Moral Choices: An Introduction to Ethics (Hardcover)

An unhelpful introduction to Christian ethics. Its chapters cover the main controversies issues that dominate political theater: abortion, infertility technology, cloning and genetic engineering, death penalty, sexual orientation, and war. The analysis is often boiled down to a simplistic "either/or" scenario that doesn't acknowledge third ways and creative solutions. Arguments favoring the author's perspective are given authoritatively, while arguments against the author are dismissed. Only a few chapters contain balance, and little in the book would convince anyone to change their mind on an issue, or even help an unsure person make up their mind, unless that person had thought little about the issue and was easily persuaded. Some of the lowlights: * The first example describes a homosexual HIV-positive Latino man on welfare who has gunshot wounds to the stomach and who you can "reasonably assume" is a gang member. Seriously, that's the scenario. The author suggests some people would say that this is just a case of "reaping what one sows". * Arguments are inconsistent. In the abortion, cloning, and euthanasia chapters, even the possibility that an innocent human life might be taken is reason enough to never do the procedure. The euthanasia chapter states, "Scripture is clear that such matters belong exclusively to God--that is, there are some prerogatives in life that are only God's, the direct taking of life being one of them." But in the death penalty and war chapters, taking life is suddenly okay, and the chance that innocent lives will be taken is no longer a deciding factor - in the war chapter, the accidental taking of innocent life isn't even considered. Another example is the death penalty chapter - the fact that the crime rate is "much lower in countries with Islamic law" is taken as evidence that harsh punishments may be a good deterrent, but the fact that the murder rate is lower in European countries that have abolished the death penalty is considered irrelevant because "the murder rate is very complex and may be affected by factors other than the deterrent." * Random proof-texting is common. "A time to die" in Ecclesiastes 3:2 is taken in the euthanasia chapter to mean that that time to die is appointed by God and no one has the right to decide it themselves, but "A time to be born" is ignored in the infertility chapter. Surrogate parenthood and the use of donor sperm or eggs is considered "outside the creation norm" because they're not part of Genesis 1-2, but genetic engineering and bypassing infertility are considered to be within the creation norm. * Unsupportable statements are common. Imagine making claims like, "In the pre-Civil War South, slavery clearly benefitted more people than it harmed" or "Scripture looks skeptically on any reproductive intervention that goes outside the married couple for genetic material".