Topic 16 Greed Flashcards
What are 5 examples of greed?
- Taking more than you need
- Taking advantage of free things
- Corruption
- Exploiting people to maximise profit
- Eating an entire cake
How is greed slightly different to selfishness?
Concerned with the use of resources
Why is greed listed among the seven deadly sins for Roman Catholics?
- greed involves worshipping money + possessions rather than God
How does the Bible warn against making Money your ‘master’? Matt…
Matthew 6:24
- either devoted to God or devoted to wealth
‘No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money
How does Timothy 6:10 inform Christian beliefs about greed and money?
- ‘love of money is the root of all kinds of evil’
- money = no itself bad
- but loving it is
How does the story of Matthew 19 help inform Christian beliefs about greed?
- rich ruler came to jesus -> asked what he had to do to get into heaven
- jesus = keep the law, (man already did that), then ‘sell all you have and give it to the poor’
- young man couldn’t do that
- jesus -> ‘ easier for a camel to go through eye of needle, than for rich man to enter kingdom of God’
- > don’t make wealth more important than God, you need to be prepared to give it up for God
How does the capitalist society that we live in depend on greed? (Non religious - pro greed!)
- no greed no incentive (to work hard, do better)
- if people didn’t want more , tech would not progress to meet that desire
- free trade (and the greed that makes people try + succeed in a free market economy) is ultimately best way to improve everyone’s standard of living
Why does scientific progress arguably rely on greed?
- new drugs discovered by pharmaceutical companies keen to make profit
Why do some economists argue that charity is counterproductive?
- handouts = disincentive for people to work hard
- dependent on aid
Why would non religious people oppose greed?
- lot of world’s problems happen due to greed of governments (eg corruption) and companies + organisations
What does Tim 6:10 show Christians about greed as root cause of human wrong doing?
- love of money = root of all evil
- Bible clearly teaches this as cause of human wrongdoing
How is greed, for Roman Catholics, one of the seven root causes of human wrong doing?
- one of seven deadly sins
For fundamentalists Christians, why do Adam and Eve suggest that greed is root cause of human wrong doing?
- greedy for knowledge according to fundamentalist Christian interpretation of genesis 2
- Adam and Eve thus caused the Fall - therefore greed = root cause of human wrongdoing
How does Matt 19 suggest that greed is root cause of all wrong doing?
- rich young ruler - easier for camel to go through eye of needle than it is for rich man to enter kingdom of god
- suggests that greed prevents you from entering heaven and is a root cause of human wrongdoing
Why do non religious people believe that greed is a root cause of human wrong doing?
- history shows us that most conflicts start due to human greed
- eg desire for land (Falklands War), power, money, status etc.
