This is a wonderful clip for thinking about religion and ethics. For those not familiar with The West Wing the bald gentleman plays Toby Ziegler, a senior aide to the President. In this episode, President Bartlett is face with a decision on whether to pardon a criminal due to be executed.
Non-religious people tend to think that religious people suppose they have some sort of ‘monopoly’ on truth when it comes to ethics, but this clip shows the ‘uncomfortableness‘ of religious ethics.
A long long time ago Plato recorded Socrates posing a difficulty for all those who believe right and wrong are what the god(s) say they are. This was the position held by the young and ‘upright’ Euthyphro.
Just post the YouTube URL on a line on its own, using the Text (HTML) editor, and it will automatically embed it – I’ve done that in this post.
The trick is not to paste it in using the Visual editor, as it will automatically create a link to the YouTube URL, preventing the embed from working.
Hey David, how are you?
thank you so much – I just looked properly – you’re right as always… thanks for your help!!
hope you’re well are you? do you ever hear from Mark Tennant?