Test this Wednesday

Just reminding you that we will have a take-home test this Wednesday. I will e-mail you the test at 3pm, and you'll respond with your answers by 5pm, which should be plenty of time to answer. Please let everyone else know in case they don't check out the blog between now and Wednesday.

Here are a few review questions:

1. How can the existence of evil in the world be explained if God is both all-powerful and benevolent? A distinction is worth making here between the actions of people, for which they are responsible, on the one hand, and the occurrence of natural events/disasters on the other. With relation to natural disasters (hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, etc.), why would God allow those things to happen?
2. St. Augustine claims that God has given us free will (this is how he attempts to solve the problem of evil). However, this view is logically problematic. How can free will be compatible with the idea of God's omniscience (absolute knowledge)? If God knows what we are going to do at every moment, even before we do something, how can we be justified in believing that we have free will? Or, if God has created a plan for the universe, and everything that happens is a part of that plan, including the things we do, then how does the idea of free will make sense?
3. Divine Command Theory is a moral theory that says that doing what God commands is what is moral. This presupposes that God is good, which is something most of us actually believe. If we further ask why God is good, as Socrates asked Euthyphro, we are faced with a dilemma: something has to make God good. The question can then be stated as follows: Is God good because he's good, or because he is God? Socrates shows that any answer to this question is going to be problematic for one who believes that morality somehow is dependent on religion. Explain what each alternative would mean, and explain how each alternative entails some sort of problem for believers.
4. People who subscribe to natural law theory condemn things like homosexuality, birth control, human cloning, stem cell research, etc as immoral because they are "unnatural." Explain what this concept of "unnaturalness" could mean. Is this a justifiable moral position? Why?
5. What would be some of the implications of accepting natural law theory as true?
6. Natural law theory is based on the presupposition of certain assumptions. What are some of these assumptions? Once we make these assumptions explicit, what is the conceptual status of natural law theory? Do we find any serious problems with this theory? What are some of these problems?
7. What would an argument defending ethical relativism look like?
8. Ethical Relativism sounds like a really nice ethical theory. Upon inspection, however, it entails a logical contradiction from which it cannot escape. What is this contradiction?
9. Even though ethical relativism is false, what are some lessons we can learn from it?
10. Why doesn't it logically follow that we should be more tolerant and less judgmental of other cultures if we accept ethical relativism as true?