Saltpetre, conscience is indeed a very complicated matter. I wrote this article as a stimulus and I am glad to see it has generated a fair amount of thought and discussion.

Yuyutsu, your moral convictions cannot be very strong given what you have written. I think your advocacy of the legalisation of the immoral is a stark example of the decline of moral reasoning in our society. That you think it immoral for the state to protect those so vulnerable that they are incapable of asking for protection, I find quite flabbergasting.

We do protect animals, by the way, though some argue that protection is insufficient, and we even protect the embryos of animals in certain cases.

Montgomery, I don't understand your point. You say, " GlenC, I have to wonder if you're putting words into Mrs Gora's mouth. She mentioned moral principles and even natural law, and merely said that ethics and religious instruction were compatible." I don't think I put any words into Mrs Gora's mouth. I merely repeated what she said. I even enclosed it in quotation marks. What she said, and what I questioned, was: "Without moral principles, rational thinking and ethical judgement have no starting point."
I said, and still think, that by implying that rational thinking about ethics cannot proceed until after moral principles have been agreed, she is implying that to do ethics, we have to import some starting principles from somewhere beyond our own resources. That is pretty close to arguing that we cannot develop ethical principles without firstly accepting religious tenets and the existence of some out-of-world intelligence to tell us how to behave. And that is what the Sydney Archbishops, the religious right wing of the Coalition government and other trenchant opponents of ethics classes in public schools argue.
You imply that I disputed Mrs Gora's contention that, "In theory, ethics classes and religious instruction are not only compatible but intricately linked. You cannot teach ethics without teaching the principles of ethical behaviour, and most of the principles we adhere to in the Western world are based on Judeo-Christian commandments such as “thou shalt not murder” or “thou shalt not steal” or “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” I didn't dispute that for I agree with her that there is considerable similarity between the rules that Christian religions teach and the rules that ethicists work out from first principles using only rational processes.

Continued…

… But Mrs Gora's understanding seems to be that ethics is a process of getting acquainted with and adopting pre-existing moral principles. It's a circular argument. You start with moral principles and end up using ethics to discover or establish that they are moral principles. Ethics is surely a process of using rational functions to work out from first principle what it's most sensible to accept as moral principles.
And I think that Mrs Gora, and the Christian apologists, draw a very long bow when they imply that before Christianity, there can have been no understanding that murdering and stealing were bad habits for societies to engage in. As I suggested, it is preposterous to assume, as most Christians seem to, that Jesus invented the golden rule.
By the way, if religious instruction and ethics were completely compatible as you come close to saying is Mrs Gora's position, why would we need both? Why not just go with ethics and avoid all the fights that inevitably arise when one religion flexes its doctrinal muscles against another's; or its current understanding of what the Scriptures say against last century's? Isn't it the case that most of what now pose as tenets of Christian religious practice were known and observed in many societies long before Jesus went back-packing in India?

@Glen C.

A more general point is being made when saying that all ethical systems have to start from somewhere. It wasn't to say meta-ethical positions like deontologism (an a priori system - categorical principles that shape the entire system) is necessarily true rather, that no one metaethical position is undisputed, with first principles accepted by all. Philosophical journals continue to publish articles about Divine Command Theory, Kantianism, biologism, natural law, utilitarianism etc.

Where do you stand with respect to the existence of universals? In trying to answer that question I hope it will bring out the point.

So all ethical system require a metaethics so that the reasoning makes sense - so that it can reach the goal of morality: to order human actions to properly match the way the world really is, so that what we do doesn't hurt us. But one has to know those goals before hand. When you leave your house you take a particular direction because you have a goal, a purpose - movement alone won't give you that. It is the same with moving the intellect along a reasoning process - in what direction should it go? What are needed to direct the intellect are concepts about what is really fundamental about the world and human life. And it is important to point out today, these fundamentals cannot be demonstrated in any physical scientific way - they are theological/philosophical claims - things you need to before you can read off meanings from physical facts.

It doesn't work to insist that the meaning of the word 'rational' is self evident. It's a word about human purposes, and includes ultimately the purpose and meaning of life itself.

But we know that in asking the question we become more human.

God bless.

P.s. If you'd like to know in what sense ethical reasoning depends upon God this is an excellent guide http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/07/does-morality-depend-on-god.html

Yes Miskha, Three things:

Firstly I am seriously questioning you morality and I am calling your consciense as in error.

There is a Judaen tradition and there is a Christian tradition.

There is a divergence from the Judaeo tradition or the old testament and the Jewish book, with the establishment of the Christian tradition as spoken by Christ and the New Testament.

The traditions clash often.

The irreconcilable difference is the forgiving nature of the Christian tradition and the vengenful nature of the Judaen tradition.

You must show us all how you have recconciled this fundamental difference.
You cannot.
You in consequence cherry pick moralities to support your positions.

That shows an error in your consciense.

Secondly 'Israel was established as a Jewish state.'

Yes ... by Jewish people who never applied the conditions of the Balfour declaration,

'... the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, ...'

Clearly Isreal has never extinguished the rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Israel so Israel is then in fact a multi-cultural state that draws it's legal systems legitimacy from the Judean religion.

Just a we in Australia have a multi-cultural community but our justice system is based in a Christian belief.

The Jewish community when claiming Israel as a Jewish state attempt to extinguish, in world opinion, the rights of a claim to Israeli statehood of Israeli Muslims, Christian and other communities.

You might have to agree these groups don't share the Cultural tradition of the traditional Jewish Machol Dance.

You issued an anti-semitic slur against an Australian Festival when the organisers of the festival recognised the deceipt in calling the traditional Jewish Machol Dance, Israeli, and then acted on their consciense in demanding honesty.

That about sums up your attitudes.

When you are confronted with the dishonesty of Israeli behaviour you do not employ Western morality nor consciense in arriving at a western reasoned position.

GlenC and Montgomery, you are both correct to a certain degree. In order to think rationally on a topic and make an ethical judgement, I do believe you need to start with a relevant moral principle. I did not, however, say how one could or should arrive at those principles. I did not, as GlenC claims, imply that there were no moral principles prior to Christianity, and nor do any of the Christians with whom I associate. I gave Judeo-Christian examples because they are familiar and because our society and law have been built on such examples.

Personally-speaking, most of my principles were thrashed out as an atheist. My parents did not allow me to attend RE at school so I grew up entirely free of religious indoctrination. I'd dearly love to see the Classics taught in our schools, but I think it would lessen our understanding of natural law to exclude some of the greatest Christian thinkers on this topic, such as Aquinas. I think there are many ways of arriving at moral principles, but in hindsight I could have arrived at the same conclusions via a shorter route if I had been educated in the various Christian teachings of Augustine, Aquinas, etc. It may have been an even shorter route had I been educated in the teachings of the various Church councils, but I’ve always been the sort of person to question everything, so I probably would have taken the longer route regardless.

As for ethics classes vs RE, I think both are flawed in practice, but would favour the reform of RE rather than its replacement by so-called ethics classes that merely indoctrinate moral relativism. In theory, good religious education would include Plato, for example, because of his influence on early Christian thinking, but primarily because he is a giant in the area of moral reasoning. I think it should also be remembered that some people would rather not spend their entire lives grappling with moral philosophy and would prefer to be offered a starting point, and I believe that starting point should be a Judeo-Christian one.