[4.] Morality and Religion.

 

At the beginning of EMP ch.4, Rachels describes two very different ways of viewing the world:

 

the religious perspective: “...the world was created by a loving, all-powerful God to provide a home for us. We, in turn, were created in his image, to be his children. Thus, the world is not devoid of meaning and purpose. It is, instead, the arena in which God’s plans and purposes are realized.” (p.50) Many, many people in our society subscribe to this view, or to something very much like it.

·         One prominent example is former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice Roy Moore (described by Rachels at pp.48-49), who has stated that “to acknowledge God cannot be a violation of the Canons of Ethics.  Without God there can be no ethics.”[1] During the ceremony in which his 5,600 lb. monument of the Ten Commandments was installed in the Alabama state judicial building, Moore stated that “to restore [the] moral foundation of law, ‘we must first recognize the source from which all morality springs ... [by] recogniz[ing] the sovereignty of God.’” [2]

 

the nonreligious perspective: an example of this view is the “‘scientific’ view of the world” expressed by English philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), in his 1903 essay “A Free Man’s Worship.” [see long quotation at p.49][3]

 

These views different in popularity depending in different parts of the world. Rachels cites a May 2008 Gallop poll according to which 78% of Americans believe in God, and a further 15% believe in “a universal spirit or higher power.”[4]

 

In this portion of the class, we will examine a view of morality that seems to go naturally with the religious perspective. (Toward the end of the semester, we will examine a view that might accompany the nonreligious perspective.)

 

 

[4.1.] Divine Command Theory.

 

We will now consider a different answer to the question: “What makes an action morally right or morally wrong?” (The first answer we considered came from moral-cultural relativism, according to which what makes an action right or wrong are the moral beliefs of people in a given society. Hence, MCR implies that morality is subjective and is thus a form of moral skepticism.)

 

Many people think that there must be a close connection between ethics and religion.  They believe that religion is the “foundation” of ethics, that ethics is necessarily based on or grounded in religion. From this point of view, there is no morality without religion.

 

Lurking behind these general beliefs about morality and religion is an assumed answer to the question of what makes an action morally right or morally wrong.  This assumption can be expressed as follows: If an action is immoral, it is immoral because God has forbidden it (e.g., adultery, lying, murder, etc.) And if an action is morally right, it is morally right because God has commanded it (e.g., being kind to others, giving to the poor, etc.) This is the ethical theory called Divine Command Theory.

 

 

[4.1.1.] Defining DCT.

 

Divine Command Theory (DCT) (df.): The view that (1) morally right actions are right because God has commanded them (or: because God approves of them) and (2) morally wrong actions are wrong because God has forbidden them (or: because God disapproves of them).

 

 

[4.1.2.] DCT as a Form of Moral Realism.

 

DCT implies that there are objective moral truths. Unlike MCR, which is a form of moral skepticism, DCT holds that statements like “Killing an innocent person is wrong” really are true apart from people’s beliefs 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.

 

So DCT is a form of moral realism: the view that there is such a thing as objective moral truth.

 

 

[4.1.3.] Three Claims about God Implied by DCT.

 

DCT also implies the following three claims about God:

1.      God exists.

2.      God has commanded (or approved) certain actions and forbidden (or disapproved) others.

3.      The actions that God has commanded (approved) are morally right; the ones that God has forbidden (disapproved) are morally wrong.

 

[Important: claim 3 is not the same claim as DCT itself! It is possible that 3 is true and DCT is false, i.e., it is possible that everything commanded by God is morally good, even though it is good for some reason other than that it was commanded by God. On the other hand, if 3 is false, then DCT must be false.]

 

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.

 

 

Stopping point for Wednesday September 2. For next time: no new reading (although you can consider EMP pp.53-57, on natural law theory, to be an optional reading); study today's lecture notes--you may have a pop quiz over those notes and/or over the material from August 31's lecture notes about the four argument forms (modus ponens, modus tollens, affirming the consequent and denying the antecedent).