Lesson 2: Sources of Authority

Question 1

The divinity called God, Allah, or Supreme Being commands and one is obliged to obey her Creator. There are persons and texts that one believes are linked to the Divine. By listening to this figures and reading these writings, an individual discovers how the Divine wants her to act. Further, someone maintaining more radical form of this theory might go beyond this instruments of Divine Revelation and claim that God “spoke” to her directly to instruct her what to do.

Answer 1

Divine Command Theory

Question 2

is the integrated pattern of human knowledge belief and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations.

Answer 2

Culture

Question 3

From the reality of diversity, it is possible for someone to jump to the further claim that sheer variety at work in the different ways of valuation means there is no single universal standard for such valuations, and that this holds true as well in the realm of ethics. Therefore, what is ethically acceptable or unacceptable is relative to, or that is to say, dependent on one’s culture.

Answer 3

Cultural Relativism