Do moral and civil laws make conflicting demands on human behavior and why?
Requirements: 800-900 words
Instructions: Please watch and read required sources listed under required sources before attempting to answer the questions. Your answers to the questions total should be around 300-400 words, please thoroughly answer all questions. All references should be properly cited following APA formatting guidelines to prevent plagiarism.
For each peer response below (they are highlighted in yellow) please write a substantive response (over 200 words) to each response below.
Sources Required:
Watch: God and Morality by Bishop Barron
Watch: The Reality of Moral Law by C.S. Lewis
Read: Attachment titled “Chapter 5 Morality and the Law Excerpt by Armenio”
Answer the questions below, numbers 1-5.
1. Do moral and civil laws make conflicting demands on human behavior and why?
2. How are conflicts between conscience and the law to be resolved? Please make sure you use credible resources to respond to this including the videos used here.
3. Bishop Barron makes a very poignant comment, ”God is the name we give to the fundamental moral good in their unconditional form.” What are your thoughts on this comment with regards to humans and morality?
4. In Mere Christianity video, there is a striking difference between what humans OUGHT to do and what we DO NOT do. What does this mean with regards to the issue of human morality?
5. Finally, where do you stand (your opinion) in the midst of this discussion on morality and the law? What is the potential struggle you or any human faces with regard to this subject?
Peer Response #1
Moral and civil laws make conflicting demands on humans because civil laws are enacted by a government and moral laws are revealed by God. The ending of chapter five states that human authorities cannot declare something deemed evil by God to be legal, making these types of laws immoral. The most prominent example of a law opposing God’s will is the fact that slavery was legal in America and is still legal in other parts of the world, proving that civil laws can directly oppose the moral laws of God.
There isn’t a universal process for resolving conflicts between the conscience and the law. Some people have protested and utilized civil disobedience to change unjust or immoral laws. According to the Pew Research Center, cases have been argued that maintain individuals don’t have legal rights to be excused from serving same-sex couples, for example, if that violates their religious beliefs (2010). The best way to avoid having to choose between your conscience and the law is to take yourself out of compromising situations like working in healthcare. Otherwise, your only option is to take the long journey of trying to amend or overturn an immoral law.
I agree with this comment because I believe that, regardless of religion, people have an internal force that pushes them to do the right thing and makes them feel guilty when they don’t. I liked Barron’s distinction that “good” isn’t a thing we produce with our will; “good” imposes itself on the will to push us in the right direction. Our natural inclination to be good and seek out good reflects the moral law that God instills in us.
To figure out which things humans do and do not do, one would only have to observe what does or does not happen. We cannot use this process to figure out what humans ought to do because one can’t observe human thoughts. This reality means that the only clues we have about human moral law are within us as our conscience, guiding our behavior toward “good.” We can only assume that, because we have a conscience, other humans also have consciences compelling them to act right. The only caveat is that we can’t figure out what others’ consciences are telling them; we only know what our conscience tells us.
In my opinion, morality has very little to do with the law. Many laws were written with hateful, harmful intentions and serve interests that directly oppose the wishes of God. There are plenty of legal actions that are immoral, and quite a few illegal actions that have nothing to do with one’s morality. I think the issue many face with this idea is that when we talk about living a “moral” life, we usually mean more than just law-abiding. To be a moral person, we have to go beyond legality and do things that aren’t required of us such as caring for the needs of others. In short, behaving legally does not equate to behaving morally.
Peer Response # 2 CR
Moral and civil laws should not make conflicting demands on human nature in an ideal world. This is because, according to Chapter 5 of Morality and the Law, for civil laws to be true, they have to derive from the original Ten Commandments. Therefore, civil laws should not make conflicting demands with morals. But, many people in the government do not follow the Ten Commandments when creating laws, as not everyone follows moral law. For example, one of the Ten Commandments is not to murder, but there is considerable debate in the United States about abortion, whether or not it is murder, and whether or not it should be legal. This is a civil law that conflicts directly with moral law.
Conflicts between conscience and the law are resolved through discussion, eventually leading to change. An example of this happening in history is the abolishment of slavery. The idea of slavery is immoral as it causes certain people to be viewed as less than others. Through many years of discussion and eventually the Civil War, slavery in the United States was abolished, removing this conflict (U.S. Slavery, 2023). Often, there are laws that conflict with morals, and it is essential to work to try to change the laws to be as moral as possible.
I agree with Bishop Barron’s comment because that is precisely what God is. If God is where morality comes from, God would have to be the fundamental moral good. God acts as our conscience and gives us our morals to help us know what is right and what is wrong. But I feel as though this comment also points to the idea that morality does not necessarily need God. There can be a fundamental moral good, just in human nature. The fundamental moral good can be discovered through learning about life and utilizing the conscience. Although the conscience might be through God, this comment makes me think that God is just something it utilized to give a name to our conscience and morals.
What this means is that we are all guided by our conscience and our morals, these ideologies tell us what we ought to do and also what we should not do. But as humans, if we do have free will, we have the opportunity to follow certain laws, not to follow certain laws, and we can even chose not to follow any laws. Therefore, while our morals are defined through God, we have the option with the idea of free will to chose what we do not do, even if it is something that we ought to do.
In my opinion, morality should follow very closely to the law. If something is morally wrong, it should be against the law and in a just society, there should be punishment for breaking moral law. It can be difficult for someone who does follow moral law to watch as there are laws being made against morals, as it can cause you or others harm when people break moral law.
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