This year the New Zealand apologetics organization Thinking Matters, ran a “Confident Christianity Conference” in Auckland. I was asked to speak at this conference on the topic. Does Morality Need God? Below is a slightly streamlined version of the talk I gave.
“If God does not exist, then everything is permissible.” These words from Ivan Karamazov in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers of Karamazov express a widely held intuition that moral requirements depend upon God’s existence. Most contemporary ethicists today would dismiss this intuition. In this talk, I will argue their dismissal is premature. I will defend what philosophers call a divine command theory of ethics. The thesis that moral wrongness is (identical to) the property of being contrary to God’s commands.[1] Where God is understood, in orthodox fashion, as a necessarily existent, all-powerful, all-knowing, essentially loving and just, immaterial person who created and providentially ordered the universe.
Note three things about this thesis:
First, it is a thesis about the nature of moral requirements. It is not a thesis about the nature of goodness. The concept of “good, is ambiguous, as is seen by the following statements “I had a really good dip in the spa pool last night,” Or “going on a low carb diet is good for you.” Or “Carlos the Jakal was a good hitman.” The concept of the morally obligatory, or morally required, is not identical to the concept of what it is good to do. It might be good, even saintly, for me to give a kidney to benefit a stranger, but it is not an act I am obliged to do.[2]
Second, my thesis is that the property of being morally required is
“identical” to the property of being commanded by God. I am not saying that people cannot know what is right and wrong unless they believe in God. Nor am I claiming that the word “wrong” means “contrary to God’s command.” These are distinct claims. Consider light; Light is identical to a certain visible range of the electromagnetic spectrum. But obviously, that isn’t the meaning of the word “light.” People knew how to use the word “light” long before discovering its physical nature. And they knew the difference between light and darkness long before they understood the physics of light. Analogously, we can know the meaning of moral terms like “right” and “wrong” and know the difference between right and wrong without being aware that the moral requirements are God’s commands.[3]
Third, this is a thesis about the relationship between God and morality. It is not a claim about the relationship between the bible and morality. The thesis I laid out does not mention any sacred text such as the Bible, Quran, Hadith, Torah, or Talmud. While many divine command theorists accept that God has revealed his commands in an infallible sacred text, some do not. The claim that God’s commands are contained in some sacred text is not part of or entailed by a divine command theory itself. It is the result of other theological commitments they have. One could consistently be a divine command theorist without holding this. Divine command theories are ecumenical; they have had advocates within the Christian, Islamic, Jewish, and even deist traditions.
Having clarified my thesis, I will defend three contentions.
- Secular accounts of morality cannot coherently account for our fundamental intuitions about moral requirements.
- If God exists, then a divine command theory can coherently account for our fundamental intuitions about moral requirements.
- Standard objections to divine command theories fail.
I. Four Assumptions about Moral Requirements
But first, what do I mean by fundamental assumptions? Moral theories are tested, in part, by how well they account for various assumptions about morality implicit in our moral thought and practice. [4] I will begin by listing four plausible assumptions about the type of requirements morality imposes upon us.
One is that moral requirements are inescapable: they apply to us irrespective of whether following them contributes to any ends or aims we currently desire. Consider a criminal who stands in the dock convicted of a crime; he openly admits the crime, is unrepentant and informs us that he wanted to kill and torture. Doing so did not frustrate any of his desires. Does our moral condemnation of him depend on us assuming he does not have statistically abnormal desires so that we withdraw this judgment when we discover he really does desire to kill and maim? Moral requirements can’t be escaped or begged off by noting they don’t fulfill one’s goals or ends. [5]
Second moral requirements are requirements that are justified from an impartial point of view. Peter Singer explains:
The ‘Golden Rule’ attributed to Moses, to be found in the book of Leviticus and subsequently repeated by Jesus, tells us to go beyond our own personal interests and ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’ – in other words, give the same weight to the interests of others as one gives to one’s own interests. The same idea of putting oneself in the position of another is involved in the other Christian formulation of the
commandment, that we do to others as we would have them do to us. The Stoics held that ethics derives from a universal natural law. Kant developed this idea into his famous formula: ‘Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.’ Kant’s theory has itself been modified and developed by R. M. Hare, who sees universalisability as a logical feature of moral judgments. The eighteenth -century British philosophers Hutcheson, Hume, and Adam Smith appealed to an imaginary ‘impartial spectator’ as the test of a moral judgment, and this theory has its modem version in the Ideal Observer theory. Utilitarians, from Jeremy Bentham to J. J. C. Smart, take it as axiomatic that in deciding moral issues ‘each counts for one and none for more than one’; while John Rawls, a leading contemporary critic of utilitarianism, incorporates essentially the same axiom into his own theory by deriving basic ethical principles from an imaginary choice in which those choosing do not know whether they will be the ones who gain or lose by the principles they select…. One could argue endlessly about the merits of each of these characterisations of the ethical; but what they have in common is more important than their differences. They agree that an ethical principle cannot be justified in relation to any partial or sectional group. Ethics takes a universal point of view[6]
Third moral requirements have practical authority: agents always have conclusive reasons to do what is morally required and never have sufficiently good reasons for doing what is morally wrong. Someone has conclusive reasons to act in a certain way when the reasons in favor of acting, taken together, are stronger than any set of reasons we may have to act in some other way. If we don’t always have conclusive reasons to do what is right, having total allegiance to morality will be arbitrary and, at worst irrational. We will have no more reason to do what is right than wrong. Or doing the right thing will be doing what we have a most reason not to do.[7]
Moral requirements are supposed to answer questions about what we are to do. They are considerations that guide our actions. When we learn something is wrong, that tells us what we are not to do. They cannot do this if we lack conclusive reasons to do what they say. Suppose you and I are discussing whether it is my duty to donate to the red cross. You convinced me it is my duty to do so. The red cross knocks on my door. I refuse to donate. I suspect this would puzzle you; didn’t I concede that I had a duty to do it? If I responded with “yes, I am persuaded it is my duty to do it, but that doesn’t mean I have reasons to do it,” I suspect you would think I was missing something. I would deny moral requirements have any authority or claim on my behavior and don’t address the question, “what ought I do?”.[8]
Or suppose you heard that I had resigned from my high-paying job. You think I am nuts. How am I going to provide for my family? Why would I give up the career I always dreamt of? I tell you, I discovered the firm was engaging in unethical business practices, and I had to resign to avoid being complicit. On hearing this, wouldn’t it now make sense that I did this? I was justified in doing so. If you do, you are assuming that the fact an action is wrong justifies my refraining from doing it.[9]
Fourth, a final assumption is that if something is morally required, we are accountable for doing it in an important sense. John Stuart Mill famously stated,
“We do not call anything wrong unless we mean to imply that a person ought to be punished in some way or other for doing it—if not by law, by the opinion of his fellow creatures, if not by opinion, by the reproaches of his own conscience. This seems the real turning point of the distinction between morality and simple expediency.”[10]
There is a conceptual link between something being morally obligatory and something being blameworthy. If we do what is morally wrong without excuse, others can legitimately blame us, and guilt is warranted. Moral requirements conceptually are demands people make upon one each, which we can hold each other accountable through demanding an excuse, practices of blaming, criticizing, and guilt.
Robert Adams asks us to imagine a situation in which there are compelling reasons to support you not walking on the lawn. However, these reasons give you no grounds for feeling guilty if you do, and they provide no reasons for other people to make you feel like you must stay off the lawn or to blame and reproach you for doing so. Adams concludes that while there would be a sense in which you ought not to walk on the lawn, you have no obligation not to do so.[11]
So, whatever property moral wrongness is, it is the property of being prohibited by certain standards: standards that are inescapable and justified from an impartial point of view. The fact these standards prohibit an action means agents have conclusive reasons not to do the action in question. Agents are also accountable for actions doing actions prohibited by these standards. Others can blame and sanction me if I act contrary to them without an adequate excuse. A plausible thesis about the nature of moral wrongness should account for these facts.
In my next post, I will defend my first contention: that secular accounts of morality struggle to coherently account for these four assumptions.
[1] Robert M. Adams, “Divine Command Meta-Ethics Modified Again,” Journal of Religious Ethics 7:1 (1979): 76.
[2] Example from C. Stephen Evans, Kierkegaard’s Ethic of Love: Divine Commands and Moral Obligations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 16.
[3] This illustration comes from William Lane Craig see “Is Is the Foundation of Morality Natural or Supernatural? The Craig-Harris Debate” available at https://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/debates/is-the-foundation-of-morality-natural-or-supernatural-the-craig-harris-deba/) accessed 19 August 2022.
[4] The implicit method here is described in Richard Joyce’s “Theistic Ethics and the Euthyphro Dilemma,” Journal of Religious Ethics 30 (2002): 68-69;”
[5] Richard Joyce, “Mackie’s Arguments for an Error Theory,” Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (available at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-anti-realism/moral-error-theory.html, accessed 20/4/17).
[6] Peter Singer, Practical Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 11
[7] This argument is adapted from C. Stephen Layman’s “God and the Moral Order” Faith and Philosophy, 23 (2006): 306- 307
[8] This example comes from Michael Smith’s The Moral Problem (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing 1994) 6
[9] This example comes from C Stephen Layman’s “A Moral Argument for The Existence of God” Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics eds Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008) 53-54
[10] John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, chapter 5 available at https://www.utilitarianism.com/mill5.htm accessed 23 August 2022
[11] Robert M. Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) 238.
Tags: Divine Command Theory · God and Morality · John Stuart Mill · Peter Singer · Robert Adams
A common objection to belief in the God of the Bible is that a good, kind, and loving deity would never command the wholesale slaughter of nations. In the tradition of his popular Is God a Moral Monster?, Paul Copan teams up with Matthew Flannagan to tackle some of the most confusing and uncomfortable passages of Scripture. Together they help the Christian and nonbeliever alike understand the biblical, theological, philosophical, and ethical implications of Old Testament warfare passages.
When bigots call out “bigots”
April 13th, 2023 by Matt
Respond
Albert Giubilini and I would not agree on a lot. Giubilini has defended not only abortion rights but what he calls “after-birth abortion”( which of course is a reference to infanticide). He also opposes religious conscientious objection in medicine. I disagree with him on both topics and disagree strongly. I find his conclusions repugnant.
believe their views are harmful. This does not mean I attempt to harangue and shut down any lectures he does, or lobby for journals to not publish his work. It means I do the best I can to critique his views, as well as defend and sketch an alternative ethic which better accounts for our considered moral judgements.
However, it is the nature of moral philosophy that people will debate controversial moral opinions, opinions both sides feel strongly about. When the issue is a serious one, such as the ethics of war, abortion, or capital punishment, where you are literally discussing who can and cannot be killed people will find the views of their opponents repugnant and sincerely
Studying moral philosophy has also taught me that often people you disagree with on one topic will say insightful and interesting things on another. In fact, they often say insightful things on the topic you disagree with them on. Those you disagree with are almost never always wrong and those in your camp are almost never always right. You can learn a lot reading people whose worldviews are very different to your own.
To this end. I recently found an interesting piece Gulibani wrote on the. Practical Ethics blog at Oxford University.
One thing that stands out from the article is this, which reflects ideas I have myself expressed on occasion.
Giubilini points out that bigotry, or “being a bigot” is not determined by the fact a person holds a particular opinion on race, gender, abortion, religion, political policy or economics to you. According to both the normal dictionary meanings of the word[1], and also more detailed philosophical analyses such as that of John Corvino. Bigotry is a function of *how* the opinion is held, and how one responds to those who disagree with that opinion.
Two aspects of what constitutes bigotry are noteworthy. Bigotry involves not just strongly held opinions, but *stubbornly* held opinions. If one holds an opinion strongly but is prepared to listen to counterarguments and revise your opinion in the face of new information and argument rather than just stubbornly affirm it no matter what, then you are not a bigot. You might be mistaken, but you aren’t a bigot.
Similarly, bigotry involves intolerance towards those who hold rival ideas. Intolerance is not “disagreement”. If I said to you, “I tolerate my wife’s cooking” you would assume my wife was a bad cook and her cooking was something I had to endure dispute not liking it. You are not tolerant if you agree with certain views. Tolerance is determined by how one responds to views one disagrees with or finds distasteful, mistaken and so on.
So if you try and ban and shut down, or express hatred towards people who disagree with you, demeaning them banning them, trying to have them removed from the country, intimidating them insulting and shaming them and so forth then you are intolerant. It doesn’t matter what those views are and what views you hold. If you do those things you are not tolerating those who disagree with you.
To his credit, Gulibani realizes this:
The irony is that today, many people who confidently pride themselves on “calling out bigotry” are actually bigots.
If you turn up to angry protests demanding that people who express certain views be silenced, shut down. You are doing two things, first, you are showing, that will not consider rival views, listen to them or consider them, instead, you will just angrily shut those views down, refuse to listen and make sure no one else can. You will not examine any counterarguments, in fact you are demanding such arguments not be made. If you do this have not just strong views, but stubborn views, views immune to counter-evidence. Second, you are also exercising intolerance towards those with whom you disagree. So, you are a bigot.
Saying “ I am calling out bigotry” doesn’t make you, not a bigot just as the claim by the characters in Orwell’s 1984 claiming they worked for the Ministry of Truth, didn’t change the fact they were publishing lies. Stating a claim over and over doesn’t make it true. Nor does chanting slogans about how much you hate bigotry make you, not a bigot. Words have meanings and we know what a bigot is. If you hold your opinion stubbornly and use it to act intolerantly against others you meet the core criteria of a bigot.
So, when I am confronted with a young first-year university student, straight out of high school, who tells me some view I hold “makes me a bigot” and concludes am to be shunned or insulted, or silenced, because of this. My reaction is to roll my eyes.
I have spent years studying questions in moral philosophy and in theology, reading and exposing myself to people on all sides of the issue. I have engaged in public debates and panel discussions with people I disagree. I read the works of the best opponents of the views I hold and I have published responses to some of them in the literature. On some occasions, I have discussed and debated issues with them. I have learnt a lot from this, on several occasions my views have shifted, or I have revised what I thought. It is, of course, possible that I am holding my views stubbornly and if you have some reasons or arguments, you want me to consider I am happy to listen.
However, if you are just going to assert without argument, I am a bigot, refuse to listen and then demand I be shunned, hated, fired, muzzled etc. etc. I am afraid that your claim to be calling out bigotry is self-deceived bull shit. It is true I might be a bigot. However, your behaviour makes it abundantly clear that you are.
Your claim to be calling out bigotry is on par with someone standing in a room shouting, in English, “I don’t speak a word of English”. That’s funny, it is something one might see an epic Monty Python skit on. But don’t expect me to take your conclusions remotely seriously. When you grow up and can have a rational discussion rather than throw a tantrum let me know. In the meantime, stop the bullshit you’re a bigot. If you want to call out bigotry, try the mirror.
[1] Some examples:
Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines a bigot as: someone who is ‘obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his own opinions and prejudices’,
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language says a bigot is:‘one who is strongly partial to one’s own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ’.
Miriam Webster defines a bigot as “a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (such as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance
The Oxford Dictionary of English defines bigotry as: ‘obstinate and unenlightened attachment to a particular creed, opinion system or party’.
Oxford Languages defines a bigot as “a person who is obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, especially one who is prejudiced against or antagonistic towards a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group.
Tags: Bigotry · Free speechComments Off on When bigots call out “bigots”