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Ethics
Religion

This question is just a few days out of season, but is it ethical to celebrate christmas (Christmas?) if you are an atheist?

I guess it depends on what you mean by "celebrate Christmas." Suppose the atheist likes the traditions of exchanging gifts, getting together with family and so on and that's why s/he "celebrates" Christmas. I dare say there are a good many people who fit that description. Hard to see any ethical problem so far. Suppose the atheist pretends to be an observant Christian in her celebrations. Is that a problem? Perhaps. But the atheist needn't pretend and even if she does, just how "bad" the deceit is would depend on the reasons and circumstances. Perhaps the worry is that the atheist's celebrating helps add stature or credibility to religion, which she rejects. But being an atheist doesn't have to mean being hostile to religion. An atheist might be indifferent about other people's theism. So if there's an ethical problem here, it would seem not to be a very obvious one nor -- most likely -- a very deep one.
Ethics

Pet lovers seem to be taking their pets along for 'alternative' therapies for their ailments- e.g. homeopathy, acupuncture, indian traditional medicine, etc. Given there is no scientific basis for these treatments- isn't this sort of thing tantamount to torture? (PETA doesn't think so.) Humans who voluntarily submit themselves to painful treatments are at least getting the 'placebo' given their belief that the treatment will work. I'd imagine that it'd be hard to give a pet a placebo!

If I set my pet up for a treatment that I know won't cure my pet and won't make the animal feel any better, then that might be somewhere in the ballpark of torture, though depending on what we have in mind, "torture" might be too strong a word. But that's not the typical case, is it? First, people who take their pets to the acupuncturist or whatnot typically believe that they're doing good; torturers seldom see things that way. Second, in at least some cases, the pet owners may be right. What you say about the science is too strong. For some conditions, we actually have evidence that some "alternative" treatments can help. And we can add: absence of scientific evidence isn't the same as evidence of inefficacy. Not all alternative remedies have been laboratory-tested. Some of the ones that haven't may work, and it may even be that the anecdotal evidence is good enough to make it reasonable to try the treatment. Of course, in some cases, the evidence is in and anyone who checks it will...
Ethics
Sex

Is there any good argument to support the claim that homosexuality is a perfectly valid lifestyle?

I'd suggest reflecting on a different question: is there any good argument to support the claim that it isn't? I ask this because for my own part, I can't think of one. Further, I don't think this is just a failure of imagination on my part. When I think about the same-sex couples I know, the fact that both partners are men or both are women fades into the background pretty quickly. I've known dysfunctional same-sex couples, and dysfunctional opposite-sex couples. I've seen loving, sustaining, healthy same-sex relationships, and loving, sustaining, healthy opposite-sex relationships. Some homosexual people are abusive; so are some heterosexual people. Some heterosexual people are just the sort of people you'd be glad to see your own child in a relationship with. And so are some homosexual people. Now it's true: homosexual sex isn't procreative. Neither is sex with birth control. Nor is celibacy. It's also true: if everyone were homosexual, the survival of the species would be a lot more...
Business
Ethics

Is it immoral for a health insurance company to refuse to cover a person with a pre-existing condition?

Timely! I'm inclined to tinker a bit with the question. First, I think it's a scandal that in the USA, people with pre-existing conditions often can't get health insurance. Other developed countries have figured this out; it's about time the US caught up. However, given the way the system works at present, we might get a fix on your issue by asking this. Suppose I'm in a position to set up a not-so-large company that provides health insurance, but I'm not willing to take on the risk of insuring people with certain pre-existing conditions; I'm worried that if I do, the company will be bankrupted and then won't be able to insure anyone. (I'm not saying this is actually the case for most big health insurance companies, but bear with me.) So long as I'm upfront and honest about what I'm offering, it's not clear that I do wrong by offering my more limited product. It's in the nature of private insurance schemes that the companies are in the business of risk management. Companies that don't make...
Ethics
Music

Say there is a music band whose members engage in frequent illegal/immoral acts, e.g. drunken driving, drug use, prostitution, rape, assault, etc. I want to buy their latest album, but I know that the money they receive from me will end up fueling their criminal behavior. Knowing this, is it wrong for me to buy the album?

You've given some good reasons for not buying the album. And since it's hard to make the case that you need this particular album, the reasons seem pretty strong - strong enough to convince me, at least. That said, there's a larger and harder issue here, and I'm guessing you may have it in the back of your mind. Many of us spend money at businesses whose practices we really wouldn't approve of if we let ourselves think about it. Perhaps they buy goods from sweat shops. Perhaps they have despicable labor practices. Without pretending that this does justice to the matter, a couple of issues strike me. One has to do with thresholds and balances. At what point are the practices of a business "bad enough" or insufficiently offset by the value of what they provide (including employment) that I should stop patronizing them? And how strong are my obligations to inform myself? I may know that business X has some very nasty practices. I might decide to patronize business Y instead, but the only...
Education
Ethics

Do professors/teachers have any ethical obligations to their students? Take, for example, the case in "21" the movie, in which a professor of mathematics at MIT is recruiting his brightest students into an illegal blackjack ring that he is heading. The action might be immoral, but my question is whether there is anything about the teacher-student relationship that makes it especially (or specially) immoral. Thx

One obvious problem here is that teachers have a sort of power over students. They can give them bad grades, refuse to write letters of recommendation... If the students "consent" to the arrangement, it will be that much less clear that the "consent" was strictly voluntary. So in addition to the inherent wrongness of the scheme, the extra problem is that the teacher is quite likely taking unfair advantage of the students.
Ethics
Love
Sex

Is it immoral to commit adultery in a marriage when one of the spouses doesn't fulfill the other spouse?

"Fulfill" is a bit of a weasel word, isn't it? Suppose one partner would like to make love every night. The other, less libidinous spouse is more a two-or-three time a week type. We might say that the first spouse is "unfulfilled," but that sounds like a really poor excuse for adultery. If the lack of "fulfillment" amount to some deep incompatibility, a good question to ask first might be: have the partners in the marriage talked about what's not working? Can it be fixed? If the answer really seems to be no, then the next obvious question is whether the marriage is worth saving. Life is complicated, of course and blanket generalizations don't do justice to the complexity of people's relationships. But the old question: "How would I feel if the tables were turned?" is always a good one to ask when we're trying to decide if we're acting rightly. It's not just an old bromide; it gets at something pretty deep in our notions of right and wrong.
Ethics
Logic
Religion

I am not trained in formal logic, so I was hoping you could help me with the moral argument for the existence of God, postulated as follows: 1. If God doesn't exist, then objective moral standards don't exist. 2. Objective moral standards exist. Therefore God exists. I don't really understand why the arguer is allowed to throw in premise 2. It seems that in order to prove that objective moral standards exist, you must first prove that God exists (because the objective moral standards come from God). Since the truth of premise 2 depends on the conclusion of the argument, it seems the argument collapses into a circle. I guess what I'm really saying is that any theist I know would concede that premise 1 is actually an if and only if statement (again, because morality is inextricably linked with God). After all, if you could prove that objective moral standards exist without appealing to God, then you've demonstrated morality's independence from the existence of God and thus nullified the argument. I...

Although I think the argument is fraught with difficulties, I don't think it simply begs the question. Suppose this hypothetical theist -- call her Thalia -- is arguing with an agnostic, Agatha, who nonetheless believes that there are objective moral standards. Agatha has real-life counterparts, and some of them are even sophisticated philosophers. Suppose Thalia makes a case for premise one: that moral standards really do presuppose the existence of a divine lawgiver. At that point, Agatha has a choice: give up belief in objective moral standards, or take up theism. Depending on how convinced she is that there really are moral standards, she might well decide that she should opt for theism. Notice that from Agatha's point of view, there's no need for proof that there are objective moral standards. She already believes that. What she'd need to be convinced of is that premise 1 is true. And although I'm personally skeptical of premise 1), I do think there's more to be said here than meets the eye ...
Ethics

This is a moral question that came to my mind after some reading of law books, but please take it only as a moral question. Suppose that Mary lent me 100 euros. When the time came that I should pay her back, I didn't do it, although I had the money (I preferred to spend it somewhere else). A friend of ours, Pete, knowing what had happened, gave Mary 100 euros saying that he was paying my debt. She accepted the money from him, and Pete told me what he did. What is my moral duty now? Should I give 100 euros to Mary? Do I still owe her 100 euros? Or do I owe Pete 100 euros, although he acted without my consent?

I'm inclined to make a distinction between two things here: the grammar, as it were, of the word "owe" and the right thing to do. I think a case can be made for saying that since you weren't a party to Pete's deed and didn't consent to it, then you owe Mary 100 euros, in at least one recognizable sense of "owe." And one can also make the case that you don't "owe" Pete 100 euros, since you didn't enter into any arrangement with him. I'm pretty sure that if we were in the realm of contract law (suppose there actually is a signed note here), this is how it would sort out, though there might be some tricky legal issues that, as an amateur, I'm overlooking. That said, if I were advising someone in this position, I'd say that at the least, they should pay Pete back. It would be a good thing as well to come clean to Mary. But whatever one thinks the moral obligations are here, we can prise them apart -- to at least some degree -- from strictly legal issue about who owes what to whom.
Ethics

As my class and I were examining the implications of ethical egoism, a dilemma became apparent to me. How could a superogatory act exist to an ethical egoist? If one is only moral by pursuing their best self-interest, how could one go above and beyond that which is already best? (I see that this question could be viewed as a violation of guidelines, but if the honor code is accepted here, I can assure you that this is not a class question. Just personal curiosity.)

What strikes me first is that ethical egoism isn't the real issue here. If any ethical theory claims that we're obliged to maximize something or other, then there's no room left for supererogation. This means that the same point would apply, e.g., to certain forms of utilitarianism. As you are in effect pointing out, nothing's better than the best. But the second point is that one could be an ethical egoist (or a utilitarian, for that matter) and not think that one is always obliged to maximize one's self-interest. One might think, for example, that some sort of "satisficing" is good enough to discharge one's duties. In other words, there would be a standard of what's good enough, and meeting that would suffice for doing what one ought to. But that leaves room for supererogation.

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