BD, I might as well join those who have found your pondering of how those of us who don't live in fear of your punisher/loving god can have ethics.

This life and how I choose to live it is the only thing in the universe that is truly mine. If I want my life to be of value I will live it as well as I can. Quite simple really.

Now that is resolved you might move on to another question in a similar vein.

How do those who believe that no matter how well they live they falied failed to meet the standard and who believe that almost no matter what they do it will be forgiven have a basis for a consistant ethical standard?

I'll help out here and provide what I consider the answer. Those who do hold that belief and manage to live for the most part ethically do so for the same reason that those of us who don't hold the belief. It's the only way they know to live a life of meaning. They might dress it up in different words based around honoring Christ etc but essentially it's the same thing.

Some/many of those who hold that belief fail to see the value in living life that way just as some/many who don't hold to that belief also fail to see the value.

It's not so hard to understand really once you get put aside the propaganda you have been taught about the meaningless and hollow lives of those without Christ. That stuff is marketing not reality.

R0bert

Oddly, although in Pericles' first post in this thread he wrote, "To believe that we have to teach ethics - even that we have such a thing as a Code of Ethics - is an admission of failure", he joined the St James Ethics Centre's ethics discussion forum at http://www.ethics.org.au/ethics_forum/default.asp a fortnight ago and has been lurking there off and on since.

Perhaps he's hoping to learn how to admit failure.

There's simply no pleasing you is there MikeM?

I follow a link that you supplied so that I could find out a little more about the background to this obsession of yours. That's why you provided it, wasn't it?

When I got there I thought I could usefully take part in some discussions and deepen my understanding of ethics. Unfortunately every thread seems to be flooded with your own contributions, which of course makes them impossible to contribute to. I wonder how many others have simply given in to your arrogant hectoring and walked away? I would give some more examples here, except that they are terribly repetitive and universally boorish.

Eric, if you are recommending to employers that they push for mandatory ethics courses simply as evidence that the individual with a degree has been subjected to the disciplines of rigorous analysis and reasoning, that's fine and reasonable. I remain unconvinced however that on its own it can make "a significant enough majority" (as you claim) more ethical, and in any event I'm certain that it could not be measured in any realistic way.

My concerns are that the promoters of this course will inevitably make a connection between the content and the outcome, forgetting that - as you point out - at the end of the day, it's all about passing exams and nothing about individual behaviours.

Just a quick question, though. Is capitalism an ethical concept in itself?

Ethics is a biased opinion that actully has no place in any attempt at fair play...

In truth it's just another tainted (as all are) agenda pushing its way.

There is nothing wrong with the concept of fair play, but when one learns at the Aussie Uni's in the current left wing faddish state they are, it is dishonist to present ethics as anything but another bunch of leftist robots stamped and passed pushing their own agenda.

ethics learned via the hands of life from street living to the biggest capo board room must surely be more realistic. One cannot learn life and its game from a book, let alone when (as Perc says vying to pass exams) or in a slanted lefty enviroment such as a uni.

Pericles wrote, "Unfortunately every thread seems to be flooded with your own contributions, which of course makes them impossible to contribute to."

That is not what other contributors find. Besides a number in Australia we have active contributors from Canada, the US, Qatar and New Zealand.

"Is capitalism an ethical concept in itself?"

No.

Ethical, compared with what? Today's regulated capitalism embraces a range of economic frameworks within which some players are ethical and some are not.

What are the alternatives? Anarchy; feudalism; socialism; communism; libertarian "capitalism" in which the government capitulates and lets businesses do what they like (as in Russia since the fall of the USSR)?

Modern capitalism is often justified by its unique ability to generate prosperity. How prosperous do we need to be to enjoy quality of life and achieve Maslow's final stage of self-actualisation?

Do chief executives need to be paid 7 or 8 figure salaries to perform their jobs?

There is an ethical issue in terms of our using up and exhausting the planet's resources. There is another in terms of, if prosperity is generated, how should it be shared amongst stakeholders: shareholders, executives, employees, customers, and those affected by externalities of the resources that it consumes and the waste that it creates? There is another again in how to discourage greedy executives from lying, and cheating everyone else.

Mike M

Acts chapter 2, start to finish :)

specially v 42 to end...

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=51&chapter=2&version=31

cheers