God and Morality

[This is my old Phil 139 ethics essay. It's the first philosophy essay I ever wrote. It probably shows.]

To insist: “If God is dead, everything is permitted”, is a rather extreme view, and one which has difficulty holding up under rational scrutiny. The implication is clear; that morality is utterly dependent upon religion, and cannot be justified in any other way. For morality to require God in such a way, there must a direct link joining the two, i.e. that morality is defined by God. This approach, whereby “morally right” is exactly identical in meaning to “commanded by God”, is commonly called the Divine Command theory.

The most important implication of the Divine Command theory is that immoral actions are wrong solely because God forbids them (and similarly that the ‘rightness’ of moral actions is only that God has commanded them). This seems counter-intuitive to basic human ethical insight – surely there is something in the nature of actions which makes them moral or immoral, not merely that God commands or forbids them? Darwall uses the torture of innocents as such an example[1], which we feel is wrong, whether God forbids it or not! We would expect that there is something immoral about the nature of torture itself, and that this immoral aspect of it is the underlying cause of it’s ‘wrongness’, rather than the fact that God forbids it. Darwall generalises, “it seems implausible to disconnect moral qualities from the natures of things that have them.”[2]

The core of this challenge is asking why something is moral or immoral, what the underlying cause of morality is. Ironically, here Darwall plays to religion’s greatest strength – for what “reason” could there be for anything, without God? The world of science seems harsh and pointless by comparison. To merely complain that the theory runs against intuition is not a solid refutation – one could simply argue that human intuition is misguided, or that we have an innate understanding of God’s commands, and it is this which makes us feel this way. In this case, the Divine Command theory can conceivably stand up to the previous objection.

Surprisingly, the Divine Command theory depends on there being no justification for the question “But why ought we obey God’s commands?”. The theory has a set way to answer any such ‘ought’ question: “because God commands it.” This is clearly an inadequate answer. Note, however, that this is (according to the theory) exactly equivalent to saying “because it is right”, which seems a slightly more acceptable response, though it raises the question “But why is it right?”. The Divine Command theory cannot answer this, it just assumes it to be the case. To try and justify it, inevitably results in departing from the stated theory.

Attempts at answering this may appeal to God’s superiority, or that he created us so therefore we should be grateful. Yet such answers require a moral fact (eg “it is wrong not to show gratitude”) to be true independently of whatever God commands. This is because the justification itself becomes the most fundamental element; it must be true as a precursor to the Divine Command Theory, as it is used to justify the theory. Another common answer is to say that God is “Ethically Omniscient”, yet to say that God knows all which is right and wrong surely means more than just that he knows what he commands (a trivial statement, which assigns little value to God’s ethical omniscience). But to have any greater meaning would imply an independent standard of morality (contradicting the divine command theory), as it requires that there be more to morality than just whatever God commands. Lastly, to justify it by saying that God is a perfect judge is really just a variation of the ideal observer theory. Morality would exist regardless of whether God actually did or not, we would only have to ask what a hypothetical ideal judge (i.e. God) would want.[3] So the Divine Theorist must conclude not only that it is solely God’s commands which make things right, but that this being so, it becomes a self-evident truth that we should obey them – no external justification is necessary, or indeed possible.

A greater problem is that God could conceivably command something new, thereby changing the rules.[4] Hypothetically, if he were to suddenly decree that all that was right is now wrong, and vice versa, then this would become so. If God were to tomorrow command us to perform yesterday’s sins, then they would, by definition, now be ‘morally right’. This seems preposterous. However, this objection becomes irrelevant if God is eternal and unchanging, as he would then be incapable of contradicting past commands.

A slight modification of this objection is all that is needed to raise a new challenge. One could ask “What if God had originally commanded things differently?” Herein lies the true challenge to the theory, as its arbitrary nature becomes clear. God could have just as easily forbidden love and commanded that we torture babies. If his command is all that decides morality, then this is unacceptably arbitrary. A common defence is to insist that God wouldn’t command evil things – yet the simple fact of God commanding something supposedly makes it good, not evil, even if that command is to torture babies. Similarly, one might argue that he is “inherently good”. Yet this again assumes an independent standard of goodness[5], one different from what the Divine Command theory defines. For Divine Command theorists to call God “good” is meaningless – they are effectively saying “God does as God commands”, a logical triviality. If he were different, he would still be just as praiseworthy to the theorists. For such praise to have any meaning, there must be an independent standard of “goodness” (morality) against which we can favourably compare God. To compare him to himself will achieve nothing.

There is only one way to avoid this problem of arbitrariness without discarding the entire theory, and that is to re-interpret the equivalence of “X is good” and “God commands X”. Rather than saying that God’s command causes something to be moral, rather, it must be the other way around. It is the goodness of an action’s nature which God recognises and causes him to command it.[6] This is drastically different from the original meaning of the Divine Command theory though. God’s commands are no less true, but they are no longer necessary. There is an inherent morality to actions which is decided independently of God or any other authority. If God is dead, then exactly the same things are permitted as if he were alive – for the independent standard lives on.

Bibliography

Arthur, J., ‘Morality Without God’ in Timmons, Mark (ed.), Conduct and Character, 3rd ed., Belmont, Wadsworth, 1999.

Darwall, S., Philosophical Ethics, Boulder, Westview, 1998.

Rachels, J., The Elements of Moral Philosophy, 3rd ed., New York, McGraw-Hill, 1999.

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[1] S. Darwall, Philosophical Ethics, p.46.

[2] Ibid., p.46.

[3] The “answers” listed in this paragraph and their rebuttals are explored in Darwall, pp.42-46.

[4] J. Arthur, ‘Morality Without God’ in Mark Timmons (ed.), Conduct and Character, p.60.

[5] J. Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, p.57.

[6] Ibid., p.57.