Coles !1

Vidal Coles

Professor Thomas Nelson

UNIV 112

November 24, 2014

Should we act morally solely due to a divine will?

Before I begin to discuss the topic at hand let us suppose a situation that I will explain the reason why after the situation is given:

It seems that, when Moses came down from the mountain with the tablets containing the

Ten Commandments, his followers asked him what they revealed about how they should

live their lives. Moses told them, "I have some good news and some bad news."

"Give us the good news first," they said.

"Well, the good news," Moses responded, "is that he kept the number of commandments

down to ten."

"Okay, what's the bad news?" they inquired.

"The bad news," Moses replied, "is that he kept the one about adultery in there.”

Now lets suppose the reverse happened then the Ten Commandments could have gone

something like this:

"Thou shalt kill everyone you dislike. Thou shalt rape every woman you desire. Thou

shalt steal everything you covet. Thou shalt torture innocent children in your spare

time. ..." The reason that this is possible is that killing, raping, stealing, and torturing

were not wrong before God made them so. Since God is free to establish whatever set of Coles !2

moral principles he chooses, he could just as well have chosen this set as any other.

(Schick, 2004)

Now let me state my ethical question that goes along with the situation given, should we act morally solely due to a divine will. The theory that goes with the situation above and is the sole basis of the argument in question is called the (DCT). This theory holds that an act is either moral or immoral solely because God either commands us to do it or prohibits us from doing it. Now the only thing that makes an act morally wrong is that God prohibits doing it, an example in essence in all means to say that torture is wrong is that God prohibits the torture and that’s the point of DCT which is where nothing is right or wrong unless

God makes it so and whatever God says goes, so if God said adultery was permissible, it would be (Keith, 2014). Philosophers like Plato, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, John

Stuart Mill, George Edward Moore, and John Rawls have presented arguments from their perspectives both theological and spiritual of moral dilemmas, moral theory and moral relativism. In my own opinion I believe that no autonomous sentient being should act morally solely due to a belief in a presence of an almighty divine will dictates us to do so.

So in essence, morality require God, or does it? The philosopher Plato gives his argument of logical independence of God and morality over 2,000 years ago in his work Euthyphro, where in his work, that the belief of this morality requires God to remain a widely held moral maxim in society. Saying that God serves as the basic assumption of the Christian fundamentalist’s social theory. The theories principals states that all of societies ills are born from the breakdown in morality and decline in the belief of God, it began with Charles Darwin’s publication of Origin of the Species in 1859 and the U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1963, banning in the Coles !3 classroom. Even though it is a surprise, atheists believe as well that morality requires God. An example would be the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, "If God is dead, everything is permitted.”.

His point is that if there is no supreme being to lay the law then there is no universal moral law.

So the argument persists in DCT, where what entailed makes an action right is that God wills it to be so, now what if someone is agnostic? Of course an agnostic will suspect it due to the fact that if one doesn't believe in God and then being told what God demands us to do is a empty truth for an agnostic who now has a moral dilemma and won’t be able to solve it (Schick, 2004).

Another philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, on his discourse of Metaphysics, explains:

In saying, therefore, that things are not good according to any standard of goodness, but

simply by the will of God, it seems to me that one destroys, without realizing it, all the

love of God and all his glory; for why praise him for what he has done, if he would be

equally praiseworthy in doing the contrary? Where will be his justice and his wisdom if

he has only a certain despotic power, if arbitrary will takes the place of reasonableness,

and if in accord with the definition of tyrants, justice consists in that which is pleasing to

the most powerful? Besides it seems that every act of willing supposes some reason for

the willing and this reason, of course, must precede the act (Schick, 2004).

He points that if things are neither right nor wrong independently of God’s will, then God cannot choose one thing over another cause it’s right; if he chooses one over another, it’s arbitrary. He also argues that an all-knowing, all-good God must exist in all possible worlds in a positive sense for such a God could create nothing less and as such to never condone acts of killing, raping, stealing, and torturing (Schick, 2004). The DCT, a theory of the nature of morality, on the other hand tells us what makes something good by offering a definition of morality, the contradiction Coles !4 then lies in that God cannot be used to define goodness, since goodness is the defining attribute of God, so it would be uninformative. So good actions will be rewarded and willed by God to do good, due to the all-good property of God, but will be unenlightened due to it not increasing ones moral understanding. The argument to this point is that what if the God isn't all good and doesn't will us to do what is good, so if good is all knowing and not all good, look at the story of Satan where one can be powerful and intelligent without being good (Schick, 2004). All in all, good people do good things because they want to do good, not because they will be personally rewarded or someone has forced them to do so, although people who do it for personal gain are not good people. So if you're doing good things cause of your desire to go to heaven in fear of going to hell, then you should most likely go to hell. So should we save Jimmy, who is drowning from the well because it’s the right thing to do or just cause you want to be on the front page of the local newspaper from saving Jimmy from the well for your own gain.

So the next dilemma is on right reason and divine commands. Back to the topic I stated in the beginning, one is moral theory, it is divided. On one side is the positive moral science, which

“holds that human and divine laws that obligate one to pursue or avoid what is good nor evil cause it is prohibited or commanded by a superior who established those laws”. On the other side there is the nonpositive moral science, which holds “that direct human action from any control of a superior” (William of Ockham, 2014). The philosopher Thomas Aquinas, held that in humanities creation into being, God is the lawgiver with right reason. What law God declares is a necessary and natural law, a law that morally obligates us to pursue the continuing flourishing of humanity under right reason. So in essence it is metaphysically impossible, catch that, that God should command us to steal, murder, commit anything that is opposed to what is good natured. Coles !5

So such a view unjustifiably restricts God’s freedom and detracts from God’s generosity. Aquinas states that God is free to command and reward unlawful, evil and prohibit acts of lawfulness, prohibit acts of praising God itself (William of Ockham, 2014). An example of this dilemma would be: Is torture wrong because God prohibits it, or does God prohibit torture because it is already wrong? A good God would prohibit torture to it being intrinsically wrong, if it intrinsically wrong then it is wrong regardless whether God exists or not (Augustine, 2014).

Rather then looking at the ethic objective, DCT ignores it by saying whatever God commands does not require justification. Humans obey the creator, but if the creator asks us to be thieves, murderers, or adulterers, right reason tells us not to be and to avoid to partake in theft, murder, and adultery (William of Ockham, 2014). So now the contradiction comes in, do we follow morally obligated acts which could be unlawful, battles our sense of right and wrong. So do we act good due to it being morally good on a basis of a God that may want us to stab our mothers to death or on our instinct belief of it being good to partake in the act in general.

The last point I will make in this argument is moral autonomy in every sentient being.

Now DCT is sometimes and more likely rejected on the grounds that such a theory does not hold hand in hand with human moral autonomy. Humans are morally autonomous, so we do what we like and are not obligated to do otherwise, so in this arguments stance humans are not obligated to perform any action simply because God dictates it (Chan L., 1989). So if God said that

2+2=100, 2+2=100 would nonetheless be false because 2+2=4 is true regardless of what God says, so you have the most obvious choice of not believe it because its your choice, your life, and your final judgement (Augustine, 2014). The philosopher James Rachels argues that any being which can a sign of God must be a being of worship, let that sink in. Unfortunately for you to be Coles !6 a being of worship it must be such beings owe it unconditional obedience, theres the problem.

The problem is that since human beings are morally autonomous and cannot owe unconditional obedience to any other being, nothing meet the standard for being God. So there is no possible state of being for one to be both a being worthy of worship and morally autonomous human agents (Chan L., 1989). In essence, we are our own men, but not our own gods, we live with choices and consequences, we abide to the right justified choice not by the choice that is ordained due to the doctrines stated by God nor only because of the reason that we should act morally due to a divine will. Coles !7

Works Cited

Augustine, Keith. “Divine Command Theory” The Secular Web. Internet Infidels, 2014.

Web. 22 Nov. 2014

Coulter, Chan L. “Moral Autonomy and Divine Commands” Cambridge Journals.

25.01 (1989): n. pag. Web. 22 Nov. 2014.

Schnik, Theodore, Jr. “Morality Requires God …or Does It?” Council for Secular .

Council for , 2014. Web. 22 Nov. 2004.

William of Ockham. “William Of Ockham (c. 1285 - 1347)” University of Notre Dame.

University of Notre Dame, 2014. Web. 22 Nov. 2014.