Is There Only One Moral Code?

Paul Monk wrote in the November Quadrant on a book by Lyle Shelton, formerly of the Australian Christian Lobby. He moved one by one through Shelton’s opinions, sometimes stopping to point out their virtues, before going on to tell us what Shelton should have said if he had been properly tuned in to the modern world and had not been in the grip of anachronistic biblical sexual ethics. Shelton, he says, “assumes that Christian faith is intrinsically wholesome and epistemologically sound”. This doesn’t seem fair when his own article is full of assumptions and statements unsupported by evidence.

But let’s examine Shelton’s two assumptions. First, is there anything intrinsically wholesome about Christianity and does it make people happier or healthier? Numerous studies have been undertaken to answer that question, and they unequivocally show Shelton’s assumption is a fact.

This essay appeared in a recent Quadrant.
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Andrew Sims, former president of…