Grade 12 Religion Test Review: Unit Three
1. Create a chart that compares religious determinism, social determinism and religious determinism. Try to come up with as many similarities and differences as you can. Prove that Freud as a determinist.
2. Using any graphic organizer of your choice, compare and contrast Pelagius, St Augustine and Calvin’s theory of predestination. Be sure to come up with as many similarities and differences as you can.
3. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, both 18 year-olds, were wealthy and brilliant. They had just graduated from college when they brutally murdered a 14 year-old boy in Chicago. During college the two had been addicted to reading crime magazines and novels. They experimented with petty theft and arson. Then together they came up with the idea of committing the perfect crime. The challenge of planning, executing and getting away with a murder intrigued and fascinated them. For what they later described as the “intellectual thrill” of it, they kidnapped young Bobby Franks. They beat him on the head with a chisel, suffocated him and then phoned his wealthy parents demanding $10,000 in ransom money. The family called the police who soon found the boy’s body half-buried under a railway. When confronted the two quickly confessed and tried for murder, punishable by death.
a. According to hard determinism, compatibilism and libertarianism could Nathan and Richard be held accountable for what they did?
b. What do you think the justice system should do with Nathan and Richard? Explain how your view regarding what should have been done to them is consistent with determinism, libertarianism and compatibilism.
c. If hard determinism is true, what should the criminal justice system do with violent criminals (Jail, rehabilitation, set free, execution etc.)?
d. If humans do not have the ability to choose their actions, can ethics and morality even exist?
4. List 3 techniques that the media uses to sell products to you. List 3 negative consequences of living in such a materialistic world focussed on the principles of consumerism.
5. A woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to produce. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $ 1,000, which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said, "No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it." So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug for his wife.
Use Kohlberg’s 6 stages of moral development to provide reasons for Heinz’ course of action. In other words assuming that Heinz was operating out of the “fear of punishment’ stage of moral development what motivation would he have had for stealing the drug. Do this for all six stages by filling in the chart below.
STAGE DESCRIPTION / Explanation of Moral Reasoning Favouring Heinz’s Theft6. How do Catholics reconcile the fact that God wills everyone to be saved yet allows some to be damned?
7. The Catechism of the Catholic Church has the following to say about organ donation;
2296 Organ transplants are in conformity with the moral law if the physical and psychological dangers and risks incurred by the donor are proportionate to the good sought for the recipient. Donation of organs after death is a noble and meritorious act and is to be encouraged as a manifestation of generous solidarity. It is not morally acceptable if the donor or those who legitimately speak for him have not given their explicit consent. It is furthermore morally inadmissible directly to bring about the disabling mutilation or death of a human being, even in order to delay the death of other persons.
i) In your own words summarize the Catholic Church’s teaching on organ transplantation.
ii) Even though the church’s teaching on the morality of organ transplants is clear, it is a bit lacking when it comes
to specifying the correct means by which someone can attain organs when they are in need. Read the following
excerpt on organ donation from http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/kan/kan_03organdonation1.html
Catholic Church holds that the virtue of charity is the norm for the justification of the cadaveric, and living organ donation and transplantation. Pius XII in his address to ophthalmologists in 1956 argues that acts of donation cannot be viewed as a duty or as obligatory. Such acts are supererogatory and not obligatory. Moreover, John Paul II justifies organ donation and transplantation based on charity in general. In the address on blood and organ donations of August 1984, John Paul II commended the National Association of Italian volunteer blood and organ donors for their spirit and initiative. He urged them "to promote and encourage such a noble and meritorious act as donating your own blood or an organ to those of your brothers and sisters who have need of it." In addition, in an address to a Congress on Renal Illness and Transplants (April 30, 1990), he speaks about the Church's main concern for renal illness and donations. The Pope asks the directors of Catholic institutions to encourage this generous act of organ donations: "Those who believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave his life for the salvation of all, should recognize in the urgent need for a ready availability of organs for renal transplants a challenge to their generosity and fraternal love." Further, in his address to the participants of the first International Congress of the Society for Organ Sharing (June 20, 1992), the Pope considered organ transplantation as a new way of serving the human family. In organ transplantation man/woman has found a way to give himself/herself, in blood and body. This gesture allows others to continue to live.
This gift is actually an authentic form of human and Christian solidarity. Similarly, John Paul II writes in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae no. 86 that organ donation is an act of love when it is done in an ethical manner. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ establishes the supreme act of love. This extends a deep meaning to the donor's offering, which is saving the life of another person. Love (charity) constitutes the main element in organ donation and transplantation, especially in the case of the organ donor.
Care for the other and altruism are the secular terms that we can find in the literature on organ donation and transplantation. Even if many use these terms, the basic idea behind them is charity. Here, care for the other or altruism in organ donation is not self-sacrifice alone, but there is sufficient self-concern for one's own self. Many scholars justify organ donation on the basis of altruism, charity, love or care for the other. From what has been stated there is no moral obligation for organ donation. The virtue of charity is the main motive for it.
According to the Catholic perspective, donors can donate organs except brain and reproductive organs. The brain is significantly determinative of personal identity. The reproductive organs are associated with reproductive identity. Neither the brain nor the reproductive organs may be procured from human beings or animals for transplant to a human person (Evangelium Vitae no. 63).
Church also holds that "to take tissue from a live fetus for transplantation is unethical" (Evangelium Vitae no. 63). Great concern must be given to ensure that all cadveric fetal tissue to be used for transplantation is derived from natural miscarriages or from ethically obtained cell lines.
Commercialisation has a serious negative impact on many of the medical and ethical values intimately connected with organ transplantation. The Catholic Church is against paid organ donation. Parts of the human body are not to be treated as commodities. Trade in human body parts is unacceptable, as in any other disrespectful use of the organs or tissues of a living or deceased person. At the World Congress of the Transplantation Society (Rome-2000), John Paul II said "any procedure which tends to commercialize human organs or to consider them as items of exchange or trade must be considered morally unacceptable, because to use the body as an "object" is to violate the dignity of the human person." Paid organ donation spoils the spirit of altruism. In paid organ donation, one does not fully respect the other.
a. What biblical passage (biblical event associated with the life of Jesus) do they use to justify organ donation.
b. What is the name of the encyclical that encourages the ethical donation of organs.
c. What is the magesterium and what is the church’s official teaching on organ donation?
d. What are the Church’s reasons for encouraging the donation of organs?
e. The church specifically forbids the transplantation of two organs. Which organs are they and why?
f. What is the Catholic Church’s stance on paid organ donation and why?
g. Assume that your father needs a kidney transplant and the doctors tell you that your father will most likely not be able to receive a donor kidney on time because his name has been placed last on the recipient list. Fearing the worst, you go online in order to discover alternate ways of acquiring a kidney for your father.How would you use the above teachings in order to form your conscience around the issue of organ donation and acquisition? Use the five steps that one should use when developing their conscience appropriately in the Catholic Faith.
8. Provide an example from your own life for each of the four excusing conditions.
http://ww3.tvo.org/video/162453/patricia-churchland-neuromorality