what rights, if any, are possessed by fetuses. But a more basic issue is that of what kind of entities fetuses are. Following current usage, we shall refer to this as the problem of ontological status. An account of what kind of entities fetuses are will, of course, have important implications for all issues of the permissible treatment of fetuses. But the two issues are distinct, and we must first attempt to resolve the preliminary question.

Although there is no single problem of ontological status, several layers of questions may be distinguished: (1) whether the fetus is an individual organism, (2) whether the fetus is biologically a human being, (3) whether the fetus is psychologically a human being, and (4) whether the fetus is a person. Some who write on problems of ontological status attempt to develop a theory that specifies the conditions under which the fetus can be said, under which the fetus is in some sense human, and still others are concerned to explain the conditions, if any, under which the fetus is a person. It would be generally agreed that one attributes a more significant status to the fetus by saying that it is fully human being rather than simply saying that it is an individual organism, and also that one enhances its status still further by claiming that it is a person.

Many would be willing to concede tha an individual life begins at fertilization without conceding that there is a human being or a person at fertilization. Others would upgrade the fetus’s status by claiming that the fetus is a human being at fertilization, but not a person. Still others would grant full personhood at fertilization. Those who spouse these views sometimes differ only because they define one of the other of these terms differently, but most of the differences come from serious theoretical disagreement about what constitutes either life or humanity or personhood, including disagreements over which category correctly applies to the fetus.

THE CONCEPT OF HUMANITY

The concept of human life is an especially perplexing one, for it can mean at least two very different things. On the one hand, it can mean (a) biological human life, that set of biological classificatory characteristics (e.g., genetic ones) that set the human species apart from nonhuman species. (This sense may be coextensive with “individual organism.”) On the other hand, “human life” can also be used to mean (b) life that is distinctively human – that is, a life that is characterized by those properties which define the essence of humanity. These are largely psychological, as contrasted with biological properties. It is often said, for example, that the ability to use symbols, to imagine, to love, and to perform various higher intellectual skills are the most distinctive human properties, those that define humans as human. To have these properties, we sometimes say, it is to be a “human being.”

To illustrate the differences between these two sense. Infants with various exotic diseases are often born and die after a short period of time. They are born of human parents and certainly are classified in all relevant biological ways as human. However, they never exhibit any distinctively human traits, and do not have the potential for doing so. For such individuals it is not possible to make human life in the “biological” sense human in the “distinctively human” or “psychological” sense. We do not differentiate these two levels of life in discourse about any other animal species. We do not, for example, speak of making feline life feline. But we do meaningfully speak of making human life human, and this usage makes sense precisely because there exists in the language the dual meaning just discussed. In discussions of abortion, it is imperative that one be specific about which meaning is being employed when using an expression like the “taking of human life.” A great many proponents of abortion, and opponents as well, would agree that while biological life is taken by abortion, human life in the second or psychological sense is not.

THE CONCEPT OF PERSONHOOD

Personhood may or may not be different from either the biological sense or the psychological sense of “human life” just discussed. That is, one might claim that what it means to be a person is simply to have some properties that make an organism human in one or both of these senses. But other writers have suggested a list of rather more demanding criteria for being a person. A list of conditions for being person, similar to the following, is advanced by Mary Anne Warren in this chapter and has been put forward by several recent writers:

(a)    consciousness

(b)   self-consciousness

(c)    freedom to act on one’s own reasons

(d)   capacity to communicate with other persons

(e)   capacity to make moral judgments

(f)     rationality

          Sometimes it is said by those who propose such a list that in order to be a person an entity need only satisfy one criterion on the list – e.g., it must be conscious (a) but need not also satisfy the other conditions (b-f). Others say that all of these conditions must be satisfied in order to be a person. We shall see that it makes a major difference which of these two views one accepts. But the dominant and prior question is whether one needs to accept anything like this list at all – a question raised in the present chapter by Philip Devine and (at least elliptically) by Baruch Brody.

          Two issues have emerged concerning the proper analysis of the concept of person. First, there is considerable dispute concerning the range of factual characteristics an entity must possess in order to be a person. One might analyze personhood n terms of a rather abbreviated list of factual, though not necessarily biological characteristics – e.g., in terms of physical characteristics such as genetic structure, characteristics of consciousness such as rationality and free choice, and perhaps characteristics that can at present be applied only to human developmental histories such as having learned a language. If personhood can be explicated in this way by listing only elementary properties, such as genetic structure, then fetuses might well qualify as persons. But one might also analyze personhood in terms of a more demanding list of presumably factual properties, such as b-f above. Clearly one would be under a heavy burden of argument to show that a fetus is a person if criteria such as these must be satisfied. In any event, the first controversy is over precisely this issue of whether any of these more demanding properties must be present in order to be a person, and if so which such properties.

          A second dispute has emerged in connection with the first one. Several writers have suggested that the concept of personhood must be analyzed in terms of properties bestowed by human evaluations well as in terms of fatual properties possessed by persons. For example, it has been argued that in order to be a person one must be the bearer of legal rights and social responsibilities, and must be capable of being judged by others as morally praiseworthy or blameworthy. The central question in this controversy is whether ftuses are the sort of entity that it is appropriate to value in this way. This issue is closely related to what we shall discuss momentarily as the moral status of the fetus.

  It is certainly not self-evident that a fetus either is or is not a person in any of the above senses. Anyone who claims to have resolved these controversies about persons must be prepared either to defend a particular theory of personhood or to show that these issues have somehow been wrongly conceived.

          The problem of ontological status is complicated by a further factor related to the biological development of the fetus. It is important to state at what point of development an entity is to be distinguished as fully individual, or fully human, or fully person. This involves specifying at what point full ontological status and only indirectly concerns what status they have.

THE MORAL STATUS OF THE FETUS

          The notion of moral status might be explicated in several ways but probably is most easily understood in abortion contexts in terms of rights. Accordingly, to say that a fetus possesses moral status is to say that it possesses rights. But which rights, if any? Conservatives hold that unborn fetuses possess the same rights as those who are born and therefore have full moral status. Devine and Brody hold such a thesis for at least most stages of fetal development.          At least some moderates contend that fetuses have only some rights and therefore have only a partial moral status. Liberals, on the other hand, maintain that fetuses possess no rights and therefore no moral status, as Warren maintains. If this liberal account is accepted, then the unborn have no more right to life than a bodily cell or a tumor, and an abortion would seem to be no more morally objectionable than surgery to remove the tumor. On the other hand, if the conservative account is accepted, then the unborn possess all the rights possessed by other human beings, and an abortion would appear to be objectionable as any common killing – except perhaps those killings committed in self-defense.

          Theories of moral status are usually closely connected with theories of ontological status. The conservative holds that since the line between the human and the nonhuman must be drawn at conception, the fetus as full ontological status and therefore full moral status. The liberal may contend that since the line between the human and nonhuman must be drawn at birth, the fetus has no significant ontological status and therefore no moral status.

MORAL JUSTIFICATION

Editor's Note:

The following information on moral justification is lifted from Contemporary Issues In Bioethics, pp. 10-13, authored by Tom L. Beauchamp and LeRoy Walters. The italics and bold terms are mine; I intend to highlight some very important words for students to remember and examine. This book provides excellent information, knowledge, and moral (medical) cases and questions that can be explored and studied with rigor and interest. I highly recommend this book especially for college students.

MORAL JUSTIFICATION

Excerpts:

“Can answer about what is morally good and right be justified?” This question arises repeatedly even in popular discussions of morality. Questions of justification are matters of immediate practical significance, and at the same time they are related to the most theoretical  dimensions of philosophy. A good case can be made that philosophy in general, in all its fields, is primarily concerned with the criticism and justification of positions or points of view – whether the subject matter under discussion is religion, science, law, education, mathematics, or some other field. Similarly a good case can be made that the central questions in ethics are those of justification. But what is required in order to justify some moral point of view?

Moral judgments are justified by giving reasons for them. Not all reasons, however, are good reasons, and not all good reasons are sufficient for justification. For example, a good reason for involuntarily committing certain mentally ill persons to institutions is that they present a clear and present danger to other persons. Many believe that this reason is also sufficient to justify various practices of involuntary commitment. By contrast, a reason for commitment that is sometimes offered as a good reason, but which many people consider a bad reason (because it involves a deprivation of liberty), is that some mentally ill persons are dangerous  to themselves. If someone holds that commitment on grounds of danger to self is a good reason and is solely sufficient to justify commitment, that person should be able to give some further account of why this reason is good and sufficient. That is, the person should be able to give further justifying reasons for the belief that the reason offered is good sufficient. The person might refer, for example, to the dire consequences for the mentally ill that will occur if someone fails to intervene. The person might also invoke certain principles about the importance of caring for the needs of the mentally ill, etc. In short, the person is expected to give a set of reasons that amount to an argued defense of his or her perspective on the issues.

Moral arguments.  Every belief we hold is subject to challenge and therefore to justification by reasoned argument. No matter what we believe about the justifiability of intervening to protect the mentally ill, our views are subject to criticism and require defense. However, because not all reasons that are offered in support of a belief are sufficient reasons, many reasons that are advanced in an argument fail to support the conclusion reached. Logic is that branch of philosophy concerned with the relationship between  reasons and conclusions drawn from the reasons. More precisely, logic describes the relationship between premises and conclusions that are correctly drawn from the premises. Logic is thus concerned to explain why arguments succeed and fail. But what is an argument – in particular a moral argument – and what role do arguments play in the attempt of justification?

An argument is a group of related statements where one statement in the group, the conclusion, is claimed to be either the consequence of the others or to be justified by the others, which are called variously evidence, reasons, grounds, and premises. In general, every argument can be put into the following form: X is correct; therefore, Y is correct. Arguments are rarely presented in this simplified form, however. More often they are submerged in complex patterns of discourse; they are disguised by rhetoric, irrelevancies, redundancies, and subtle connections with other arguments.

Moreover, an argument in which conclusions correctly follow from premises does not necessarily constitute a proof. The term “proof” refers to a sound argument, that is, one that establishes the correctness of its conclusion. Just as there are good and bad reasons, so there are good and bad arguments, and a person may argue adeptly for some conclusion and still not prove anything. In general, logic is not concerned with soundness or proofs because (with one minor exception) logic alone cannot determine whether the premises in an argument are correct or incorrect. Thus, in ethics some form of evidence or reflection must determine whether the premises used are acceptable in order to know whether an argument proves anything. It is the business of logic to tell us whether conclusions follow from premises; it is the business of some substantive inquiry such as ethics to tell us whether the premises should be accepted in the first place. Only ethics, not logic, can tell us if it is ever morally permissible to deceive those who are sick or dying. But only logic can tell us whether we have made a mistake in the way we formally argue about this topic. For example, it can tell us if we have made mistaken inferences, are guilty of inconsistencies, have a sufficient number of premises, etc.

Levels of Justification in Moral Argument.  Different kinds of discourse are involved in moral reasoning and argument. A moral judgment, for example, expresses a decision, verdict, or conclusion about a particular action or character trait. Moral rules are general guides governing actions of a certain kind; they assert what ought (or ought not) to be done in a range of particular cases. Moral principles are more general and more fundamental than such rules, and serve (at least in some systems of ethics) as the justifying reasons for accepting rules. A simple example of a moral rule is, “It is wrong to deceive patients,” but the principle of autonomy may be the basis of several moral rules of the deception-is-wrong variety. Finally, ethical theories are bodies of principles and rules that are more or less systematically related.

The different  kinds of moral disclosure can also be developed as a theory of levels of justification. Judgments about what ought to be done can be viewed as justified (i.e., good and sufficient independent reasons for the judgments given) by rules, which in turn are justified by principles, which then are justified by ethical theories. This thought can be diagrammed as follows (where the arrow indicates the direction of justification, the particular or less general moral assertion being justified by appeal to the more general):

Theory

Principle

Rule

Moral Judgment

+++

Consequentialist theory (e.g., utilitarianism)

Principle of autonomy

Rule of confidentiality of a physician's information

Judgment that the psychiatrist's confidential information

should remain confidential (undisclosed to others)

+++

The particular judgment made by the psychiatrist (and one judge) that confidential information should remain undisclosed in this case is shown in this diagram to be justified in terms of a rule of confidentiality, which in turn is justified in terms of a more general principle of autonomy, which is then justified by a more general theory that recognizes the importance of consequential appeals. (Of course, more than one rule or principle may be involved at these levels in the attempt to justify a judgment.)

This discussion of justification and argument implicitly raises the question of the best justifying reasons and theories – and thus of the best premises to use in moral arguments.

                                          

TIPS/INFO RE ADVEX THIS WEEK.

Hi, guys! I'd like to remind you, again, about the importance of this exercise (i.e., Advisory Exam). Don't miss it. The types of questions (both Theo 111 and Theo 131):  a) True or False, b) Multiple Choice, c) Matching Type, and d) Discussion/Case Evaluation. Some names of biblical figures and moral philosophers, places, events, and terminologies used in these courses occupy a significant part.

For Morality, review the following:
1. All the five ethical theories (consequentialist, nonconsequentialist, relativism, absolutism, determinism) and other concepts or principles such as virtue ethics, value, fatalism, fundamentalism, egoism, autonomy, beneficence, common good, justice, gradualness, altruism, and other "Ignatian" values or educational worldview.

2. Study and evaluate these moral cases:

Case 1: A little girl gets hurt (physically) from heavy spanking and is refused to eat supper after her despondent mother discovers she comes home late. They are living in a community where drug addicts and criminals abound. Is the mother’s conduct acceptable? Explain why.

Case 2: A young person is seriously injured in a vehicular accident. The blooded victim has to be rushed to the hospital for immediate treatment. The attending doctor tells the victim's relatives that a blood transfusion is necessary to save his life. But the relatives refuse to let the doctor employ this "standard life-saving procedure" on account of the fact that they (and the victim) are members of the Seventh Day Adventist church; they believe that the "blood procedure" violates their basic religious beliefs. Should the doctor ignore the intent of the relatives and proceed with the blood transfusion procedures to save life? If he does it, does he violate any moral obligation to his patient? What ought to be done in this critical situation?  

Case 3: A big group of starving victims of typhoon forcibly enters the warehouse of National Food Authority and take away several sacks of rice. They insist that the goods government distributed to the typhoon victims are not enough. They also claim for several days they are starving. What they do is just right for their action addresses their dire need for food. Some government officials criminally charged those who participate in the trouble. Is the action of the people justifiable or not? Defend your moral stance.  

For Theo 111: The exam covers the topics
1. Terminologies
2. Revelation and the Word of God
3. The Bible
- Three Assumptions about the Bible
- Canonicity and internal composition of the Bible
4. Creation stories (e.g., 6-day creation); scientific interpretations
5. The saga of Abraham (The movie: "Abraham: Friend of God)
6. Hebrew Bible
7. Protestant Bible

Discussion:
What is the place of theology in what scientists have discovered or known about the beginning of the universe?