Philosophical Ethics: Naturalism - Essay Example

The word ethics comes from the Greek word “ethos” which means customs or habits (Council On Ethics 7). Ethics is how people are supposed to act. Ethics is different from morals, morality because ethics shows the theory of what is the right action, and morals show practice. Ethics on the other hand is not only restricted to a moral code but also blankets the whole of the ideals and behaviors. Ethics describes what is right and what is wrong (Council On Ethics 13). Sidney Hook, one of the philosophy professors at New York University says that the use of anything else that is not science oriented or does not get its answers from science is a “failure of nerve” (Habermas 77).

He strongly supports the commitment to methodological naturalism. Science or scientific methods helps us to know what does or does not exist. There is a lot of opposition in supernaturalism from naturalism. This is because there are is no evidence to show the existence of supernatural powers. Religion or religious beliefs tend to explain that there is existence of God, spirits and immortality. Naturalists on the other hand believe that this is not true because there is no evidence to support this (Bunge 101).

There is also no evidence to support the issue of fairies and elves as presented in many children stories. People in religion should provide evidence of this existence so that scientific study should be conducted on them to provide people with the right answers. Morality dictates that killing a person is wrong or abortion is wrong. Naturalists will argue out because of self-defense in terms of murder. If a thief attacks a person in their home and the owner of the house kills them, that is self-defense and the charge may be lower or may not be there at all.

On the other hand, non-naturalists will claim that this is wrong because the blanket word for killing someone no matter the circumstance is murder. In the case of