Term Paper #1

Divine Command Theory: A Critical Evaluation

Topic #2:

“G-d tells us what is right and wrong. Ethics needs a solid, supernatural foundation.”

In late 1945 in Nuremberg, Germany, twenty-two Nazis were prosecuted for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the Allied powers. One by one they took the stand and, nearly without exception, disavowed responsibility for their actions by repeating the now-infamous statement that they were merely “following orders”.[1]

The Nazis were not the only people in history to attempt to justify morally heinous acts through appeals to authority. It’s all too easy for employees to blame employers, children to blame parents, students to blame teachers, soldiers to blame their commanders, and politicians to blame their party leaders. It seems human beings have an endless capacity to pass the buck and avoid taking responsibility for their actions. In these cases, we would tend to reject their attempts to shift the blame, claiming instead that they have free will and should have exercised it instead of relying on blind faith in these superiors. If I were to kill my sister and claim that I was acting on the orders of a non-verifiable entity such as the purple people eater, I would still be either imprisoned or, if I were really convincing, committed to a mental hospital. (I suppose the purple people eater could theoretically be charged with conspiracy, if he were to be found.)

Now, what if I gave the purple people eater a new name? For the sake of argument, let’s call this entity “G-d[2]”. If, in this scenario I went to court claiming that the voice of G-d had commanded me to kill my sister, I would probably still be locked up. For my sister’s sake, I certainly hope so. But, suppose my name were not Sari but Abraham, and instead of killing my sister, I claimed to be ordered to sacrifice my son, Isaac. Would I be locked up? Or would someone write a book about me and hold me up as an example?[3]

A fundamentalist religious Christian recently engaged me in debate on an Internet message board. At one point, I asked him why he thought it necessary to appeal to G-d for ethics. He responded:

When men and women try to think that they know more than God or to play God they are risking a lot. They’re filling their heads with mind-numbing ideas and losing touch with reality. We are generally evil in nature, no matter how good we try to be. We lie, cheat, steal, swear, lust, hate, and are just plain mean. So what can we possibly come up with to rationalize what is right and wrong? We don't have the moral capacity to govern ourselves fairly. We can't do anything without thinking of ourselves. So all this talk of that we can dictate what is right or wrong is just plain insanity.[4]

In simple terms, this is the claim of the Divine Command Theory of ethics. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines divine command theory as “the view that moral actions are those which conform to G-d’s will.”[5] In other words, G-d determines what is right and wrong, and is the basis for ethics and morality. In this paper, I will examine the claim that we need G-d to tell us right from wrong, and I will demonstrate that this claim is not only illogical, it is extremely dangerous.

The first question to address regards the internal consistency of the divine command theory. Does it make logical sense to attribute morality to the will of a supreme being?

To answer that, the first thing we can ask is, what exactly is G-d? According to the Judeo-Christian concept of G-d, aside from being all-powerful and all knowing, He is invisible and unknowable, and it is impossible to prove His existence. The mere questioning of G-d’s existence is considered to be blasphemous by most religious people, who insist that the only proof is faith. Faith, of course, is no proof at all. As of yet, nobody has successfully proved the existence of G-d.[6] How is it, then, that we can base our standards of right and wrong on an entity that logically may not even exist?[7]

Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the theist manages to counter with a satisfactory proof of the existence of G-d, the second question then becomes, of course, which G-d?[8] While Jews, Christians, and Moslems claim that there is only one G-d, many other religions and cultures, for example, the ancient Greeks, have been polytheistic. Furthermore, even if we stick to the monotheistic, Judeo-Christian notion of G-d, different religions, denominations, and individuals all have varying interpretations of His nature and commands. In that case, which G-d do we follow? Mine? Yours? The purple people eater?

This, of course, brings me to the third point: assuming, again for the sake of argument, that G-d exists and we can identify which G-d we’re talking about, how do we know what He thinks is right or wrong? Aside from the few unbalanced individuals who claim to hear G-d’s voice in their heads, most religious people would claim that G-d’s word is set forth in holy books such as the Torah, the Bible, the Qu’ran, or other such texts, depending on one’s religious denomination⁷. So even if we’ve solved the problem of which G-d we’re talking about, we now have a new problem: which text is the true representation of His word? If I were to publish my masterpiece, “Sari’s book of ethics”, which commands all people to listen to the band Collective Soul and prohibits the consumption of broccoli, I could theoretically claim that this was the will of G-d and that breaking these rules would therefore be immoral. So how, then, can we determine that a book is truly the word of G-d? Even sticking to the bible has a multitude of problems, considering the many different Testaments, versions, translations, and interpretations, not to mention the many contradictions appearing in the same version of the bible.

I asked this very question on the same Internet message board, and obtained the following in response from “Jake”, one of the religious regulars: “Because God said so. Because everything points to it being true. Because it has never been disproved.”[9]

The first part of Jake’s answer, obviously, is circular logic. The bible cannot serve as proof for its own legitimacy; outside evidence is needed to do so. The example I gave him was that Pepsi claims in its advertising that it is better than Coke. Simply having Pepsi’s say-so on the subject does not make that claim true, however. In order to back up the claim, Pepsi would need to bring in outside evidence, such as a taste test or an independent research report. The same applies to the bible. In order to convincingly make the claim that the bible is the word of G-d, evidence outside of the bible itself is required. The second part of Jake’s statement is a logical fallacy because it assumes that the burden of proof is on the nonbeliever, when, in fact, it is the theist’s job to prove his claim that the bible is the word of G-d, and he cannot do that.

So without knowing who G-d really is or what sort of rules G-d wants us to follow, the claim that ethics come from G-d seems to be problematic. Obviously, for G-d to be an absolute, objective source of ethics, we would need agreement and consistency about what exactly those laws and ethics are. Without this, we are reduced to nothing more than arbitrariness, each with our own ideas of what G-d wants.

However, what if we really could know who G-d was and what exactly He wanted? Would it make sense to appeal to Him for ethics at that point? Theists claim that of course it makes sense, because if G-d is the creator of everything, then it logically follows that He created our consciences, our desires, right, wrong, good, and evil. Their claim is that we must serve and obey our creator simply because He created us[10].

The following is another quote from the same message board, from a person going by the alias NoYearZero, regarding the topic of homosexuality and religion:

Homosexuality is wrong because God said so. He created the universe and us and he created sex, therefore he can govern what is proper and what isn't, even if he had no good reason.[11]

This argument implies that G-d’s will is purely arbitrary, which is problematic for reasons I will address later in this paper. However, it also implies that the creator can make the rules, a claim whose truth is not necessarily evident. My parents effectively created me, and yet I disobey them frequently. To take another example, was Dr. Frankenstein’s monster morally obliged to obey his creator? Or, after his creation, did he become a moral free agent, responsible for his own actions?[12] The point is, even if we human beings are creations of a divine power, we also have agency and free will. We are not mere computer programs, designed simply to execute the will of our programmers. Free will negates the theory that we are obliged to follow the will of our creator, assuming one even exists⁷.

So if not from G-d, theists will ask, where does morality come from? After all, the laws of morals and ethics must come from somewhere, right? This assumption - that no morality is possible without some form of “higher” law – is, according to Frederick Edwards, a result of the assumption that all laws need a lawmaker.[13] However, if that were true, where do G-d’s laws come from? The idea that every law needs a higher source would lead to an endless chain of higher sources. Thus, the claim that G-d is the ultimate source of morality would tend to eliminate this problem, however, this implies that G-d’s laws and morals are simply arbitrary inventions.

Furthermore, Edwards claims, the assumption that all laws need a higher source is faulty. Why do we humans tend to assume that we are incapable of creating laws ourselves? We do so every day – traffic laws and rules of sports are both cases in point. Our system of morals need not be entirely relative or arbitrary, as we as humans all share certain characteristics that factor into our moral systems. Edwards gives several examples: basic survival and growth needs, genetic behaviours, common emotional responses, a common planetary environment, the same laws of physics, and the same rules of logic and evidence¹³. With all these common elements, is it not so difficult to believe that ethics have human origins?

One frequent claim of theists is that we need G-d to have morality, because without Him, we could justify just about anything. For example, theists claim, without G-d as a basis for ethics, there would be nothing to prohibit rape.[14] This claim is based on the notion that, without G-d, all ethics have human origins and are therefore arbitrary. However, if right and wrong are simply what G-d believes, this implies that G-d’s will in itself is purely arbitrary. Therefore, if G-d were to decide tomorrow that rape was good, then, in theory, it would become good.

This brings up a related question: is rape wrong because G-d prohibits it, or does G-d prohibit rape because it is wrong? This dilemma was first introduced by Plato in Euthyphro[15], and can be applied to any moral issue.

If G-d prohibits rape because it is wrong, then G-d must be judging rape against some objective standard of right and wrong that's external to His arbitrary will. In other words, we can remove G-d from the equation altogether, because if there are other objective reasons why rape is wrong, then we really don't need to base it on G-d's commands, do we? Why not just make the arguments outside religion?⁷

If, on the other hand, rape is wrong simply because G-d said so, then that implies that "right" and "wrong" are arbitrary inventions of G-d. So, in theory, if G-d were to change His mind tomorrow and say that rape is right, it would then be right, wouldn't it? Assuming G-d is all-powerful, changing things around so that rape was good would be a fairly simple task for Him, right? If there's nothing G-d can't do (the definition of all-powerful implies this), then G-d can change his mind, can't He? He could turn around tomorrow and make rape, murder, torture, incest, and a whole host of other morally repugnant things "right" because, after all, "right" and "wrong" would simply be extensions of G-d's will.⁷

Now, theists would claim that these people wouldn't really have been following G-d's orders, because G-d is inherently good. Therefore, they were really following the devil or twisting the word of G-d, making their actions wrong. They would probably argue that G-d COULDN’T decide rape is good, because it would be against G-d’s nature to condone evil. Theists such as such as Greg Bahnsen and John Frame have held that goodness is an attribute of G-d’s nature or character[16]. But what does it really mean to say that G-d is by nature good?

The problem with that statement, philosophically speaking, is that the phrase "G-d is good" loses its meaning with the first case of the Euthyphro dilemma. Because when we say, "G-d is good" we're comparing G-d to some external standard of morality. But if "good" is simply whatever G-d approves of, than "G-d is good" really translates as "G-d is Himself" or “G-d approves of Himself”. So the phrase becomes absurd and, thus, meaningless⁷.

Finally, theists will maintain that all these arguments are inadequate on the basis that G-d is far too complex for humans to understand, and that we must take everything on faith. This argument is essentially the same as throwing up one’s hands and giving up, but theists won’t admit it. This argument does not hold up logically either, because people who use it cannot provide any evidence to back their theory. While it is true that a theoretical G-d would be more complex than us, Occam’s Razor states that we should not multiply entities beyond necessity⁷. We don’t need G-d for ethics or morality because we can explain their existence in strictly human terms. Therefore, the burden of proof is on the religious theist who makes the claim that G-d is the source of ethics. By refusing to present evidence or back it up in any way, they have relegated this theory to one of mere faith, with no useful application to anyone other than themselves.

For all these reasons, the claim that we need G-d as a source of ethics is a logical fallacy. A frequent claim, however, is that the divine command theory, regardless of whether it can be proven ontologically, is a good theory because it is useful⁷. Religion motivates people to be good by promising the rewards of heaven for the righteous and threatening an eternity in hell for the evildoers.

However, is it truly ethical to do good deeds and avoid bad ones for purely selfish reasons? If I help an elderly person cross the road because I think she will give me a tip, am I really doing something good? What if I were to help her simply because she appears to need help and I judge it to be the right thing to do? When evaluating an action in ethical terms, we must look at the motive, the act itself, and the consequences⁷. While the act and the consequences will be the same regardless of whether I help the elderly person cross the street because it’s the right thing to do, or whether I do it because “the bible says so”, the motive is clearly different. This is not necessarily a problem in this case, since in the end I did do something good and helped someone else. However, actions in these terms can fall into one of four categories (ignoring ethically neutral acts):

(1) Both ethically right and commanded by religion

(2) Both ethically wrong and prohibited by religion

(3) Ethically right and yet prohibited by religion

(4) Ethically wrong and yet commanded by religion

Clearly, in the first two cases, the existence of a conflict will be minimal, since, regardless of motive, people will continue to act ethically. However, the real problem with the divine command theory can be illustrated with the third and especially fourth cases. In the case of ethically wrong actions that are – at least in the interpretation of certain people – commanded by religion, we can clearly see where appeals to authority become extremely dangerous. And yet, blind faith is a virtue according to most Judeo-Christian religions, as exemplified in the biblical story of how, when G-d, through Moses, offered the “Book of the Covenant” to the ancient Israelites, they replied: ‘Na’aseh Venishmah’.”[17]

Na’aseh Venishmah translates literally as “we will do and we will hear”. In other words, the Israelites accepted the commandments without even hearing them first or knowing what they said. With this simple statement, the Jewish religion and those deriving from it, namely Christianity and Islam, based their concept of moral rightness and wrongness on a blind appeal to authority.

Some acts that have been carried out in the name of G-d include: the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the burning of suspected witches, the forced slavery of black people, and many others too countless to ignore. Nor are these actions limited in the past. To this day, religious fundamentalists burn abortion clinics and kill doctors in the name of the “pro-life” movement, the irony of that deed escaping them in their self-righteous convictions. Holy wars are being fought in hundreds of countries as we speak. And on September 11, 2001, highly trained suicide pilots crashed planes into buildings, killing thousands of people in a mission that they firmly believed was mere carrying out of religious orders.

I asked my online religious debate-opponent if he would be willing to kill his child on G-d’s orders. After protesting that G-d would never command such a thing, I brought up the example of Abraham from the bible, to which he replied:

Well, if God told me to do something which was against His normal law, then I would have to do it. Just like Abraham; that was a good example you had there. This is where faith comes into effect; I have faith that God is love and righteousness and he will not ask me to break His law. The Bible says that God does not tempt us, but he does allow Satan to tempt us to further God's Will in ways we often do not see initially.[18]

By admitting that his theory of ethics would theoretically allow him to kill his own child, Jake effectively destroyed his argument, since a theory of ethics must be tested against what we know is wrong in order to see if it will hold up⁷. In this case, what we know is that all people have a prima facie right to life⁷, and clearly, indiscriminate killing of a fellow human being, especially one’s own child, is a violation of that right and would be universally condemned.

In conclusion, divine command theory does not hold up logically, nor is it a “harmless” theory regardless of logic. People appealing blindly to a higher authority have carried out many terrible things in the name of G-d. Karl Marx claimed, “Religion is the opium of the people[19]”. Based on the number of people who appeal to religion to justify their actions, I would contend that, in fact, religion is the punching bag of the masses. Human beings need to exercise their free will and assume moral responsibility for their actions and their consequences. As in the case of Nuremberg, appealing to authority as a basis for ethics simply does not hold up.