RomanJoe wrote:

I'm wondering, would deliberately taking your own life in order to donate all your organs imply a consequentialist view of morality? If taking innocent human life is intrinsically wrong then no positive consequences can morally justify suicide. But if we admit the consequentialist view then would we have to forego the intrinsic view?

Let's assume that taking innocent human life is intrinsically wrong. In that case the only reason that you would want to commit this immorality is to do it for a greater good (assuming that you have good intention) which seems to suggest consequentialism. However, I'm not sure about the position of Kantian ethics on this special case. I hope there is someone who can respond from a Kantian point of view.

I think a consequentialist can still condemn taking innocent lives but would say that it is better to kill oneself and to save more people than to let oneself die and not save others. So in this sense, I think a consequentialist can believe in intrinsically evil actions but that does not lead to the consquentialist  avoiding intrinsically evil action in every situation.

Note: I'm not sure if we can say that taking our own life intrinsically is evil. To get from taking the innocent lifes of other human beings being intrinsically evil to taking our own's life being evil is unjustified to me.
Also note that you must address God's rule in human's life to get a satisfactory (if you are a religious person) account of morality. Maybe you should take a look at Divine command theory. I think Craig is a proponent of that conception of morality.
 

UGADawg wrote:

I'm an economist. I think the best introduction to the subject for the interested layman is Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics, which is now in it's 5th edition I believe. This is of course assuming you don't want to read through a college level principles textbook. If you're interested in anything beyond a broad introduction I can make other recommendations.

Thanks a lot. Happy to see an economist here. I just need enough information so that I can understand which economic policy I should support. Or if there is a presidential election, I would know if he is just making baseless claims and so on. Anything that can help me to be a responsible citizen is welcome. I dont mind if it is university or college text book. I will read it.

I would appreciate if anyone can recommend some introductory books on the subjects above. Basically, as a citizen I would like to have enough knowledge to support the good causes, right policies, vote for the good politicians and so on.

God being just is only one example so you could replace justice with any other attribute of God and have the same argument.

And actually there is no need for you to answer to other point (maybe except the last one), the point is God can reject your prayers if your prayer is in conflict with his other attributes or with grand scheme which is better than what you are wishing for. The bottom line, God is obliged to provide you with highest good possible which fits into his grand scheme and is not at odds with his attributes.

I think the quote from Jesus actually goes against what we have been discussing but I leave it be for the time being.

Your arguments are missing the essence of my arguments. I'm not saying that God needs to create us so that he may be perfect; Rather considering that we exist, one criterion for qualifying having perfect love is that human beings must be treated perfectly!