In many of his addresses and debates William Lane Craig has defended a Divine Command Theory of moral obligation (“DCT”). In a recent article Walter Sinnott-Armstrong has criticized this contention.[1] Armstrong contends that even if theism is true then a particular form of ethical naturalism is a more plausible account of the nature of moral obligations than a DCT is. This paper critiques Armstrong’s argument.

Craig’s contention
Craig’s contention is that if theism is true then we can plausibly explain the nature of moral obligation by identifying obligations with God’s commands analogous to the way “we explain the nature of water by identifying it with H2O, or explain the nature of heat by identifying it with molecular motion.”[2] By “God” Craig means a necessarily existent, all-powerful, all-knowing, loving and just, immaterial person who created the universe.

This emphasis, both on God as a loving and just being and identifying moral obligations with God’s commands suggests that Craig defends a version of the modified DCT defended by Robert Adams,[3] William Alston[4] and C Stephen Evans[5]. Both Adams and Evans have argued, like Craig, that if God exists then his commands “best fill the role assigned to wrongness by the concept”.[6] Much of Craig’s arguments can be seen as an appropriation and popularisation of Adams.[7]

Armstrong’s Argument from Harm
Armstrong contends that such a position is “incredible”[8], he states:

There is a much more plausible foundation for morality. It seems obvious to me, and to everyone who does not start with peculiarly religious assumptions, that what makes rape morally wrong is the extreme harm that rape causes to rape victims.[9]

We do not need a “new supernatural level” for morality because a natural property, the property of harming others without an adequate reason, fulfils the role assigned to wrongness by the concept better than divine commands do. Armstrong provides two arguments for this conclusion.

(a) The harm account makes moral obligations more objective than a DCT does;

(b) The harm account is more economical than a DCT.

Armstrong contends that his argument refutes, not just Craig, but any theistic account of ethics, “Other theists might try to give better arguments for a religious view of morality. I don’t see how they could avoid all the problems in Craig’s account without leaving traditional Christianity far behind.”[10]

I will address arguments (a) and (b) below. However, it is worth noting that, as stated, Armstrong’s conclusion here misses the point. He contends that everyone who does not start with peculiarly religious assumptions will see that the harm-based account is more plausible than a DCT. But Craig’s contention is that if God exists then a DCT is a plausible account of the nature of moral obligations. Neither Craig nor Adams contend that a DCT is the most plausible theory in the absence of religious assumptions. They contend that a DCT is the more “attractive theory, given those [theistic] beliefs, than any other meta-ethical theory is, given non-theistic beliefs”.[11] Note that this is not the conditional Armstrong addresses in his paper.[12]

Armstrong’s Arguments for the Superiority of the Harm-Account
Turning to Armstrong’s two main arguments in favour of the harm-account:

Objectivity
Armstrong’s first argument is that his harm account of moral obligations makes moral obligations more objective than a DCT does. He distinguishes between two “levels of objectivity”; a strong sense, where the wrongness of an action does not depend on whether anyone thinks or wants it to be wrong, and a weaker sense where the wrongness of an action does not depend on whether we think or want it to be wrong. Armstrong contends that divine commands are objective only in the first sense. God, after all, is “someone”. However, the natural property of causing harm is objective in both senses. Hence, his harm account provides a better explanation of the objectivity of moral obligations.

I will make three comments in response to this.

First, Armstrong’s harm account is not, in fact, more objective than a DCT.  If God exists then natural properties are not objective in the first sense. God is omniscient and is the creator and sustainer of the universe; hence, no natural property exists independently of his beliefs and desires. Natural properties can only be objective in the strong sense if theism is false but Craig is not arguing that a DCT is plausible if theism is false. His claim is that if God exists then there is a sound ontological basis for moral duties.

Second, the property of harming others is not objective in the weak sense either. In a later elaboration of his account Armstrong states that the badness of harm consists in it being “irrational to seek it (or not to avoid it) without an adequate reason”[13] and “to call such acts irrational is then, at least partly, to say that you and other normal people would never advise your friends (or anyone you care about) to do them”.[14] This entails that the badness of harming others, and the reason-giving force of the obligation, depends on what we (normal people) believe and desire and so it is not objective even in Armstrong’s weak sense.

Third, even if Armstrong’s harm account does make moral obligations objective in the strong sense. It does not follow that it is a better explanation of the objectivity of moral obligations. That follows only if strong objectivity is part of the “the role assigned to wrongness by the concept”, and hence, is the type of objectivity an account of moral obligations must explain. However, Armstrong provides no argument for this.[15] Moreover, Adams’ reason for claiming that objectivity is part of this role assigned to moral obligations is that “‘wrong’ has the syntax of an ordinary predicate, and we worry we may be mistaken in our moral judgments”.[16] We worry that, neither we nor society can “eliminate all moral requirements just by not making any demands”[17] and that “what the Nazi’s did to the Jews was horribly wrong whether or not the Nazi’s thought so and it would have been more horribly wrong if they had managed to persuade the Jews that it was not wrong”; these features of the concept only require weak objectivity.

Ockhams Razor
Armstrong’s second argument appealed to Ockham’s Razor; he stated “We should prefer simpler views when we have no reason to complicate matters.” However, “the divine command view adds a new supernatural level to its theory of morality. That added complication brings no benefits for the objectivity of morality”.[18]

In response to this argument I will make three points.

First, it is unclear that in the relevant dialectical context a DCT does violate Ockham’s Razor. Consider a related point by Alvin Plantinga:

Suppose we land a space ship on a planet we know is inhabited by intelligent creatures.  We find something that looks exactly like a stone arrowhead, complete with grooves and indentations made in the process of shaping and sharpening it.  Two possibilities suggest themselves: one, that it acquired these characteristics by way of erosion, let’s say, and the other, that it was intentionally designed and fashioned by the inhabitants.  Someone with a couple of courses in philosophy might suggest that the former hypothesis is to be preferred because it posits fewer entities than the latter.  He’d be wrong, of course; since we already know that the planet contains intelligent creatures, there is no Ockhamistic cost involved in thinking those structures designed.[19] 

Plantinga’s comments are aimed at debate over divine design. But something analogous occurs here. Craig and Adams are assuming for the sake of argument that God and his commands exist and asking what theory best explains the nature of moral obligation given these assumptions. One does not postulate a new supernatural level by explaining obligations in terms of divine commands. Armstrong’s appeal to Ockham’s Razor might[20] have “teeth”[21] if the naturalist and divine command theorist were starting from an agnostic position, and if the divine command theorist postulated the existence of God’s commands to explain the nature of moral obligation.  But Craig and Adams are not doing this.  They are assuming, for the sake of argument, that God and his commands exist and they are then asking which theory best explains the nature of moral obligation given these assumptions.[22]

Second, even if Armstrong’s naturalism is simpler than a DCT, it doesn’t follow it is a better account, all-things-considered. Simplicity is one relevant consideration. Another is which property best fits the role assigned to wrongness by the concept. Armstrong does not provide a reason for thinking his account does this. He argued it is a simpler account of the objectivity of moral obligations. However, objectivity is only one feature of moral obligations that a viable account must explain.

This is important because defenders of DCT contend it provides a better explanation of all the relevant features. Adams argued that if God exists then divine commands “best fill the role assigned to wrongness by the concept”.[23] He argued that if moral obligations are divine commands then this explains the fact that “wrongness is an objective property of actions”;[24] it also accounts for “the wrongness of a major portion of the types of action that we have believed to be wrong”;[25] It can explain how this property “plays a causal role … in their coming to be regarded as wrong.”[26]  And how moral obligations constitute a “supremely weighty reason” for doing or refraining from an action. Similarly, he contends that a DCT accounts for the intuition that our moral duties comprise “a standard that has a sanctity greater than that of any merely human will or institution”.[27] To conclude, his arguments call into question any theistic account of ethics that Armstrong needs to argue that his account provides a simpler account of all these features.

Part II coming soon…

A good example can be seen in a recent USA Today article by influential biologist Jerry Coyne entitled, As atheists know, you can be good without God. Coyne, an outspoken atheist, is disturbed that many Americans, including some prominent scientists, believe that our instinctive sense of right and wrong is “strong evidence for [God’s] existence.” He ventures into moral philosophy to explain why this is clearly mistaken.

From the get-go Coyne demonstrates he does not understand the issues.

It is necessary to accurately understand the position Coyne is criticising before we look at the paucity of his critique. The argument that our instinctive sense of right and wrong “is strong evidence for [God’s] existence” found its most important formulation in a 1979 article by Yale Philosopher Robert Adams. In it, Adams noted that we instinctively grasp that certain actions, like torturing children for fun, are wrong; hence, he reasoned, we are intuitively aware of the existence of moral obligations. According to Adams, the best account of the nature of such obligations is that they are commands issued by a loving and just God. Identifying obligations with God’s commands can explain all the features of moral obligation better than any secular alternative. Consequently, the existence of moral obligations provides evidence for God’s existence.

It is important to note what Adams did not claim. Central to Adams’ argument, and to pretty much every author who follows him, is a vital distinction; this is the distinction between the claim that moral obligations are, in fact, divine commands and the claim that one cannot recognise what our moral obligations are unless one believes in divine commands or some form of divine revelation. Adams illustrates this distinction with the example of H₂0 and water.

Contemporary chemistry tells us that the best account of the nature of water is that water is, in fact, H₂0 molecules. This, of course, means that water cannot exist unless H₂0 does. However, it does not mean that people who do not know about or believe in the existence of H₂0 cannot recognise water when they see it. For centuries people recognised, swam in, sailed on and drank water before they knew anything about modern chemistry.

This distinction has important implications. The claim that moral obligations are, in fact, commands issued by God does not entail that people must believe that God exists and has issued commands in order to be able to recognise right and wrong. These are separate and logically distinct claims.

Coyne conflates this distinction from the outset. After noting that some people believe that moral obligations provide strong evidence for God’s existence, he claims that this is an oft-heard argument, “‘Evolution,’ many argue, ‘could never have given us feelings of kindness, altruism and morality…’;” to this he rejoins that, “scientists studying our primate relatives, such as chimpanzees, see evolutionary rudiments of morality: behaviours that look for all the world like altruism, sympathy, moral disapproval, sharing — even notions of fairness.”

This is confused. Apart from the fact that no one who cites morality as evidence for God actually makes the argument about evolution that Coyne sets out, the claim that moral obligations cannot exist independently of God is not the claim that without God people would not have moral feelings. Feeling that one has an obligation to do something and actually having an obligation to do it are clearly different things. People can feel that they have a certain obligation without it actually being the case that they do.

Coyne makes a similar mistake when he argues that secular European countries like Sweden and Denmark “are full of well-behaved and well-meaning citizens, not criminals and sociopaths running amok.” This may well be true but all it shows is that people can recognise moral obligations and live in accord with them without believing in God. That no more shows that moral obligations can exist without God or that moral obligations are not divine commands than the fact that for centuries people could recognise water and swim without knowing anything about modern chemistry shows that water can exist without hydrogen.

Coyne equally fails to address the issue when he asserts that the bible endorses beating slaves, genocide, killing homosexuals, torturing people for eternity, killing children for being cheeky and so on; texts he claims Christians pass over “with judicious silence”. Apart from the fact that Coyne’s interpretation of these texts is in many places dubious and that far from passing over them in silence, Christian theologians working in the field of Old Testament ethics have written voluminous works on how these passages are to be understood, Coyne’s argument here misses the point. The claim that moral obligations cannot exist independently from the existence of a just and loving God is not the claim that the bible is an accurate source of information about what God commands. Someone could, for example, argue that the wrongness of an action is constituted by God’s commands but that we know and recognise what is right and wrong from our conscience and not from a written revelation. Some leading writers on theological ethics have suggested precisely this.

The only time Coyne is remotely on point is when he argues that if moral obligations are constituted by God’s commands then morality becomes arbitrary; anything at all could be deemed ‘right’ as long as God has commanded it – even stealing or infanticide. Coyne suggests this argument is devastating and has known to be so by philosophers for hundreds of years.

In fact, since Adams’ publication, this argument has been subject to extensive criticism in the philosophical literature. So much so that today even Adams’ leading critics grant that it fails. Adams contended that moral obligations are, in fact, the commands of a loving and just God; therefore, it is possible for infanticide or theft to be right only if a fully informed, loving and just person could command things like infanticide and stealing. The assumption that this is possible seems dubious. The very reason Coyne cites examples such as infanticide and theft is because he considers them to be paradigms of conduct that no morally good person could ever knowingly entertain or endorse.

Coyne seems vaguely aware of the response, stating “Of course, you can argue that God would never sanction something like that because he’s a completely moral being, but then you’re still using some idea of morality that is independent of God.” Here he again falls into confusion. What his response shows is that people can have ideas about and recognise what counts as loving and just independently of their beliefs about God and his commands. Now this is true but this does not show that moral obligations can exist independently of the commands of a loving and just God. Coyne again fails to grasp the basic distinctions involved in discussions of God and morality.

Not only does this argument not refute Adams position but precisely analogous reasoning provides a serious challenge to Coyne’s own secular account of morality.  After claiming that moral obligations cannot be constituted by God’s commands, Coyne offers an alternative: morality comes from “evolution”, humans evolved a capacity to instinctively feel certain actions are wrong and others are right. But couldn’t evolution have produced rational beings that felt that infanticide and theft were obligatory or that rape was, in certain circumstances, ok? As Darwin himself noted,

“If men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters, and no one would think  of interfering.”

Coyne faces a dilemma. If the fact that it is possible for God to have commanded that infanticide is permissible proves that morality is not based on God’s commands then the fact it is possible for evolution to have produced rational beings who feel infanticide is permissible must prove that morality is not dependent on evolution.

Believers of God can avoid this conclusion for the reasons I pointed to above; it is unlikely that a loving and just person could command actions such as infanticide or rape whereas, evolution, guided only by the impersonal forces of nature, is not subject to such constraints. Coyne’s argument does not refute Adams’ position but it does appear to refute his own.

Now nothing I say in response to Coyne here is new, much of it has been said in the voluminous literature on God and Morality written and published over the last forty years. All Coyne had to do to realise this was actually read it. Of course, like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and a host of other popular writers, Coyne has not bothered to actually read the literature on contemporary theological ethics before wading in. Instead he hopes that his stature as a biologist and his confident tone will convince many unfamiliar with the field that he has offered a devastating criticism.  He has not and pretending he has is about as sensible as pretending that because I am a theologian I can offer informed commentary on contemporary genetics off the top of my head.

Matt writes a monthly column for Investigate Magazine entitled “Contra Mundum.” This blog post was published in the October 2011 issue and is reproduced here with permission. Contra Mundum is Latin for ‘against the world;’ the phrase is usually attributed to Athanasius who was exiled for defending Christian orthodoxy.

Letters to the editor should be sent to:
editorial@investigatemagazine.DELETE.com

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“Matt” he told me tersely “I am just ringing to say I am alright. I got grounded at Heathrow airport and did not fly into the US as I had intended to this morning and so was not caught up in the drama that’s unfolded.”

“What drama?” I said bewilderedly “why wouldn’t you be ok?”

“Haven’t you heard?” he responded “planes have been high-jacked; there has been a terrorist attack in America – the World Trade Centre has been hit, as has the Pentagon”.

I suddenly was wide awake.

One particularly poignant fact about the events of 9/11 is that the terrorists who carried out the attacks justified their actions by claiming God commanded them to do so. That fact has lead many contemporary commentators to argue that a divine command theory of ethics is indefensible. September 11 is just the most recent example in a series of incidents throughout history such as the Crusades, Inquisition and wars of religion. Divine command ethics is discredited by the fact that people appeal to such commands to justify terrorism.

At first glance this objection is hard to take seriously; the premise is that some people have appealed to divine commands to commit atrocities. The conclusion is that any appeal to divine commands in ethics should be rejected.  This conclusion does not follow. To be valid the objector must assume a tacit premise: if people appeal to certain reasons to justify atrocities, then appeals to those reasons are always problematic. This premise is false.

An analogous line of reasoning applies to appeals to right and wrong per se. Take any historical atrocity that people have attempted to justify; in almost every case the justifier will have argued that the action in question was the right action to do, the justifier invariably appeals to the purported rightness of their action. If the tacit premise is true then appeals to right and wrong are always problematic.

Other examples illustrate the same point. The “reign of terror” during the French Revolution was justified by appeals to liberty, equality, fraternity and the rights of humankind; one victim of the guillotine famously remarked, “Oh, liberty, what crimes are committed in your name?” Millions have been slaughtered by appeals to the greater good of society or the liberation of the oppressed classes and it is well known that people have defended wars on the basis of justice and social peace. Should we therefore avoid liberty, equality, opposing oppression, seeking justice, social peace and so on? Obviously not.

The fact that people have attempted to offer justifications for atrocities by appealing to some reason does not entail that any or all appeals to such reasons are problematic. This is a fairly innocuous claim. Take any premise you like – secular or theological – it is true that a person could appeal to this premise in an attempt to justify something but this fact does not mean the premise is problematic. For the appeals to atrocities argument to have bite one needs to show more than just that someone has tried to justify an abhorrent action by appealing to God’s commands; one would have to show that they did so successfully, that God actually commands such practises.

The claim that God commands atrocities appears to be indefensible. We need to remember that we are not talking about the commands of just anyone; we are talking about God, who is typically defined as a being who is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect. So, as the terms are defined, the claim that it is possible for God to command people to torture others for fun is true only if it is possible for a morally perfect person to command an atrocious thing. But this is not possible. The very reason that critics cite atrocities in their arguments against God is because they regard these actions as paradigms of conduct that no morally good person could ever entertain or endorse.

At this point, a second line of argument is mounted; it is claimed that God, in fact, has commanded atrocities. Sceptics have argued passionately that the bible portrays God as issuing commands that are at odds with contemporary modern understandings of morality. They claim that God commands us to punish adultery with death, women to marry their rapists and parents to execute naughty children. They claim that God condoned slavery and that he commanded the killing of non-combatants in “holy wars” against the local Canaanite population.

There is a lot that can be said about these concerns (and I have said a lot about most of them and more on this blog previously). Here I will offer three points.

First, even if the Bible does teach these things, it does not follow that our moral obligations are not, in fact, divine commands. The claim that moral obligations cannot exist independently from the existence of a just and loving God is not the claim that the Bible is an infallible source of information about what God commands. While I do not hold this view, it is possible for someone to argue that the wrongness of an action is based on God’s commands but that we know and recognise what is right and wrong from our conscience and not from a written revelation. Some leading writers on theological ethics have suggested precisely this. What this argument shows then, at best, is that the Bible is not an infallible source of information about Gods commands.

Second, often the interpretation of the Bible undergirding this objection is suspect. In many instances the sceptic fails to appreciate the context and genre of the passages he cites. The sceptic fails to understand the difference between indentured servitude in the ancient Near East and antebellum slavery; they fail to understand that that “cursing their parents” in ancient Near Eastern law does not refer to children being cheeky nor does it refer to children who are minors. They fail to understand that ancient societies consider seduction to be a form of rape. They fail to appreciate that ancient Near Eastern conquest accounts employ highly figurative rhetoric that hyperbolically describes victories in terms of total annihilation of the enemy. They fail to appreciate that ancient Near Eastern legal texts, as noted by Raymond Westbrook, “reflect the scribal compilers’ concern for perfect symmetry and delicious irony rather than the pragmatic experience of the law courts.” They miss that, as JJ Finkelstein points out, the commands “were not meant to be complied with literally” but to “serve an admonitory function”; so the commands probably do not command execution for the crimes mentioned.

Sceptics can fail to grasp that claiming the Bible is God’s word does not mean that it did not come to us mediated through the writings of human beings who wrote in a particular time and place using the language, rhetoric and literary conventions of their time and so and frequently they fail to appreciate that the bible is a Canon and that passages need to be read in their broader context i.e. taking into account their place within the whole Bible.

Third, it is worth reflecting on the general method in play here. In each case the sceptic takes a purported divine command and compares it to a moral belief that she takes to be correct. The conclusion she draws is that the purported command is inauthentic. This is of course a possibility; however, there is another possibility that on, at least, some occasions the moral statements these sceptics are relying on are mistaken. Objections like this assume that when a purported moral claim contradicts a theological claim about what God commands it is the latter that should be rejected.

All of this raises an interesting question: why does the sceptic assume that God, if he exists, would never command anything contrary to his own moral beliefs?

The most sustained argument for this method I know of comes from Robert Adams in Finite and Infinite Goods. Adams states that “Our existing moral beliefs are bound in practise, and I think, ought in principle, to be a constraint on our beliefs about what God commands.”

Adams reasons that we can only accept the claim that God’s commands constitute our moral duties if God is understood as perfectly good. If God were evil or morally indifferent then it would be possible for him to command wrongdoing and we cannot have a duty to do wrong. Once this assumption is granted one cannot coherently say that God has commanded just anything. We have some grasp of what goodness is – what counts as right and wrong, what kinds of things a good person does not command. Therefore, God cannot coherently be called good if what he commands is contrary to “our existing moral beliefs”. As Raymond Bradley argues, to do so would be “playing word games which are intellectually dishonest [that deprive] the word ‘holy’ of its ordinary meaning and make it a synonym for ‘evil’.”

In response I will simply note that critics of Adams’ argument have shown that, as it stands, it needs qualifying. It is true we have some grasp of what goodness is but this is mitigated by two factors.

First, our moral judgements are fallible. While God does not command wrongdoing, it is likely that a perfectly good omniscient being would, at some time, command something contrary to what we think is wrong. To say otherwise dogmatically assumes that we are such good judges of morality that God could never disagree with us.

Second, our moral concepts are subject to revision. We change our opinions about the goodness and rightness of certain things without “playing word games which are intellectually dishonest [or depriving] the word ‘holy’ of its ordinary meaning and mak[ing] it a synonym for ‘evil.’” If this were not the case then one could never honestly or rationally change one’s mind on an ethical issue.

Consequently, Adams’ argument does not show we cannot attribute to God commands that are contrary to “our existing moral beliefs”. Rather, as he says elsewhere, we cannot coherently ascribe to “God a set of commands that is too much at variance with the ethical outlook we bring to our ethical thinking.” Elsewhere Adams allows for “the possibility of a conversion in which one’s whole ethical outlook is revolutionized, and reorganized around a new center” but “we can hardly hold open the possibility of anything too closely approaching a revolution in which, so to speak, good and evil would trade places.”

Therefore, Adams does not establish the claim that “our existing moral beliefs must serve as a constraint on our beliefs about what God commands.” It does, on the other hand, suggest that we cannot coherently “accept a theological ethics that ascribes to God a set of commands that is too much at variance with the ethical outlook we bring to our ethical thinking.” Adams argues that we cannot coherently or defensibly accept a theological ethics that, in effect, makes good and evil trade places and which so radically transforms our concept of goodness that it becomes a synonym for what we call evil. Nor could we accept an ethical system that calls our concept of goodness so radically into question that it breaks down.

Certain beliefs such as the claim that “killing, assault, theft and lying are in general wrong and can only be justified if some overriding moral reason applies” or that “without special overriding reason it is wrong to inflict pain and suffering on others or treat them with contempt” are so central to our account of goodness that we cannot coherently accept that a perfectly good being has issued commands that negate them.

Many moral claims are highly controversial and such that people can debate them and change their minds on them and so on. When they do it is implausible to suggest that their concept of goodness was so radically at odds with previous beliefs that “good and evil would trade places” or that there new position it is merely a word game.

Consider, for example, the debate over whether the bombing of Hiroshima was justified because it saved a huge number of lives by ending a war early. While I myself do not share this opinion, I would not say that it is obviously self-contradictory.

Similarly, consider moral debates about capital punishment or euthanasia or affirmative action. While I believe there are defensible and justified answers to these questions, I doubt we can dismiss those views we disagree with as all being conceptually incoherent and so radically at odds with our understanding of good so as to be incomprehensible or merely semantic gymnastics. Even when we disagree with people on these issues, in many instances, we need to take what they say with genuine seriousness and be open to the possibility that they might be right and we may be wrong.

This means one should not be too quick to dismiss a purported divine command merely because it is contrary to contemporary liberal morality. Obviously one cannot coherently attribute anything at all to God and claim that he is good and that Adams is correct to say that we cannot accept a theological ethics that ascribes to God a set of commands that is too much at variance with the ethical outlook we bring to our ethical thinking.

One function of theological reflection is to critique our contemporary mores and an authentic encounter with God’s will is likely to contrast with some of our moral beliefs. It is sheer hubris to suggest God would always agree with us. Is it really impossible for an all knowing, all good being to disagree with us on the seriousness of adultery or the propriety of capital punishment? To say no is to tacitly assume that modern 21^st century liberal westerners have made no mistakes and their understanding of morality is infallible and inerrant. Those who make such an assumption have a dogmatically certain faith in contemporary liberal mores. Such attitudes are normally attributed predominantly to religious fundamentalists; I think the irony of this speaks for itself.

So the appeal to historical atrocities, on examination, is often found to be based on a fairly selective analysis of the evidence. The Bin Ladens and Hitlers of this world are clearly dangerous but so too are the Stalins, Pol Pots and secular groups like the Tamil Tigers who pioneered the practice of suicide bombing long before Al-Qaeda came on the scene. People fight and kill for a number of reasons; sometimes these are religious, more often they are secular and sometimes they are a combination of both. When people care deeply about something sometimes they will kill to protect it. Religion is no exception.

This post was published as part of the Apologetics Bloggers Alliance collaboration for the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Other participating blogs are:

“The Problem of Evil:  Whose problem is it?  Is it a problem?” (Tilled Soil)
“The Need for Moral Choices and Consequences”(Possible Worlds)
“Ground Zero:  Why truth matters in preventing another 9/11-style attack”  (Wintery Knight)
“9/11 Memorial: Christianity Gives Authentic Hope In The Face Of Suffering” (Bringing Back the Tao)
Remembering 9-11:  Which revelation is true?  The need for evaluating religious claims” (Ratio Christi – Ohio State University)
“If God, Why Evil?” (In Defense of the Christian Faith)
“Unsung Lessons from 9/11:  ‘Moral Monsters’ & Fear of Death” (Clay Jones)
“9/11 and Religious Pluralism” (Another Ascending Lark)
“The Tiptoes of Tolerance” (Valley Girl Apologist)
“9-11″ (Deeper Waters)
“Do all roads (and flights) lead to God?” (Sarcastic Xtian)
“On September 11, 2001, harmless things became fearful” (J.W. Wartick – “Always Have a Reason”)
“Remembering 9/11:  A Young Californian’s Perspective” (Take Two Blog)
“The Two Ground Zeros” (Reasons for God)
“Suffering and the Cross of Christ” (Hieropraxis)
“America after 9 11:  Is Religion Evil?” (Apologetics Guy)
“Resources on the Problem of Evil” (Apologetics 315)
“Atheism, Evil, and Ultimate Justice” (Faithful Thinkers)
“9/11: ‘Full Cognitive Meltdown” and its Fallout” (Thinking Christian)
“Where was God on 9/11?” (Cold and Lonely Truth)
“The Three Faces of Evil and A Christian Response” (The Real Issue)
“Christianity and 9/11:  Guilt by Association?” (The POINT)
“Did God Allow the Attacks on 9/11 for a ‘Greater Good?’” (The Gospel According to Erik)
“Where was God on 9-11?” (Neil Mammen’s Blog)
“From Ground Zero to Ten Years Later–September 11, 2001″ (Sententia)
“9-11 Remembered” (Answering Muslims)
“On the anniversary of the attacks of 9/11″ (Mirror of Justice) 

RELATED POSTS:
9/11 
Religion, Science, 9/11 and the Moon: Dawkins’ Response to Copan
Religion and Violence
The Problem of Evil: Why does God Allow Suffering?

A few weeks ago, as part of Jesus Week at the University of Auckland, Thinking Matters and Evangelical Union hosted an event entitled A Godless Public Square: Do ‘Private’ Christian Beliefs Have a Place in Public Life? This event was a conversation between Theology, Philosophy and Law and featured Matthew Flannagan - Analytic Theologian, Glenn Peoples - Philosopher and Madeleine Flannagan - Legal Scholar. The video is still being edited and will be available soon but for now, this 3-part series comprises the written speeches of each speaker.

Matthew Flannagan – Analytic Theology

Recently, many Christian ethicists have defended the central place of God’s commands in Theological ethics. In this talk I want to discuss one important objection to appeals to God’s commands; this is the claim that, while it is perfectly appropriate for believers to appeal to purported divine commands when regulating their private conduct or the conduct of voluntary religious communities who believe in such commands, it is morally wrong to appeal to theological beliefs of this sort in any discussion of social ethics. When doing Ethics as a public enterprise i.e. engaging in debates over social policy or offering criticism of cultural and social practices, Christian Ethicists are morally bound to only appeal to secular considerations. I will argue that this position, though widely accepted inside and outside of the church, is mistaken.

The Objection
So what is the problem with appealing to divine commands in social ethics? Christian theological convictions ought to impact the whole of life both in the private and public spheres; this is what is meant by the idea of an “undivided life”, where Jesus is Lord of all aspects of our lives.

Yet this consequence of Christian faith conflicts with a pervasive contemporary attitude: the view that that religion is fundamentally a private matter. It is accepted that a Christian is free to utilise theological convictions when they make decisions about their own life but in a pluralistic society it is increasingly deemed inappropriate to bring such convictions into public discussions about morality, law, politics, economics, education, scholarship and so on. The desire to influence society with Christian ideals or to convert others to the faith is viewed by many as an intolerant desire to impose one’s private views onto others.

It is widely accepted that theological convictions can govern churches and the private lives of believers yet we are told that the public square – government, public policy, the courts, the academy, education, business, arts, media, etc – should be secular only.The problem is nicely summarised by Stephen Carter Christian theological convictions ought to impact the whole of life both in the private and public spheres; this is what is meant by the idea of an “undivided life”, where Jesus is Lord of all aspects of our lives.

Yet this consequence of Christian faith conflicts with a pervasive contemporary attitude: the view that that religion is fundamentally a private matter. It is accepted that a Christian is free to utilise theological convictions when they make decisions about their own life but in a pluralistic society it is increasingly deemed inappropriate to bring such convictions into public discussions about morality, law, politics, economics, education, scholarship and so on. The desire to influence society with Christian ideals or to convert others to the faith is viewed by many as an intolerant desire to impose one’s private views onto others.

It is widely accepted that theological convictions can govern churches and the private lives of believers yet we are told that the public square – government, public policy, the courts, the academy, education, business, arts, media, etc – should be secular only.

This event looks at this issue. The conversation will span Theology, Philosophy and Law led by a panel made up of Christian representatives from each discipline along with you the audience:

“One good way to end a conversation – or start an argument – is to tell a group of well educated professionals that you hold a political position (preferably a controversial one such as being against abortion or pornography) because it is required by your understanding of God’s will. In the unlikely event that anyone hangs around to talk with you about it, chances are that you will be challenged on the ground that you are intent on imposing your religious beliefs on other people. And in contemporary political and legal culture, nothing is worse.”[1]

Carter cites the objection that appealing to God’s commands in public moral debate involves imposing one’s religious beliefs onto other people, and points out that such impositions are morally wrong. Note that the objection is not that such divine commands do not exist or that it is irrational to believe that they do. The objection is a specifically moral one. It is morally wrong to appeal to such beliefs; doing so violates a moral obligation people have to not impose their religious beliefs onto others. Something like this moral objection is widely held, both inside and outside the church. In response to this I will make four points.

I

First, unqualified, the claim it is wrong to impose your moral beliefs onto others is problematic. Consider acts such as rape, assault or infanticide. I personally believe each of these practices is wrong for me to engage in and I support the commission of these acts being considered a crime punishable by the state. However, if it were wrong to impose moral beliefs onto others then my position on rape, assault or infanticide would be unacceptable. I would have to leave others free to choose whether they wished to rape, assault or kill children – to do otherwise would be to impose my moral beliefs onto others.

II

So there cannot be an unqualified obligation to not impose one’s beliefs onto other people. This brings me to my second point. Carter’s example is not unqualified. It explicitly mentions religious beliefs about what God wills. Carter alludes to what Richard Rorty dubbed as:

“The happy, Jeffersonian compromise that the Enlightenment reached with the religious. This compromise consists in privatizing religion — keeping it out of … ‘the public square,’ making it seem bad taste to bring religion into discussions of public policy.”[2]

A particularly rigorous elaboration of this stance comes from Robert Audi. Audi argues that one should not advocate any “[policy] restrictions on human conduct unless one has, and is willing to offer an adequate secular reason for this advocacy or support”.[3]  By ‘secular reason’ he meant a reason that “does not depend on the existence of God (such as through a divine command) or on theological considerations (such as a sacred text)”.[4] So qualified, the objection is that religious believers have a moral obligation to not advocate policies or positions that restrict others on the basis of beliefs about God’s commands. In discussions in public they are to appeal to secular premises that do not invoke God, scripture or specific theological authorities.

III

This brings me to my third point; why single religious out beliefs in this way? If there is no general obligation to refrain from imposing one’s beliefs onto others then why are religious beliefs different in this respect? By limiting the moral restriction to religious beliefs and allowing non-theological secular beliefs to play a role in public discourse that religious beliefs do not, Audi’s position shows that “There is an important asymmetry between religious and secular reasons in the following respect: some secular reasons can themselves justify state coercion but no religious reason can.”[5] Audi’s position appears to privilege secular ideologies and doctrines in public debate whilst relegating religious or theological perspectives to the private sphere. But why are theological beliefs singled out in this way? Three lines of argument seem to be common.

1. Wars and Conflict

The first is an appeal to religious wars and violence. It is contended that the only way to keep social peace and prevent the kind of violence that Europe witnessed in the 17^th century is to adopt a moral rule requiring that all political discussions take place on secular terms and that religious reasons be bracketed from such discussions.

However, this assumes that appeals to theological moral beliefs cause wars and appeals to secular reasons protect us against such wars. This is dubious. Christopher Eberle and Terence Cuneo note that the religious wars of the 17^th century were caused not by the appeal to religious reasons per sé but rather by the violation of religious freedom. Moreover, even in the 17^th century, religious persecution was typically justified on secular grounds. In addition, they note that some of the most important defences of religious persecution and defences of religious tolerance, such as those proposed by John Locke and Pierre Bayle, appealed to explicitly theological grounds.[6]

Nicholas Wolterstorff makes a similar point, he notes that much of “the slaughter, torture, and generalised brutality of our century has mainly been conducted in the name of one or another secular cause–nationalism of many sorts, communism, fascism, patriotisms of various kinds, economic hegemony.”[7] He also stated that “many of the social movements in the modern world that have moved societies in the direction of liberal democracy have been deeply and explicitly religious in their orientation.”[8] He cites examples such as the abolitionist and civil rights movements and various other resistance movements as examples.

The point is that secular and theological reasons are on par in this respect. Particular types of religious reasons in particular political contexts can lead to wars and abuse, whereas appealing to other types of religious reasons in other contexts can be beneficent. Similarly, certain types of secular reasons can be dangerous in particular contexts and other types of secular reasons are not. To single religious reasons out as being ‘too dangerous to be aired in public’ and insisting on a default to secular reasons seems ad hoc and unjustified.

2. Division

Similar things can be said about the objection that appeal to theological premises will be divisive. Robert Adam’s notes  “nothing in the history of modern secular moral theory gives us reason to expect that general agreement on a single comprehensive moral theory will ever be achieved or that, if achieved, it would long endure in a climate of free inquiry. His conclusion is that “the development and advocacy of a religious ethical theory, therefore, does not destroy a realistic possibility of agreement that would otherwise exist”.[9]

3. Pluralism

The main reason offered for excluding theological premises from public debate is that not everyone accepts the truth of such premises. Any policy decisions based on a purported divine law would be binding upon these people in spite of the fact they do not accept theological doctrines or that they do not accept these theological doctrines.

Michael Tooley states, “For it is surely true that it is inappropriate, at least in a pluralistic society, to appeal to specific theological beliefs … in support of legislation that will be binding upon everyone.”[10] Audi argues, “as advocates for laws and public policies, then, and especially for those that are coercive, virtuous citizens will seek grounds of a kind that any rational adult citizen can endorse as sufficient for the purpose.”[11] [Emphasis added]

One obvious problem with this line of argument is that exactly the same thing can be said about many secular, non-theological, beliefs. Phillip Quinn articulates this point,

“…If the fact that religious reasons cannot be shared by all in a religiously pluralistic society suffices to warrant any exclusion of religious reasons for advocating or supporting restrictive laws or policies, then much else ought in fairness also to be excluded on the same grounds.”[12]

Quinn notes correctly that secular moral theories such as Utilitarianism or Kantianism, Intuitionism, Socialism, Libertarianism, can all be reasonably rejected in a philosophically-pluralistic society.

“Indeed, it would seem that the appeal to any comprehensive ethical theory, including all known secular ethical theories, should be disallowed on the grounds that every such theory can be reasonably rejected by some citizens in a pluralistic democracy. And if justification of restrictive laws or policies can be conducted only in terms of moral considerations no citizen of a pluralistic democracy can reasonably reject, then in a pluralistic democracy such as ours very few restrictive laws or policies would be morally justified, a conclusion that would, I suspect, be welcome only to anarchists.”[13]

If we are to exclude appeals to theological beliefs because not all reasonable people accept such beliefs then we should be consistent and exclude from public discussion appeals to all secular moral, political, philosophical, beliefs about which reasonable people do not agree. This would gut public discussion of any substantive content.

IV

My final point is that suppose a religious person does, as Carter mentions, take a “controversial political position … because it is required by their understanding of God’s will”? The objection Carter mentions is a specifically moral one, the objection is not that such divine commands do not exist, or that it is irrational to believe that they do.

On the face of it, this seems very odd. The objection entails that a person can be morally obligated to act contrary to what he rationally and correctly believes God’s will requires of him. A person who believes that a rational, all knowing, perfectly just and loving person requires a certain action of him is morally obligated to not take that action in public.

Normally when one assesses a moral question one should take into account all the relevant information – not just some of it. If it is true that God has issued certain commands, and this is relevant to the question, then it would be prima facie irrational to not take these factors into account.

The Christian believes her theological beliefs are true, and the objector does not contest this. Further the objection is not that her belief in such commands is irrational or subject to philosophical difficulties. The objector contends that, even if the Christian’s beliefs are true, and rationally believed, she is morally obligated to ignore them in such discussions.

This entails that when doing social ethics believers are morally required to act in accord with beliefs they rationally believe to be false. The objector appears to suggest that, in a pluralistic society, believers can hold certain beliefs as true in private but in public they must deny these beliefs; even though these beliefs may be both true and rationally held. This would seem to force believers to live a divided life where their intellectual and religious commitments are incoherently compromised. I contend that there is no good reason for thinking believers are under any moral obligation to do this.

If God truly is sovereign then his commands govern the whole of life, both private and public; believers should strive to live an undivided life of loyalty to him. The fact that other people do not share this commitment does not entail that it is wrong for them to follow it.

Part II of A Godless Public Square: Do ‘Private’ Christian Beliefs Have a Place in Public Life? features Glenn Peoples’ talk from the perspective of Philosophy.

1. If God exists then we have a plausible account of (a) the nature of moral goodness and (b) the nature of moral obligation.

I noted that Harris’s attempt to refute this conditional failed miserably. However, he did not just offer a negative case; Harris contended that:

2. If atheism is true then we have a plausible account of (a) the nature of moral goodness and (b) the nature of moral obligation.

Harris defended 2(a) by contending that moral goodness could be identified with human well-being, which he “in turn” identified with physical states of the brain. Harris defended 2(b) by identifying our moral obligations with the property of promoting human well-being. Harris suggested that this means that moral questions are scientific questions that can be answered by science.

Harris’s Argument for Ethical Naturalism
Harris’s argument for 2(a) consisted of three claims. First, he proposed a thought experiment of a world without conscious beings. Intuitively, we judge that nothing is good or bad in this world because nothing matters to anyone in such a world, since there is no one for anything to matter to. Harris concluded that the existence of goodness is dependent on conscious beings.

Second, Harris asked us to imagine a world full of conscious creatures who live forever in excruciating pain. We intuitively judge this state of affairs to be bad and we intuitively assume a duty to avoid it.

Third, since states of consciousness are brain states, science can develop ways of promoting these states.

However, this argument fails to establish Harris’s conclusion. The first claim shows only that goodness depends on the existence of conscious beings. It does not show that goodness is a state of consciousness. Moreover, the second and third premises affirm that we have a duty to avoid maximising pain and that science can tell us how to fulfil this duty. It does not show that moral obligation is the property of promoting or enhancing human flourishing. Nor does the argument show that science can answer moral questions.

The argument, in fact, relies on people determining, by moral intuition, what things are good and what obligations we have prior to scientific investigation. After this is determined science is used to ascertain how to fulfil these duties. Nothing in Harris’s argument implies that science can discover what our duties are or what is good in the first place.

Moreover, as I noted in my previous post, this method involves accepting moral beliefs as properly basic. However, if it is the case that we can accept moral beliefs as properly basic then what is the problem with Alvin Plantinga’s contention that belief in God is properly basic? What exactly is it about religious beliefs that disqualifies them from being basic in the same way Harris contends moral beliefs are?

Craig’s response to Harris’s account of Goodness
Craig offered at least six different arguments in his critique of Harris’s naturalism.

Human Flourishing and ‘Speciesism’

First, Craig contended that,

“But if there is no God, what reason is there to regard human flourishing as in any way significant? … After all, on the atheistic view, there’s nothing special about human beings. They’re just accidental by-products of nature that have evolved relatively recently on an infinitesimal speck of dust called the planet Earth, lost somewhere in a hostile and mindless universe, and doomed to perish individually and collectively in a relatively short time.

This is mere rhetoric. As Wes Morriston argues the conclusion that “there is nothing significant about human flourishing” simply does not follow from the premises that: (i) humans are tiny compared to the universe, (ii) they have not been around very long, (iii) they owe their existence to mindless natural processes, (iv) they die after a short time, (v) eventually all of them will become permanently dead.[1] In fact, it is hard to see how any of the premises (i)-(v) imply this at all.

Craig’s premises allude to John Hare’s[2] and Stephen Layman’s[3] arguments that atheism does not allow for the existence of a moral order where, ultimately, virtue and happiness are conjoined. They argue that such an order is important for the rational authority of moral obligation.

However, at the point Craig offered this argument in the debate he was not attacking Harris’s account of moral obligation, nor was he addressing the question of morality’s rational authority. His conclusion was that “human flourishing”, sans God, could not be “significant”. Craig’s argument seems confused here, given the imprecision of the word ‘significant’ and his failure to spell out the links to the premises mentioned. Despite this, however, Harris never responded to the argument.

Craig’s second argument was more on point. He argued that if naturalism is true, there is nothing significant about human flourishing given that, on naturalism, humans do not differ in any significant way from other animals. Past critics of Craig, such as Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, have tended to dismiss this argument. I think this is a mistake. Craig’s comments and his references to “speciesism” – a term associated with Peter Singer – allude to a serious point made by both Singer and Nicholas Wolterstorff. In Justice: Rights and Wrongs Wolterstorff challenges the secularist who believes in human rights to identify a non-theological or non-religious property that:

(a) is possessed by all members of the human family;
(b) is not possessed by a terrestrial non-human animal;
(c) can be plausibly said to give humans worth sufficient to account for the standard rights we grant to humans; and,
(d) is not a property that is possessed by different humans to different degrees.[4]

Criteria (a) and (b) are necessary if rights are going to be granted to all human beings and not to animals like cows or dogs; (c) is necessary for the property to ground the kinds of human rights we recognise; (d) is necessary if all people have “equal rights”. If the property that grounds rights comes in degrees, and some people have it more than others, then people will not have equal rights. The problem according to Wolterstorff is that no non-theological property we know of appears adequate to do this. Interestingly, Singer has made the same point, arguing that our moral codes must be radically revised so that the welfare of human infants is not given more importance than that of pigs.

Harris’s response to this was inadequate. He stated that if it is a sin to be concerned about sentient life on this planet then he’ll take being sinful. He then remarked, “One wonders what Dr Craig is focused on”. However, Craig never said that being concerned about sentient life is sinful. The real wonder was what Harris was focused on –  it was clearly not the arguments of his opponent.

Evolutionary Scepticism
Craig’s second objection alluded to an argument made by Mark Linville, Sharon Street[5], and others. In his opening argument, Harris relied on moral intuitions concerning, good, evil and duties. Linville has argued that if God does not exist then the theory of evolution leads to moral scepticism about our basic evaluative judgements and our other evaluative judgements by implication - given that our non-basic judgements derive from these.

Craig argued that contemporary evolutionary psychology teaches that our basic evaluative judgements have evolved from precursors in lower primates. Evolution, however, is unconcerned with truth per se; it merely selects adaptive behaviour. As Craig pointed out, if God does not exist then the process evolution took is the result of numerous chance contingencies. There are a huge number of different ways evolution could have occurred. Each different way offers the possibility that radically different evaluative judgements of humans or any other moral agents could have emerged. Consequently, it is highly unlikely that the evaluative judgements we actually ended up making, given how the evolution did occur, just happened to be objectively true; this entails that all possible judgements that could have been made just happened to be false. [6]

Once again, Harris gave no response to this argument.

Identity and Incoherence
In his rebuttal, Craig made a further argument Harris’s position. Harris claimed that well-being is identical to goodness; however, identity relations such as this are, in philosophical language, ‘necessarily’ true. If A is identical to B then there is no possible world or situation where A and B are not identical. Craig noted that, in his book, Harris appeared to admit it was possible that doing evil might enhance human well-being. He also appeared to say that if this occurred then the “landscape would not be a moral landscape”. But this admits that there is a possible world where human well-being is not identical with what is morally good, and hence, logically is not identical in the actual world. Harris’s only response was to state “that was interesting” and then change the subject to questions of hell and religious exclusivism – issues which were not the subject of the debate.

Craig’s response to Harris’s account of Obligation
Craig also offered several arguments against Harris’s account of obligation.

Moral  Lawgiver
The first was his argument that “moral laws require a lawgiver”. This argument is unpersuasive. As many have noted, it is not obvious that laws always require a lawgiver; the laws of mathematics and logic for example do not. For Harris, obligation could perhaps function a bit like laws of nature. Just as with gravity, if one drops something then that thing falls to the ground, so to with obligation – if one does X then it is a scientific fact that well-being will be enhanced.

Yet, again, Harris again said nothing in response.

A related argument Craig gave was that obligations arise in response to imperatives from a competent authority. I addressed this argument in my previous post, I suggested that it is not entirely cogent but that Craig was probably alluding to Robert Adams’s point that obligations can be plausibly construed as “social requirements”. Being obligated to do X differs from having a reason to do X or it being good to do X. If one is obligated to do X then one has to do X. Failure to comply brings censure, guilt, shame and alienation from other people. Adams observes, “having an obligation to do something consists in being required (in a certain way, under certain circumstances or conditions), by another person or group of persons, to do it”[7] This feature of obligation, moral or otherwise, makes obligations very different from laws of logic or natural laws. Once again, Harris offered no response to this argument.

Is-Ought Fallacy
Craig’s second argument against Harris’s account of obligation was that his position violates the “is-ought fallacy”. Harris’s position is that our moral obligations can be determined by scientific research. But while science can tell us descriptive facts, it simply cannot tell us whether these facts were good or were identical to goodness. Nor can it tell us which facts are identical with the property of being morally obligated.

Harris did respond to this argument but in a confused way. He argued that scientists often assume certain epistemological values and virtues in their research, and that there is no way to actually argue for these values. But even though this is true, the fact that scientists rely on certain virtues to conduct research does not show that one can validly infer a substantive evaluative answer from that research. The is-ought fallacy does not claim that you cannot rely on values when you discover facts, it claims that you cannot deduce values from facts. Harris’s own comments suggest that science often operates by making moral assumptions which it cannot itself validate or prove, and are therefore known from some source other than science itself.

Ought Implies Can
The last objection Craig offered was that moral obligations presuppose the ability to make morally responsible choices. Implicit in our moral discourse is the notion that “ought implies can”. A person can be morally required or obligated to do something and be culpable for not doing it only if they can choose to not do it. This is why, for example, we do not have laws requiring people in wheelchairs to walk and why we don’t hold small children or the insane responsible for crimes, and so forth. Craig noted that Harris himself rejects the notion of moral responsibility. Harris rejects libertarian free will, the idea that human beings have a will that is not determined by prior physical events. He also rejects compatibilism, the idea that human responsibility is compatible with physical determination. Consequently, Harris’s own view commits him to denying that human beings can have moral obligations.

Yet once again, Harris did not respond to the argument presented.

Conclusion
Concerning the issue of ethical naturalism, it seems clear that Craig made the better case. Harris opened with an argument that did not, in fact, establish what he thought it did – something Craig made obvious. Craig then responded with three arguments against Harris’s account of goodness and another three against his account of obligation. Granted, some of these arguments were rhetorical flourishes that on examination required more exposition but others alluded to or presented significant challenges to Harris’s ethical naturalism.

What was telling was that Harris did not respond adequately to any of them, and in most cases he did not respond at all. One challenge he responded to with a thinly-veiled insult; another he responded to by simply confusing the derivation of an ought from an is by presupposing an ought in order to act in a way that enables one to determine an is while nevertheless maintaining the reverse i.e. that the ought (moral) has been derived from the is (scientific).

With every other argument, Harris offered no rebuttal or reply whatsoever. He changed the subject, and often aggressively attacked the truth of various Christian beliefs that were irrelevant to the moot of the debate. But even aside from this, Harris never offered any rationale for accepting his own meta-ethical stance of ethical naturalism and did not even attempt to mount any remotely rational defence of it against Craig’s criticisms.

In this review I will analyse the debate in two parts. In Part I, I will look at the discussion of Craig’s contention that,

1. If God exists then we have a plausible account of (a) the nature of moral goodness and (b) the nature of moral obligation.

In Part II, I will examine Harris’s contention that,

2. If atheism is true then we have a plausible account of (a) the nature of moral goodness and (b) the nature of moral obligation.

A couple of definitions are necessary here; what both Craig and Harris are defending are rival accounts of what both goodness and moral obligation are. When Craig or Harris offers an account of the nature of goodness, each is offering an account of what moral values and obligation are, that is, their ontological or metaphysical nature. Similarly, when Craig refers to God, he is referring to a personal immaterial being who is necessarily existent, omniscient, omnipotent and morally perfect.

Craig’s Argument for a Divine Command Theory
In support of 1(a) Craig argued that if theism is true, goodness could be identified with God himself. His view is that goodness is best understood in terms of an exemplar, that good is identified with the perfect paradigm of a good person and that the goodness of everything else is measured by its resemblance to this paradigm. An analogy to this idea is the official “metre stick” that exists in France today. The metre stick is exactly one metre long, and the length in metres of every other length is determined by comparison with it. In the same way, God is both perfectly good and is the standard of goodness for everything else. God’s goodness, for Craig, is cashed out in terms of certain character traits. To claim God is good is to claim that he is truthful, benevolent, loving, gracious, merciful and just, and that he is opposed to certain actions such as murder, rape, torturing people for fun and so on.

In support of 1(b) Craig argued that if God exists, moral obligations can be identified with Gods commands. He therefore advocated the version of a divine command theory of obligation proposed by Robert Adams in Finite and Infinite Goods.

While Craig sketched his account of goodness and obligation in his opening statement, he never offered any actual argument for why he thinks that if theism is true, this account is correct; yet later in the debate he said it was obvious. While I myself agree with a certain version of divine command theory, I think this suggestion is inadequate. There have been many objections raised against such theories in the literature, and hardly any of them presuppose the non-existence of God. I think these objections fail, and most of them fail miserably. But it would be a gross overstatement to claim that, given the truth of theism, a divine command theory is obvious.

Later in the debate,Craig did offer an argument of sorts for a divine command theory. He contended that obligations arise only in response to imperatives or demands by an authority.  As moral obligations are a type of obligation, they share this feature, of which divine command theory is the best explanation. The obvious question here is, why should we think obligations arise only in response to imperatives from an authority? Craig does not say. Moreover, there do appear to be counter-examples to this claim. For instance, consider the non-moral social obligations people have to friends or hosts, these are not grounded in imperatives from an authority.

Consequently, considered by itself, Craig’s argument for a divine command theory seems insufficient. However, I suspect his comments at least suggest a more defensible argument. Robert Adams has persuasively argued that the role that guilt, censure, punishment, forgiveness and social inculcation play in morality suggests moral obligations are a form of social requirement; “being obligated to do something consists in being required (in a certain way under certain situations) by another person or groups of persons not to do it”[1]. If this is the case then a divine command theory plausibly explains, in a way that naturalistic and secular theories struggle to, how moral obligations can be objective and also how they can be a demand made by a person. Unfortunately, Craig did not develop this point.

Harris’s Response
Harris’s  first rebuttal ignored 1a) and raised four main objections to 1b), which I will outline below.

Abhorrent Commands
Harris objected that a divine command theory entails that any action at all could be right, no matter how abhorrent. However, Craig pointed out in his opening statement that this objection falsely assumes that God could command anything at all, including abhorrent acts. A divine command theory does not identify our obligations with the commands of just anyone but only with the commands of God defined as omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect. And it is impossible for a morally perfect being to command abhorrent acts. Consequently, this objection fails. Despite Craig pointing this out, Harris continued to allude to this objection several times. He never tried to demonstrate how an omniscient being that was perfectly good could command what is abhorrently evil.

Old Testament Barbarisms
A second line of argument Harris made against 1b) was his allegation that the Old Testament teaches the permissibility of genocide and slavery. While I disagree with this claim, and have argued for my views elsewhere on this blog [see my genocide and slavery tags], the major problem in this context is that even if the claim is true, it does not refute 1b). Contention 1b) simply asserts that if God, understood as an “essentially omniscient, omnipotent, morally perfect being”, exists then it is plausible to identify our moral obligations with God’s commands. Nothing in this thesis says anything or commits one to saying anything, about whether the Old Testament is an authentic revelation of this God’s commands. While many divine command theorists believe in biblical infallibility, many do not. A divine command theorist could claim that the wrongness of an action is determined by God but we know what is right and wrong from our conscience—not from a written revelation. Philip Quinn once suggested this kind of theory.[2] Similarly, a divine command theorist could reject some Old Testament stories as immoral, as Robert Adams appears to[3]. Hence, as a rebuttal of 1b) this argument is a red herring. Craig repeated this fact early on in the debate, yet Harris continued to ignore it, repeating the red herring over and over again.

Miscellaneous Objections to Christian Theology
Harris’s main rebuttal of 1b), however, was four-fold. He contended:

(i) that the existence of evil in the world suggests that God does not exist;
(ii) that the doctrine of hell as a place of eternal conscious torment is unjust;
(iii) that the doctrine of exclusivism is unjust;
(iv) that these beliefs are jointly psychopathic.

What is bizarre about this is that none of these arguments actually address Craig’s contention.

Consider (i), the claim that evil proves God does not exist. Craig’s contention in 1b) was a conditional statement that: If God exists then we have a plausible account of the nature of moral obligation. Arguing that God does not exist does not refute this conditional since the conditional does not claim that God exists. Again, this was pointed out by Craig repeatedly in the debate and Harris repeatedly ignored it.

Similarly, Harris’s arguments in (ii) and (iii) do not refute 1b). Hell and particularism are doctrines in Christian theology. But the moot was not about whether Christianity is true. Craig’s contention was that, if God exists then we have a plausible account the nature of moral obligation. Nothing in this conditional requires one to embrace a particular view of hell or Christian soteriology or even Christianity at all. In fact, one could accept 1b) without even being a theist. Once again, this was pointed out to Harris by Craig early on, yet Harris continued to ignore it and instead resort to making jibes at Christian doctrines.

In the same way, (iv) is equally beside the point. Apart from the fact that simply referring to a claim in pejorative terms is not a rebuttal, these claims were not what the debate was about anyway. Hence his comments were strictly irrelevant. The debate was not about whether Christianity is psychopathic.

Evidentialism
One final objection Harris alluded to was that there is no evidence for God’s existence. But again, this is irrelevant to 1b). The debate simply was not about whether there was evidence for God’s existence. Again, Craig’s first contention was only that: if God exists then we have a plausible account of the nature of moral obligation. Nothing in this claim requires one to believe there is evidence for God’s existence. At some point, the question can no longer be evaded – does Harris even understand conditional implication in a debate resolution?

It is worth noting that, in addition to being irrelevant, this objection has two other problems. First, it begs the question. If Craig is correct in holding that 1b) is true and 2) is false, then there is evidence for God’s existence. If moral obligation can be plausibly explained only on the assumption that God exists then the existence of moral obligations would be evidence for God’s existence. Consequently, to establish that there is no evidence for God’s existence, Harris would have to attack 1 and defend 2, something he spent almost the entire debate not doing.

A final point on this last issue. At several points in his opening statement, Harris appealed to intuitive moral judgements about the wrongness of causing suffering. He stated that he was justified in accepting them as “axioms” without any evidence. Now I think something like what Harris says here is correct. I accept that certain moral claims are properly basic and justified independently of any argument for their truth. The problem is, however, once you grant that substantive moral claims can be properly basic, it is hard to see how you can then  reject the arguments of people like Alvin Plantinga that God is rational in the absence of evidence. What exactly is it about religious beliefs that disqualifies them from being properly basic that does not apply to moral beliefs?

Harris never answered (or even bothered to raise) this question; the only time he came close to doing so was when he argued that one cannot have properly basic beliefs about God because people disagree radically over the nature of God. However, as the existence of this debate shows, people also disagree widely over the nature of morality.  So not only was the evidentialist objection irrelevant to the actual debate, Harris’s use of it was an obvious case of special pleading. Craig put his finger on this problem when he noted that Harris took morality on faith despite claiming to have proven it by science—an argument that Harris, true to form, consistently ignored.

Consequently, regarding contention 1, Craig clearly presented the better case. While Craig did not really offer any arguments for his contention untill late in the exchange, and even then the argument he gave was rather undeveloped, Harris never offered a response. He pretty much ignored 1a) and threw out one relevant point in argument against 1b) which Craig had already refuted in his opening statement and which has been rebutted in the philosophical literature ad nauseum. In every other argument Harris offered against a divine command theory, he ignored the theory altogether instead he offered objections to numerous other positions that were not divine command theory and which were not even pertinent to the debate.

Harris’s attitude appeared to be, “’in spite of the agreed-on subject of the debate, I’ll say whatever negative thing I like about Christianity and that will surely count as an awesome argument.” Unfortunately for the new atheists rational discussion does not function this way. Rational discussion involves listening to what your opponent actually contends, attempting to understand it, responding with reasoned arguments and sticking to the topic you agreed would be the focus of the discussion.

In Debate Review: Sam Harris and William Lane Craig on Divine Command Theory Part II, I will discuss Harris’s contention that morality can be grounded in the natural facts studied by science.

There is a lot that can be said about these concerns and in a short column I cannot say everything. In many instances I think the sceptics fail to appreciate the context and genre of the passages they cite. They fail to appreciate, for example, that Ancient Near Eastern conquest accounts employ highly figurative rhetoric, which hyperbolically describe victories in terms of total annihilation of the enemy. They fail to appreciate that Ancient Near Eastern legal texts, as noted by Raymond Westbrook, “reflect the scribal compilers’ concern for perfect symmetry and delicious irony rather than the pragmatic experience of the law courts.” Or that, as JJ Finkelstein points out, they “were not meant to be complied with literally” but to “serve an admonitory function” and so probably do not command execution for the crimes mentioned. Sceptics can fail to grasp that claiming the bible is God’s word does not mean it did not come to us mediated through the writings of human beings who wrote in a particular time and place using the language, rhetoric and literary conventions of their time and so and frequently they fail to appreciate the bible is a Canon and that passages need to be read in their broader context i.e. taking into account the whole bible. A full articulation of these points, however, would take more space than I can here muster.

Instead I will address another feature of this issue which concerns the general method in play here. In each case the sceptic takes a purported divine command and compares it to a moral belief that he takes to be correct. The conclusion he draws is that the purported command is inauthentic. This is of course a possibility; there is, however, another possibility that on at least some occasions, moral statements these sceptics are relying on are mistaken.

This feature of the dialectic became clear to me after a public debate I had on these issues in August. A sceptic wrote to me claiming that even granting the issues about the genre of the biblical text, the bible still presents a picture of God who issues commands out of accord with contemporary modern understandings of morality.  Suppose one grants that when read in its literary context, the Torah does not literally prescribe the death penalty for adultery or sodomy, it still is condemning sexual activity between consenting adults. This raises an interesting question, why does the sceptic assume that God, if he existed, would be a contemporary western liberal? Why assume that he would never command anything politically incorrect or out of accord with trendy Western mores? The sceptic assumes that it is appropriate to assess purported divine commands with his own moral perspective. Why?

The most sustained argument for this method I know of comes from a Moral Philosopher at Yale University, Robert Adams, in his excellent book Finite and Infinite Goods. Adams states that “Our existing moral beliefs are bound in practise, and I think, ought in principle, to be a constraint on our beliefs about what God commands.”

Adams reasons that we can only accept the claim that Gods commands constitute our moral duties if God is understood as perfectly good; if God were evil or morally indifferent then it would be possible for him to command wrongdoing and we cannot have a duty to do wrong. Once this assumption is granted, however, one cannot coherently say that God has commanded just anything. We have some grasp of what goodness is, what counts as right and wrong, what kinds of things a good person does not command. Therefore, God cannot coherently be called good if what he commands is contrary to “our existing moral beliefs”. As Philosopher Raymond Bradley notes, to do so would be “playing word games which are intellectually dishonest” that deprive “the word ‘holy’ of its ordinary meaning and make it a synonym for ‘evil’.”

In response, I will simply note that critics of Adams’ argument have shown that as it stands it needs qualifying. It is true we have some grasp of what goodness is but this is mitigated by two factors.

First, our moral judgements are fallible. While God does not command wrongdoing it is likely that a perfectly good omniscient being would at some time command something contrary to what we think is wrong. To say otherwise dogmatically assumes that we are such good judges of morality that God could never disagree with us.

Second, our moral concepts are subject to revision. We change our opinions about the goodness and rightness of certain things without “playing word games which are intellectually dishonest” or depriving “the word ‘holy’ of its ordinary meaning and make it a synonym for ‘evil.’” If this were not the case then one could never honestly or rationally change one’s mind on an ethical issue.

Consequently, Adams’ argument does not show we cannot attribute to God’s commands contrary to “our existing moral beliefs”. Rather, as he says elsewhere, we cannot coherently ascribe to “God a set of commands that is too much at variance with the ethical outlook we bring to our ethical thinking.” Elsewhere he allows for “the possibility of a conversion in which one’s whole ethical outlook is revolutionized, and reorganized around a new center” but “we can hardly hold open the possibility of anything too closely approaching a revolution in which, so to speak, good and evil would trade places”.

Therefore, Adams does not establish the claim that “our existing moral beliefs must serve as a constraint on our beliefs about what God commands.” It does, on the other hand, suggest that we cannot coherently “accept a theological ethics that ascribes to God a set of commands that is too much at variance with the ethical outlook we bring to our ethical thinking.”  Adams argues that we cannot coherently or defensibly accept a theological ethics which, in effect, makes good and evil trade places and which so radically transforms our concept of goodness that it becomes a synonym for what we call evil. Nor could we accept an ethical system that calls our concept of goodness so radically into question that it breaks down.

Certain beliefs such as, “that killing, assault, theft and lying are in general wrong and can only be justified if some overriding moral reason applies” or that without special overriding reason it is wrong to inflict pain and suffering on others or treat them with contempt” are so central to our account of goodness that we cannot coherently accept that a perfectly good being has issued commands which negate them. However, many moral claims are highly controversial and such that people can debate them and change their minds on them and so on. When they do it is implausible to suggest that their concept of goodness was so radically at odds with previous beliefs that “good and evil would trade places” or that it is merely a word game that the position holding these things could be endorsed by a good person.

Consider, for example, the debate over whether the bombing of Hiroshima was justified because it saved a huge number of lives by ending a war early. While I myself do not share this opinion, I would not say that it is obviously self-contradictory.

Similarly, consider moral debates about capital punishment or euthanasia or affirmative action. While I believe there are defensible and justified answers to these questions, I doubt we can dismiss those views we disagree with as conceptually incoherent, as being so radically at odds with our understanding of good so as to be incomprehensible or merely semantic gymnastics. Even when we disagree with people on these issues in many instances we need to take what they say with real seriousness and be open to the possibility that they are right and we are wrong.

This means one should not be too quick to dismiss a purported divine command merely because it is contrary to a contemporary liberal morality. Obviously one cannot coherently attribute anything at all to God and claim he is good and Adams is correct that we cannot accept a theological ethics that ascribes to God a set of commands that is too much at variance with the ethical outlook we bring to our ethical thinking. However, one function of theological reflection is to critique our contemporary mores and an authentic encounter with God’s will is likely to contrast with some of our moral beliefs.  It is sheer hubris to suggest God would always agree with us. Is it really impossible for an all knowing, all good being to disagree with us on the seriousness of adultery or the propriety of capital punishment? To say no is to tacitly assume that modern 21^st century liberal westerners have made no mistakes and their understanding of morality is infallible and inerrant. Those who make such an assumption have a dogmatically certain faith in contemporary liberal mores. Such attitudes are normally attributed predominantly to religious fundamentalists and I think the irony of this speaks for itself.

I write a monthly column for Investigate Magazine entitled “Contra Mundum.” This blog post was published in the February 2011 issue and is reproduced here with permission. Contra Mundum is Latin for ‘against the world;’ the phrase is usually attributed to Athanasius who was exiled for defending Christian orthodoxy.

Letters to the editor should be sent to:
editorial@investigatemagazine.DELETE.com

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In “God, Morality and Abhorrent Commands: Part II Robert Adams” I mentioned Phillip Quinn’s observation that theists can face a particular dilemma,

“[I]t seems possible that a theist should have both good reasons for believing that God has commanded him to perform a certain action and good reasons for believing that it would be morally wrong for him to perform that action. Thus a theist can be confronted with moral dilemmas of a peculiar sort.”

Quinn’s point is that a theist might find himself believing all three of the following propositions:

[1] Whatever God commands is morally permissible;

[2] God commands X;

[3] It is wrong to do X.

Adams and Kant argued that one should resolve dilemmas of this sort by affirming [3] and denying [2].  I argued in Part I Kant and Part II Robert Adams that this conclusion is unjustified. What Adams does show is that one cannot “accept a theological ethics that ascribes to God a set of commands that is too much at variance with the ethical outlook that we bring to our theological thinking.” [Emphasis added] His position, in fact, suggests that in many cases we should accept divine commands at variance with our moral beliefs. Hence, there may well be times when it is rational to reject [3] and embrace [2].

In this last post I will elaborate Quinn’s answer to this question. Quinn’s position can be seen by contrasting two approaches he takes to specific examples of the kind of dilemma he cites.

The first is Quinn’s response to the dilemma posed by “the sins of the patriarchs” this is the term medieval theologians gave to specific dilemmas they thought they saw in the biblical texts, cases “where God commands something that appears to be immoral and indeed to violate a prohibition he himself has laid down.” Three examples were dominant in medieval discussions. These were: (a) the case of Abraham being commanded to kill Isaac; (b) a command in Exodus 11:2 which was interpreted to be a command to plunder the Egyptians; and (c) the command to Hosea to have sexual relations with an adulteress. (Hosea 1:2, 3:1)

Quinn’s response is to appropriate the response suggested by Augustine, Bernard,   Aquinas and, in most detail, by the 14^th century theologian Andreas de Novo Castro:

“[T]here are actions which, ‘known per se by the law of nature and by the dictate of natural reason, are seen to be prohibited, as actions which are homicides, thefts, adulteries, etc., but, with respect to the absolute power of. God, it is possible that actions of this kind not be sins.’”

Andreas’ claim is that certain actions such as theft, adultery and killing the innocent are wrong and that people know by nature that they are wrong. What he contends, however, is that God could have made them permissible if he choose to do so by simply commanding them.  Moreover, Andreas accepts that in the cases of (a), (b) and (c) God did do this and so on these occasions the actions in question were not wrong.

Quinn notes that a divine command theory makes sense of this. According to a divine command theory wrongness is constituted by the property of being contrary to God’s commands. So where God has issued a command to all people to refrain from P, engaging in P would have the property of being wrong. However, if, in a specific situation, God commands a specific person to do P then P is no longer contrary to God’s commands, for that person, and hence, no longer has the property of being wrong, for that person.

Quinn notes that this does not, as critics contend, open the flood-gates allowing everyone to kill or steal or so on because if a specific individual is commanded to kill or steal or commit a sexual indiscretion for a specific occasion then it is only permitted for that particular individual to perform that act on that particular occasion. Hence, this view is compatible with contending that these actions are generally, and in most cases, wrong. Moreover, nothing about this view requires a person to believe that God ever issued such commands to anyone apart from the specific instances mentioned nor does it require a person to accept any and every claim made by any would be killer, thief or sexually promiscuous person that God has commanded them to act as they do.

People who hold this view can, and typically do, think that cases where God does command such things are extremely rare and that any claim that God has commanded such an action today is unlikely. In fact, they may have theological reasons for thinking such commands would not occur outside of the events recorded in salvation history. Adopting this view, one could even accept that such actions are, for practical purposes, absolutely wrong. All this position entails then is that in specific, rare and probably never to be repeated occasions, these actions have been permitted.

Quinn’s second approach is to respond to an objection made to divine command theory by 17^th century Philosopher Ralph Cudworth. Cudworth objected that the divine command theory makes morality arbitrary, according to a divine command theory, anything at all could be deemed ‘right’ as long as God commanded it. Wes Morriston formulises the objection as follows:

(i) The divine command theory entails that whatever God commands is morally obligatory;

(ii) God could command X;

(iii) so if the divine command theory is true, X could be morally obligatory;

(iv) but X could not be morally obligatory;

(v) therefore, the divine command theory is false.

[ X = the action of torturing children purely for fun]

Quinn’s response here is interesting (and I think substantially correct). He notes that this objection assumes (ii) is true, that it is possible that God could command atrocious things like torturing people for fun. This assumption seems very dubious.

We need to remember that we are not talking about right or wrong as being based on the commands of just anyone, we are talking about God, understood as a being with certain attributes. The most notable of these is His being omnipotent, omniscient, loving, good and just.

So, as God is understood by divine command theorists, the claim that it is possible for God to command people to torture others for fun is true only if it is possible for a morally perfect person, who is fully informed of what he is doing, to command such an atrocious thing.  But this is impossible. As Quinn notes, “If God is essentially just, there will be constraints on the antecedent intentions God can form.” A just being cannot command just anything, hence Cudword’s argument fails.

What is immediately apparent is the contrast between these two approaches. In the sins of the patriarchs case, Quinn has responded to the dilemma by denying [2] on the basis of [3]. He argued that the actions in question are not wrong for these individuals in these contexts because God commanded them. However, regarding the example of torturing children for fun, Quinn has denied that [3] is possible on the basis of his moral judgements about [2], torturing children for fun is the kind of action a loving and just being could not command. Quinn notes the apparent inconsistency,

“Given that I say it is impossible for God to command someone to torture an innocent child just for the sake of amusement, it may seem that I must also say that it is impossible for God to command Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, impossible for God to command the Israelites to plunder the Egyptians, and impossible for God to command Hosea to have sexual relations with the sinful woman.”

Quinn’s response is that in the case of torturing children for fun, the most plausible response is to answer that God could not command such a thing; “it would be a mistake to generalize to the conclusion that it is an implausible kind of response in every possible case, including all cases of the immoralities of the patriarchs.” This is because in the case of torturing children for fun Quinn’s response was based on the intuitive insight that it is impossible for an omniscient, loving, just and good being to command such a thing.

However, he notes that our intuitions about different cases differ. While it is intuitively obvious that it is impossible for a perfectly good being to command us to torture others merely for fun, it is not obvious that it is impossible for a good being to ever permit stealing – cases exist where a person might need to steal food in order to avoid their child succumbing to starvation and in such cases it is not obvious that stealing is always wrong.  Moreover, in the case of plundering the Egyptians, the Israelites had just been liberated from slavery and were taking property from those who had held them in slavery. Similarly with Hosea, like Quinn, I don’t find it intuitively obvious that there is no possible world or situation where a good person might permit someone to sleep with an adulteress.  So, these cases are not on par with the case of a command to torture children for fun.

Behind Quinn’s analysis is the epistemic principle he attributed to Kant, “whenever two conflicting claims differ in epistemic status, the claim with the lower status is to be rejected.”  Unlike Kant, however, he does not assume that moral claims will always have a higher status than theological ones. In the case of torturing children for fun the claim that such an action is necessarily wrong has a fairly high epistemic status; the idea that it is wrong to torture children for fun is so central to our understanding of  goodness that denying it would make it impossible to coherently claim a good being commanded it. On the other hand, the claim that God has commanded such a thing or even could does not have a high status. Hence it is sensible to contend that God cannot issue such commands.

In other cases, such as the immoralities of the patriarchs, the contention that the action is wrong does not have a high epistemic status. It is not obvious that our beliefs about it being always wrong to sleep with adulteresses or that it is wrong in any circumstances to steal, have anywhere near the strength our belief about torturing children for fun does. That it is never permissible to steal is a moral judgment. One can coherently deny that a perfectly good being would endorse this judgment and there appears to be some scriptural support for the claim God did command theft on a specific occasion. So, provided the exegetical case for this command having occurred is conclusive enough, one can accept that God commanded it.

Quinn’s approach, I think, also incorporates some of the insights of Adams. Adams argued that in order for [1] to be correct God must be understood as good. Quinn’s response to Cudworth illustrates that Cudworth’s objection fails only because God is essentially good. Similarly, Adams argued that in order to meaningfully say God is good, one cannot attribute to God a set of commands so much at variance with our beliefs about morality that one could no longer coherently claim that a good person had commanded them. Quinn’s response acknowledges that in this sort of situation one would have compelling reasons for thinking that God did not issue the commands in question because accepting God did would be incoherent. What Quinn’s approach adds is that there are also many situations in which our theological beliefs can correct and critique our moral beliefs. We might be quite sure on exegetical grounds that God has commanded some action and coherently believe this; if this is the case then unless we have equal or stronger reasons for thinking the action is wrong, it will be rational to accept God’s command. Quinn’s position, therefore, takes seriously the fact that our moral judgments are fallible and an authentic encounter with God’s will is therefore likely to contrast with some of our moral beliefs.

RELATED POSTS:
God, Morality and Abhorrent Commands: Part I Kant
God, Morality and Abhorrent Commands: Part II Robert Adams

In “God, Morality and Abhorrent Commands: Part I Kant” I mentioned Phillip Quinn’s observation that theists can face a particular dilemma,

“[I]t seems possible that a theist should have both good reasons for believing that God has commanded him to perform a certain action and good reasons for believing that it would be morally wrong for him to perform that action. Thus a theist can be confronted with moral dilemmas of a peculiar sort.”

Immanuel Kant argued that when faced with such a dilemma the theist should reject the belief that God has commanded the action and accept the moral belief. This was due to his belief that moral beliefs are more certain that theological beliefs. I contested this claim. More recently Robert Adams has defended Kant’s conclusion. Consider the structure of the kind of dilemma Quinn cites,

[1] Whatever God commands is morally permissible;

[2] God commands X;

[3] It is wrong to do X.

These three claims contradict each other; like Kant, Adams suggests that the rational person should reject [2]. However, his reasons are somewhat different. Adams persuasively reasons that [1] is true only if God is understood as perfectly good, in the sense of being loving, just and so on. If God were evil or morally indifferent then it would be possible for him to command wrongdoing and so [1] would be false.  This means that a person who accepts [1] must presuppose that God is good.

Adams argues that God cannot be meaningfully said to be good if what he commands drastically departs  from what we consider to be right and wrong. Human beings have some grasp of what constitutes goodness and some grasp of what constitutes right and wrong and it is part of our concept of what is good that a good being does not command wrong doing. Moreover, to call a being good is to attribute to it a character trait that is incompatible with certain other actions, attitudes and so on. Raymond Bradley made the point succinctly in his debate with William Lane Craig “Can a Loving God Send People to Hell?“

“If we were to describe someone such as Hitler as perfectly good despite all his evil doings, we’d be playing word games which are intellectually dishonest as they are morally pernicious. … it would be to deprive the word “holy” of its ordinary meaning and make it a synonym for “evil.”

This supports Adams’ conclusion that one cannot rationally accept [1] as one implicitly assumes that God does not issue commands at variance with our conception of morality. In Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics he concludes,

“Our existing moral beliefs are bound in practise, and I think, ought in principle, to be a constraint on our beliefs about what God commands. We simply will not and should not, accept a theological ethics that ascribes to God a set of commands that is too much at variance with the ethical outlook we bring to our ethical thinking.” [Emphasis original]

As with Kant there is a lot of truth to this; however, Adams’ position has certain limits.  As critics of Adams have pointed out his conclusion is limited. In the paragraph above Adams concludes that “our existing moral beliefs” must be a constraint on our beliefs about what God commands. His justification for this is that we “should not, accept a theological ethics that ascribes to God a set of commands that is too much at variance with the ethical outlook we bring to our ethical thinking.” The phrase “too much” suggests that one can accept ascription of a set of commands that is somewhat at odds with the outlook we bring to our ethical thinking.

Two points Adams makes elsewhere in Finite and Infinite Goods suggest that this limitation on his conclusion is necessary. First, while we do have some grasp of what is good and some grasp of what is right and wrong it is evident that our moral judgements are fallible. Adams calls this the “transcendence” of the good. He states,

“All of God’s commands and judgments are right; God is the ethical standard. But our beliefs (even the most cherished) about them must be distinguished from God’s commands and judgments themselves. To fail to make that distinction is idolatry.”

Adams is surely correct here. While God does not command wrongdoing. It is quite likely that a perfectly good omniscient being would command something contrary to what we think is wrong.  Our moral intuitions are fallible, hence it is possible that some of God’s commands would clash with our own moral judgements. In fact to suggest that God would never command something which we consider to be wrong expresses an incredible hubris. It is to dogmatically assume that we are such good judges of morality that God could never disagree with us. It is to put our own moral judgements beyond question. The existence of some commands that strike us as strange or immoral does not count for much.

Second, our concept of goodness and our judgement about particular cases can be and sometimes is subject to revision. We change our opinions about the goodness and rightness of certain things without “playing word games which are intellectually dishonest” or depriving “the word ‘holy’ of its ordinary meaning and make it a synonym for ‘evil.’”  If this were not the case, one could never honestly or rationally change ones mind on an ethical issue. Nor could people coherently disagree with or persuade one another about moral issues. Adams’ notes this when he writes that he accepts “the possibility of a conversion in which one’s whole ethical outlook is revolutionized, and reorganized around a new center” but “we can hardly hold open the possibility of anything too closely approaching a revolution in which, so to speak, good and evil would trade places”.

These points, however, quite evidently limit Adams’ conclusion. What his argument, in fact, shows is not that “our existing moral beliefs must serve as a constraint on our beliefs about what God commands” but rather that certain types of our existing beliefs do this, those so central to our concept of goodness that accepting them would be “approaching a revolution in which, so to speak, good and evil would trade places.” In “A Psychological Constraint on Obedience to God’s Commands: The Reasonableness of Obeying the Abhorrently Evil” James Rissler notes,

“In such an instance, obedience requires that one give up everything one previously believed about morality… one has been commanded to relinquish everything one understands about the nature of goodness, one will have no concept of the good with which to identify Gods command, there will be complete breakdown of between everything one currently affirms about goodness and everything one is asked to believe about goodness.”

Rissler gives two examples; the first is where God issues a command to reverse one’s conception of right and wrong or issues a set of commands, each one of which negates every moral imperative one currently accepts. Second, he suggests that a moral belief might be “sufficiently integral to one’s conception of morality” that abandoning it would force such a radical revision as to destroy one’s concept of goodness all together. Imagine a command to kill everyone around you purely for entertainment or a command that said harming, hurting and inflicting suffering on people for no reason at all is permissible. Consider a command to hate God and despise all other human beings. One cannot accept a system of divine commands where every duty we believe in is declared false nor can we accept a system which suggests that the vast majority of our moral beliefs are mistaken. This would come too close to the problematic revolution Adams talks of.

To sum up, in Part I and II, I have looked at the Kantian approach to the kind of dilemma Quinn sketches. Neither Kant or Adams, I think, establish the claim that in “our existing moral beliefs must serve as a constraint on our beliefs about what God commands.” They did, however, lend support for a weaker thesis. Kant’s argument, for example, does suggest that those moral claims about which we are certain, should serve as such a constraint and I mentioned several beliefs which I consider to be fairly certain as examples.

Adams’ argument on the other hand suggests that we cannot coherently “accept a theological ethics that ascribes to God a set of commands that is too much at variance with the ethical outlook we bring to our ethical thinking.” He argues that we cannot coherently or defensibly accept a theological ethics which, in effect, makes good and evil trade places and which so radically transforms our concept of goodness so that good becomes a synonym for what we call evil or calls our concept of goodness so radically into question that it breaks down. Certain beliefs such as it is prima facie wrong to inflict pain and suffering on others or it is prima facie wrong to treat others with contempt” or it is prima facie wrong to lie, steal and kill are so central to our account of goodness that we cannot coherently accept that a perfectly good being has issued commands that negate them.

In my next post I will look at Philip Quinn’s alternative.

RELATED POST:
God, Morality and Abhorrent Commands: Part I Kant
God, Morality and Abhorrent Commands: Part III Philip Quinn

In “Commonsense Atheism and the Canaanite Massacre“ I addressed a question put to me by Luke from Commonsense Atheism,

“If Matt did think these events happened literally as described in the Bible, would he then conclude that God was an evil monster to command them? Or would he, in the end, agree with Bill Craig that genocide is okay as long as God feels like it?”

In my response I pointed out Craig claims that killing non-combatants in war is permissible if a loving and just God commands it (which is an implication of a divine command theory). This conditional is arguably true. Either it is possible for a just and loving omniscient person to command genocide or it is not. If it is then genocide would only be commanded in situations where a just and loving person, aware of all the relevant facts, could endorse it; under these circumstances it is hard to see how genocide could be evil. On the other hand, if it is impossible for a just and loving omniscient person to ever command genocide then the situation Luke mentions is one with an impossible antecedent. On the standard accounts of counter-factual logic, conditionals with impossible antecedents are true. So far from being absurd there are reasons for thinking this conditional is true.

The question Luke asks is really a species of a larger and important question in theological ethics. In Finite and Infinite Goods Robert Adams notes “A convincing defense of a divine command theory of the nature of obligation must address our darkest fear about God’s commands–the fear that God may command something evil.” Philip Quinn makes a similar point,

“[I]t seems possible that a theist should have both good reasons for believing that God has commanded him to perform a certain action and good reasons for believing that it would be morally wrong for him to perform that action. Thus a theist can be confronted with moral dilemmas of a peculiar sort.”

I suspect Luke is really asking how a theist can rationally respond to a dilemma of this sort. While I do not know what Luke’s opinion on this issue is, a common view is that if a theist has good reasons for believing an action is wrong then any claim that God has commanded should be rejected. The locus classicus for this position is Immanuel Kant; in Reason within the Bounds of Religion, Kant stated:

“Abraham should have replied to this supposedly divine voice: “That I ought not kill my good son is quite certain. But that you, this apparition, are God — of that I am not certain, and never can be, not even is [read: if] this voice rings down to me from (visible) heaven.”

Similarly, in the Conflict on the Faculties he states he states,

“That to take a human being’s life because of his religious faith is wrong is certain, unless (to allow the most extreme possibility) a divine will, made known to the inquisitor in some extraordinary way, has decreed otherwise. But that God has ever manifested this awful will is a matter of historical documentation and never apodictically certain. After all, the revelation reached the inquisitor only through the intermediary of human beings and their interpretation, and even if it were to appear to him to have come from God himself (like the command issued to Abraham to slaughter his own son like a sheep), yet it is at least possible that on this point error has prevailed.”

Kant, here, is discussing the kind of dilemma Quinn refers to. The dilemma can be spelled out as follows, in certain situations a theist might find him or herself with reason to affirm the following three propositions,

[1] Whatever God commands is morally permissible;

[2] God commands X;

[3] It is wrong to do X.

These three claims cannot all be true, so a rational person must reject one of them; the question is which one? Kant’s answer is that when faced with a dilemma of this sort the theist should reject [2].  It is worth elaborating on his position a bit.

First, note that Kant accepts [1] he grants that if we knew that God commanded the killing of a particular human being, it would be permissible to kill that human being. Kant’s objection is that one cannot be rational in believing that God has, in fact, issued such a command. Philip Quinn notes that Kant’s argument involves an appeal to an epistemic principle: whenever two conflicting claims differ in epistemic status, the claim with the lower status is to be rejected.  Kant contends that moral claims such as “it is wrong to kill innocent people” are certain. However, claims that God commands or forbids a certain action are not certain and never can be. From these points it follows that a rational person will accept [3] and reject [2].

Despite its appeal Kant’s argument is flawed for several reasons. Philip Quinn notes two problems. First, “Kant has an extremely optimistic view of our ability to attain epistemic certainty about principles of moral wrongness,” he thinks we can be certain of moral claims. This, however, is dubious. There are some moral claims of which I am fairly certain. I am certain, for example, that it is wrong to inflict as much pain on another as I can merely for my own entertainment. I am fairly certain that killing, assault, theft and lying are prima facie wrong and can only be justified if some overriding moral reason applies. However, many moral claims are highly controversial and are far from certain at all. Consider, for example, the debate over whether the bombing of Hiroshima was justified because it saved a huge number of lives by ending a war early. While I myself do not share this opinion, I would not say I am certain about it. Similarly, consider moral debates about capital punishment or euthanasia or affirmative action. While I believe there are defensible and justified answers to these questions, I doubt we can claim certainty about answers to these questions.

Second, Kant claims that we can never be certain that God has prohibited a certain action. Quinn notes, “It would thus seem to be well within God’s power to communicate to us a sign that confers on the claim that God commands some intolerant behavior, for example, issuing threats to heretics, a fairly high epistemic status.” If God were to do this then we would have certainty that he had commanded the action. So it is not clear that beliefs about what God wills are always less certain than moral beliefs.

I am inclined to push this criticism further. It seems to me that many sceptical worries that are raised about God and his commands apply with equal force to moral beliefs. Consider three common concerns sceptics raise about religion. One is the claim that the existence of God is not necessary to explain any empirical phenomena. The second is the concern that the claim God exists and has commanded a particular action cannot be empirically demonstrated or proven to exist. The third is the widespread pluralism with regard to both the existence of God and his nature. All three of these worries apply to moral beliefs. The existence of moral properties appears unnecessary to explain any empirical phenomena, almost any empirical phenomena can be explained equally well by accepting that moral beliefs are all false but that people think they are true. Attempts to prove that moral beliefs are true from non-moral premises alone are probably more controversial than any argument for the existence of God. And there is widespread pluralism over whether moral properties exist; nihilists and non-cognitivists deny such properties exist and amongst believers in the truth of moral beliefs, there is widespread disagreement over the nature of morality. Intuitionists contend it is a non-natural property, naturalists contend it is a natural property but disagree over what the natural property in question is, supernaturalists contend it is a divine command or a theological property and so on.

In fact, Kant’s own argument provides an example of this point. Kant argues in The Conflict in the Faculties that we can never be certain that God has commanded an action because,

“the revelation reached the inquisitor only through the intermediary of human beings and their interpretation, and even if it were to appear to him to have come from God himself (like the command issued to Abraham to slaughter his own son like a sheep), yet it is at least possible that on this point error has prevailed.”

But this is equally true of many moral beliefs, a good amount of what people believe with regards to morality comes to them through the intermediary of human beings and their interpretation. Most westerners belief’s in liberal ideals, such as, the equality of women, opposition to slavery and so are mediated through human beings. Moreover, even if we directly intuit moral properties, it is possible that we are mistaken. Human moral intuitions and judgements are fallible and can err. So in many instances I am inclined to think that the sceptical worries people raise to conclude that theological beliefs are uncertain apply also to moral beliefs. To appeal to these concerns, so as to claim that belief about God’s will is less certain than moral beliefs, is to engage in special pleading.

In my next post I will look at Robert Adams’ defence of Kant’s position and then I will look at Philip Quinn’s alternative.

RELATED POSTS:
God, Morality and Abhorrent Commands: Part II Robert Adams
God, Morality and Abhorrent Commands: Part III Philip Quinn