[M]any failures to apply good ethical precepts can be put down to failure in applied science rather than to failure in ethics as such. Nevertheless it is also the case that perhaps the majority of men do not accept good ethical precepts, but accept maleficent ethical systems. Men are often motivated by religious fanaticism, political ideologies, and so on, and are thus driven by motives quite other than those of generalized benevolence. Now in this respect ethics is not all that different from science. The credulity of the majority of human beings is immense. In one Australian university, at the beginning of the academic year, when students were advertising their various clubs and societies, I noticed a table manned by members of an astrology society. I felt distressed that such credulity could exist even among university students. If there are maleficent systems of ethics in the world today so also there are ridiculous but influential systems of factual belief. The decline of orthodox religion has by no means caused a decline in superstition: when one devil goes out seven more rush in to take its place.
(J. J. C. Smart, "Ethics and Science," Philosophy 56 [October 1981]: 449-65, at 451)
Note from KBJ: Professor Smart will not like to hear this, but I consider his ethical system—utilitarianism—to be one of the "maleficent" ones. It treats individuals as happiness containers and, in the famous words of John Rawls, "does not take seriously the distinction between persons" (A Theory of Justice, 27).
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 