Required Textbook Readings to Accompany these Lecture Notes:
· Elements of Moral Philosophy ch.4: "Does Morality Depend on Religion?" (sections 1, 2 and 4 only)
The next theory of morality we will consider is:
Divine Command Theory (DCT) (df.): the theory that explains morality by saying that (1) right actions are right only because God has commanded them (or: only because God approves of them) and (2) wrong actions are wrong only because God has forbidden them (or: only because God disapproves of them).[1]
In the definition of DCT, the word “because” is crucial: DCT is a theory about why an action moral or immoral. It says that the only reason that an action is right is because God wants us to do it and the only reason that an action is wrong is because God does not want us to do it.
DCT presupposes that God (an omnipotent, omniscient creator of the universe) is real.
omnipotent (df.): all-powerful; capable of doing anything.
omniscient (df.): all-knowing; possessing all possible knowledge of every subject.
While this is a very widespread belief in our society, you yourself might be an atheist, someone who does not believe that God (or gods) exists. That's perfectly OK.
However, for the sake of understanding the next theory, I will be setting aside questions about whether God is real and assuming, for the sake of argument, that there is a God.[2]
Even for atheists, it is important to understand what this theory says and what the possible arguments against it are.
DCT is a form of Moral Realism: the view that there is such a thing as objective moral truth. This is because DCT implies that there are objective moral truths.
Unlike Cultural Relativism, which is a form of Moral Skepticism, DCT holds that statements like "Killing an innocent person is wrong" really are true apart from what people believe about morality.
Suppose that DCT is true and that God has forbidden killing innocent people. If God has forbidden this, then it is objectively true that he has forbidden it, and thus (if DCT is true) it is objectively true that killing an innocent person is wrong.
Now, someone might think that God has forbidden something (say, having sex outside of marriage) while someone else thinks that God hasn't forbidden it. But in this case, at least one of those people is wrong.
The fact that people disagree about what God wants us to do does not make it a subjective matter. If God forbids having sex before marriage, then that is an objective fact about God, even if some people do not believe it.
DCT implies the following three claims about God:
1. God (an omniscient, omnipotent being) is real.
2. God has commanded certain actions and forbidden others.
3. All of the actions that God has commanded are right and all of the ones that God has forbidden are wrong.
If you do not believe all three of these things, then you will have to reject DCT.
But just accepting these three things does not force you to accept DCT. You can believe all three and still think that DCT is false.
Optional Video: Morality Comes from God (Wi-Phi, 9:28)
An explanation of DCT and some of the problems with it.
[6.4.] Plato’s Dilemma.
Plato (c.427–347 BC), a Greek philosopher who lived centuries before the birth of Jesus, posed a question relevant to DCT. It occurs in one of his dialogues, the Euthyphro.[1]
The question is “whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods”?[2]
In more modern terms, the question is: Is conduct moral because God commands (or approves of) it (in which case DCT is true), or does God command (or approve of) it because it is moral (in which case DCT is false)?
dilemma (df.): a situation in which you are required to accept one of two choices, but neither choice seems acceptable. The two choices are called horns. There are three ways to respond to a dilemma: (1) “grasp” the first horn; (2) “grasp” the other horn; (3) “go between the horns” by finding a third alternative that hasn’t been considered yet (this is not always possible).
The two “horns” of Plato’s dilemma are:
1. DCT is true: right conduct is right because God commands it (or approves of it) and wrong conduct is wrong because God forbids it (or disapproves of it);
2. DCT is false: God commands (or approves of) right conduct because it is right and forbids (or disapproves of) wrong conduct because it is wrong.
Each option has consequences that most religious people will find troublesome.
Rachels describes three potentially troublesome consequences of the first horn, according to which DCT is true:
1. DCT is “mysterious”
2. DCT “makes God’s commands arbitrary”
3. DCT “provides the wrong reasons for moral principles”
Each of those “troublesome consequences” of DCT can be stated as an argument in standard form (each premise and the conclusion on separate, numbered lines, with the conclusion stated last).
Once they are in standard form, it becomes obvious that they all have this logical form or structure:
If Divine Command Theory is true, then [some other claim] is also true.
But [that other claim] is not true.
Therefore Divine Command Theory is not true.
More generally, the form is this:
If p, then q.
Not q.
Therefore not p.
We have seen this form before (Rachels’ three arguments against Cultural Relativism). And we have seen that any argument that has this form is logically valid; in other words, it is impossible for the premises to be all true and the conclusion false at the same time.
So we do not need to investigation further into whether the three arguments against DCT are valid; all of them are in fact valid. Now we need to ask: are the premises in each argument true?
Here’s how Rachels puts the argument:
This conception of morality is mysterious. What does it mean to say that God “makes” truthfulness right? It is easy enough to understand how physical objects are made, at least in principle. We have all made something, if only a sand castle or a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. But making truthfulness right is not like that: it could not be done by rearranging things in the physical environment. How, then, could it be done? No one knows. (EMP p.54).
Here is one way of putting this argument against DCT into standard form:
1. If DCT is true, then it is possible to make something right.
2. But this can’t be true, because it is too mysterious; it is impossible to understand how someone—even an omnipotent being—can just make an action right.
3. So DCT is not true.
To illustrate premise 2, Rachels gives the example of child abuse:
[C]onsider some wretched case of child abuse. [According to DCT], God could make that instance of child abuse right—not by turning a slap into a friendly pinch of the cheek, but by commanding that the slap is right. This proposal defies human understanding. How could merely saying, or commanding, that the slap is right make it right? If true, this conception of morality would be a mystery. (EMP p.54)
If DCT is true, then no matter what God were to command (or approve of), that action would be morally good… even child abuse, or torture, or rape. God could command anything at all and it would be morally right. If God were to command rape or torture, then those things would become morally right.
This is so mysterious that it cannot be the correct explanation for morality, according to the Mystery Argument.
Rachels states this argument as follows:
This conception of morality makes God’s commands arbitrary. Suppose a parent forbids a teenager from doing something, and when the teenager asks why, the parent response, “Because I said so!” In such a case, the parent seems to be imposing his will on the child arbitrarily. Yet the Divine Command Theory sees God as being like such a parent. Rather than offering a reason for his commands, God merely says, “Because I said so.”
God’s commands also seem arbitrary because he always could have commanded the opposite. … [If DCT is true, then] [h]e could command anything whatsoever. This result may seem not only unacceptable but impious from a religious point of view. (EMP p.54)
Here is one way of expressing this argument against DCT in standard form:
1. If DCT is true, then God's commands are arbitrary (based on random choice or whim rather than on reason or principle).
2. But God's commands are not arbitrary.
3. So DCT is not true.
If a decision is arbitrary, then it is made on a whim and isn’t supported by any specific plan or reason. For example, my choice of t-shirt to wear today was totally arbitrary. I just grabbed one out of my closet, but I could just have easily grabbed another one. I had no reason to choose one over the other, so my choice was arbitrary.
If DCT is true, then God’s commands turn out to be arbitrary, not based on any specific reason or principle; God just as easily could have commanded the exact opposite. Rachels’ example is that if DCT is true, then God’s commanding honesty instead of dishonesty was an arbitrary choice, and he could just as easily have commanded dishonest (see EMP p.54). The same point holds for anything else God has commanded: he could just as easily have forbidden that thing and commanded the opposite.
The philosophical problem is that if DCT is true, then God has no reason not to command torture, rape, lying, etc. It is irrelevant whether God has actually commanded things that make (most of) us happy in the long-run, whether God actually does love us, etc.[3] If DCT is true, then his decision to love us or to command things that are good for us in the long run are also arbitrary—he has no reason for doing those things, either.
So, since DCT implies that God has no reason not to command any of those things, DCT must be false.
Rachels puts this criticism of DCT as follows:
This conception of morality provides the wrong reasons for moral principles. There are many things wrong with child abuse: It is malicious; it involves the unnecessary infliction of pain; it can have unwanted long-term psychological effects; and so on. However, the Divine Command Theory does not care about any of those things; it sees the maliciousness, the pain, and the long-term effects of child abuse as being morally irrelevant. All it cares about, in the end, is whether child abuse runs counter to God’s commands. (EMP pp.54–55)
Here is one way of putting this reasoning into standard form:
1. If DCT is true, then the only reason that an immoral act, like child abuse, is wrong is that God has forbidden it.
2. But the fact that God has forbidden it isn't the only reason child abuse is wrong.
3. So DCT is not true.
DCT says that there is one and only one reason why any immoral action is immoral: God doesn't want it to happen. But this argument points out that there are other things that make immoral actions immoral.
What's more, DCT implies that "[i]f God didn't exist, child abuse wouldn't be wrong" (EMP p.54). In fact, it implies that if God weren't real, then nothing whatsoever would be immoral… or morally right. But (according to this argument) that cannot be right.
Rachels also points out that we can know some actions are wrong without knowing whether God has forbidden them. “[E]ven a religious person might be genuinely in doubt as to what God has commanded. After all, religious texts disagree with each other, and sometimes there seem to be inconsistencies even within a single text” (EMP p.55). But there are some actions that are clearly wrong so that no one needs to doubt whether they are wrong; child abuse is an example.
Since each argument is valid, we need to ask: do the arguments have true premises?
This is a question that you will need to think about for each of the three arguments. For each of the arguments, you need to form your own opinion: is the first premise true? and is the second premise true?
[6.6.] What If DCT is False?
Recall Plato’s Dilemma:
Either DCT is true … right conduct is right because God commands it (or approves of it) and wrong conduct is wrong because God forbids it (or disapproves of it)…
or DCT is false … God commands (or approves of) right conduct because it is right and forbids (or disapproves of) wrong conduct because it is wrong.
If DCT is false, then God commands actions because they are morally right.
But that means that there is a standard of morality that is independent of God’s commands. God does not control morality; rather, God knows which actions are right or wrong and communicates that information to us in the form of commands.
This threatens the claim that God is omnipotent (all-powerful), since it means that there is something that God cannot do: change an action from morally right to morally wrong (or vice versa).
However, this does not threaten the claim that God is omniscient (all-knowing).
In EMP ch.4.4, Rachels makes a number of points about the relationship between morality and religion, especially Christianity:
Rachels claims that the latter is the case with regard to abortion. Here is an argument that some conservative Christians give against abortion:
1. A fetus is a human being from the moment of conception.
2. Killing a human being is immoral.
3. Therefore, killing a fetus (i.e., abortion) is immoral.
According to Rachels, the scriptures give no straightforward support for the first premise.
In fact, Rachels says that there is no clear support in the Bible for either position in the abortion debate.
Nevertheless, people sometimes think that the Bible or church tradition offers clear support for their own personal moral views, including their views on abortion. Rachels identifies a common pattern:
1. scripture or tradition contains ideas favoring both positions on a moral issue [I would add: or, there is no consensus among Bible scholars as to what a given passage really means]
2. you already believe that one position is correct
3. you emphasize the ideas that support your position and ignore the ideas that do not [or: choose the interpretation that best supports your position and ignore the other interpretations]
When this happens, you are not engaging in a sincere effort to discover whether a given behavior really is right or wrong. Rather, you are making up your mind ahead of time and then paying attention only to the evidence that supports your position.
Rather than letting the premises (evidence, reasons) determine the conclusion, you have decided on the conclusion in advance and then ignored all reasons and evidence that don't support your conclusion. This is not genuine inquiry. It seems more like sham reasoning, which we learned about earlier:
sham reasoning (df.): the kind of pseudo-inquiry that occurs when you defend a claim that you really believe is true but your belief is immune to evidence or argument—no matter what the evidence shows, you will not change your mind about it.
[1] The Euthyphro is available online at http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/euthyfro.html . For an extensive overview of Plato’s thought, see Richard Kraut, "Plato," The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2009/entries/plato/>.
[2] This quotation is from the Benjamin Jowett translation of Euthyphro.
Information contained in these footnotes is provided in case you are interested in further reading. You will not be quizzed on the information given in these footnotes or on the websites to which they link. However, you should feel free to refer to this material in your discussion board posts.
[1] There are different varieties of Divine Command Theory; we will be considering a relatively simple and straightforward variety. Sometimes these theories are called, not "Divine Command Theory," but "theological voluntarism." For an in-depth examination of these views, see Mark Murphy, "Theological Voluntarism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).
[2] If you are interested in the philosophical arguments for and against the existence of God, I encourage you to take our Introduction to Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion courses.
[3] Another possible objection to this criticism of DCT is: "God would never change his commands!" There are two responses to this objection: (1) The Bible itself suggests that God has changed his commands. The God of the Old Testament frequently required his followers to perform human sacrifices, and he commanded his followers to take slaves–presumably, God no longer requires these things. (2) This objection is irrelevant to the argument. Even if it is true that God won't ever issue new commands, this doesn't change the philosophical problem described above: DCT implies that if he were to issue new commands that we rape and torture one another, then rape and torture would be moral.