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Advantages
- Based on reason - so technically open to anyone who can reason
- Focused on the search for happiness and fulfilment
- Christian version (Aquinas') unites faith with reason
- Primary precepts provide absolute framework - applies the same principle to anyone
- Straightforward - should be accessible to anyone
- Timeless - primary precepts can be applied to all people throughout time
- Secondary precepts provide flexibility
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Disadvantages
- How do you decide what 'natural' is? - e.g. should doctors try to prolong the life of someone who is ill, when death is the natural consequence of much illness.
- Some principles of Natural Law when applied can lead to absurd consequences - e.g. infertile couples cannot have sex.
- Vague/quite general rules - not very adaptable or too simple to apply to individual situations.
- Karl Barth - reason is fallible (untrustworthy), so we should rely on Divine revelation in scripture for right or wrong.
- Kai Nielsen - there is not one unified human nature: humans have changeable natures e.g. hetero/homo sexuality.
- Vardy and Grosch - Aquinas' view on human nature is too simplistic.
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