"...and Gulliver Returns" Book 4 A Look at Human Values

In Book 4 this series, prompted by questions that arose from their visit to Kino, Gulliver and his friends visit with a professor of ethics at the University of Kino. she explains how values, such as ethical values, are developed. They are all based on non-provable basic assumptions which are either self-centered, God based or society based. She goes into some detail looking at the various approaches to what God might be and to some considerations for an ideal society. She then looks at the various sources of evidence that people use in selecting their values, such as: empirical, historical and evidence comes from authorities such as Kings, parents and popes.
At the end of their discussion she takes a number of ethical problems, such as: capital punishment, abortion, contraception, torture, gay marriage and several other common ethical questions. She shows that from each basic assumption (God, self,society) depending on the evidence used, just about every value question can be seen as ethical or unethical. So values are not as clear as our pastors and politicians would like us to believe.