Here’s my opening paragraph from Sunday’s sermon. I was a little bit happy with it.
It’s not very cool these days to say you’re interested in “morality”. You can say you’re interested in “ethics”, yes. That’s because “ethics” has a kind of cutting-edge, out-there-in-the-complex-modern-world feel to it, as if you’re engaging in highly specialised and hair-splitting decisions that the advance of technology has thrown up at us, like “if some rogue scientist has cloned a goat crossed with a seagull, is it ok to harvest its bone-marrow to use in weapons technology?” That kind of thing.
I think about the goat-seagull conundrum all the time.
I use morality and ethics interchangeably, although there are those, especially in academic circles, who make the distinction. However, I understand why some would prefer to use ethics and not morality, as you point out. It is because the word moral lends itself to the word moralistic, which is a bad trait, while there is no equivalent construction for ethics. To be unethical isn’t the same as being moralistic. Moralistic implies narrow-mindedness and intolerance, while being unethical is to have done the wrong thing.
If its bone marrow is going to be weaponised, then it was unlikely to be a rogue scientist and more likely a secret govt programme.
How did you define the difference?
Depends which government?
Yes, but when you sacrifice it on the altar, which sin does the bird-goat atone for?
Lol
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