Divine Command

I have now featured in the Philosopher's Carnival twice (here and here), and hope to continue submitting posts to it despite confining my knowledge of and real interest in philosophy to a few areas (ethics, law, politics, religion). I would greatly recommend having a look - although I tend to confine my interest to the ethics section, the submissions are generally quite thought provoking.

A good example is this post from Daylight Atheism. It says what I have always felt about morality based on divine command - that it is often dangerous, easily manipulated and irrational. It may be more difficult to base morality on rationality, but it is a far safer and more successful to do so. The following paragraph is crucial:

By accustoming people to unquestioning obedience, religion cripples their skills of moral reasoning, often resulting in a sort of induced "ethical dyslexia" where they are unable to recognize evil for what it is, even when it is staring them in the face. Just consider how many Christian apologists continue to defend the atrocities recorded and praised in their own Bibles.

This is very true. I have heard Christians defend the actions of Abraham, ordered by God to kill his own son, with horror. I think ethical dyslexia is a brilliant term for this kind of mindset.

However, I do have one big quibble with the post. It seems to implicitly suggest that all or most theists follow the divine command theory of ethics, while atheists do not. I think this is unfair. Many, many believers follow rationality and merely supplement it with religious ethics, or build rational systems out of religious ethics. Many will have trouble with the story of Abraham. On the other side, many atheists are seduced by theories like societal ethics, whereby what is right and wrong is determined by what is generally thought to be, a sort of command. If Daylight Atheist had made this clearer, I would happily agree with pretty much everything he says here.

The Sanctity of Life

This will be my first post in response to what I have read of Peter Singer's work. I was not expecting to agree with all of his work, despite him being in broadly the same camp as me in terms of ethical views (pro-choice, anti-animal testing etc). I'm glad that reading a volume summarising his main views, (Writings On An Ethical Life, Peter Singer, 2002 Fourth Estate), has allowed me to find some major points of disagreement, while understanding and respecting his main points.

In this first post however, I will be agreeing with and developing upon one of his points. This is his identification and rejection of the monolithic 'old ethic' which is creaking with the weight of its illogic and incompatibility with modern realities. He calls this the 'sanctity of life' ethic, which holds human life inviolable and intensely superior to animal life. As well as justifying any harm to animals in the name of human wellbeing, it denies that there is ever a reason to end human life unless in the name of saving other human life. Thus suicide and euthanasia are always wrong, as is abortion from the point of conception.

There is much to be said about what is wrong with this, and Singer does so admirably. The specialness of humanity is not premised upon any faculties or abilities peculiar to humans, as otherwise it could not be extended to the seconds after conception or the most profoundly mentally disabled. Furthermore, removing the right to choose to end our lives and refusing to accept that other harms (like extreme ongoing pain or discomfort) can make it worth our while to have our lives ended makes living less a right and more an obligation. What Singer does not identify, I think, is the rationale behind this. Stripped down, I think that it exists in quite startling form. This explanation is purely religious, although it has been unthinkingly adopted even by the nonreligious for a long time.

This explanation for the old ethic is this. Normal 'interests' (to live, to be free from pain, to have dignity, etc) are not what are to be respected. If they were, then it would be impossible to include all that are included and exclude all that are not. Instead, the specialness of humanity is based on the value placed on it by God. What this means is that what is wrong about killing someone is that it offends God's value on the person's life. Moral wrongs are not against people so much as against God. Thus even if a baby and a chimpanzee had exactly the same mental development and state, harming the latter would be far worse because it would be more of a slight to God. This actually rings of familiarity with another institution we are used to. Property. The ethic treats all things purely as the property of God. We would not complain about our property's rights being violated when it is stolen or damaged. We would complain about our rights over the property. The property's value is entirely wound up in those with interests in it. This seems to be exactly what the old ethic does with people, considering them as God's property.

Thus it is worse to harm humans because God places more value on humans. Just as we would be willing to sacrifice less beloved property for more beloved, God is willing to allow animals to be sacrificed for humans. These preferences need not be rational - indeed, as both Singer and I have tried to show, there is no rational divider which neatly puts all humans on one side and all non-humans on the other. It would seem worse to us to damage property that is valuable to someone than property which they care little for, even though the valuation may be irrational to us. This is because it is the owner we care about, not the property. The sanctity of life ethic treats us like property.

For more evidence, a key teaching from Christianity should help. This is the view, inherent in the sanctity of life ethic, that only God may give or take life. This was once used as an argument against medicine (and still is in some fringe groups) and while it is now generally thought that things which kill us are generally evil rather than God's will, the second part of the dictum is widely held to still be true. We may not take life, because that is God's job. God has the right to rob us of our lives. This is entirely consistent with God owning us. A key example is the story of Abraham and Isaac in the Old Testament. Abraham is routinely praised for obeying God in attempting to kill his own son. The action was right, because God said it to be so. This takes precedence over any supposed 'rights' we have. This is because we are God's to do with as He wishes. The general rules of morality are only there because He put them there, because that is how He wants His property treated. Just as how we may allow our property to be destroyed, so may God. Our interests do not come into it.

As an ethic, this posits a radically different understanding of morality from any most of us would recognise. It is no longer about interests and rights, but about God's plans for His playthings. As an explanation for why God's commands make up morality, it still suffers from the same failings as other explanations, as previously considered on this blog, but it also seems most repugnant. If God were to favour one human over another, would the lowlier be morally required to give his life and interests for the other? How is our position any different to that of slaves (who were even recognised as property), albeit with a possibly benign owner?

It is difficult to put into words just how wrong this way of looking at people seems to be. At least it is consistent, but even the most consistent ethics can be wicked. Far from all Christians or religious people would accept this basis, and they need not. God can be worshipped and respected without being owner. A counter-ethic must be advanced which puts the interests of living beings at the centre. This is an ethic towards which I strive, and Peter Singer does exactly the same. I may not agree with him in many ways, but in the search for this alternative, I concur wholeheartedly.

God and Authority

In this post I would like to point out two problems with the idea that God created morality, going further than the arguments in my post about Relativism. These arguments will not necessarily work against the idea of morality from nature itself, although I have already dealt with some of the arguments from nature by basically arguing that if there are such standards, they are completely unknowable.

I will attempt to flesh out the following passage I wrote in the above post, and consider its implications for the idea of God making morality:
"In the end, authority is a human concept. Furthermore, while clearly whatever posits universal standards requires authority to do so for legitimacy, authority itself is merely a status given to one which allows him or her certain rights to do things and creates obligations on others to do other things. Rights and obligations are in themselves creations of morality, so in the end there is a circularity to the concepts. Morality is only underpinned by morality, perhaps underpinned by the acceptance of the people. In the end therefore, morality is dependant on the understanding of the people, and that can only mean relativism."

The Authority Paradox

The crucial assumption to pick out of my argument here is that authority is a moral phenomenon. Interestingly enough, not everyone seems to believe this. The works of John Austin suggest that authority is in fact the power to enforce one's dictates. If we apply Austin's definition to God, we see something interesting. As long as we imagine God to exist and be roughly like He is presented in Christianity or similar traditions, He could have the power to enforce his dictates. Of course, for Austin possession of power is insufficient - willingness to use it was required. We can use the idea of Hell as explaining in what way God enforces his dictates. In this way, God could have authority. What this means though is that morality is no more than avoiding punishment. The only way to distinguish being moral from actions done to avoid the hangman's noose or the highwayman's gun is by the source of the obligation. In the case of morality, it would be God threatening punishment for non-compliance. If this is the meaning of authority and morality, then both are reduced to questions of power and avoiding punishment. Instead, it is submitted that any morality people demand that God creates is much richer and more important than this. It is supposed to create obligations in a way that normal threats do not.

Joseph Raz said that authority is a reason to act. He explained it in terms of authorities taking old reasons and assessing them to create a new reason which (if we accept the authority) excludes consideration of the old reasons. Again, this presents an interesting view if we consider the supposed authority of God to determine morality. Conceiving of God as weighing up moral arguments to create a uniform code is tempting, but it requires us to accept a background morality behind God. It gives no account of how God could create morality ex nihilo.

So the only way that God could have the authority to create morality without reducing the concept of morality to orders backed by threats is to conceive of authority as moral in nature. This seems to me to be what is generally meant by the term. When we say someone has authority, we mean that they have characteristics which make it good to accept their commands, or at least to take them into account. It is submitted that this is the only rational way to conceive of God's claim of authority to create morality. It must be that He has the moral characteristics to make it right for people to follow what He says.

The downfall of this should be obvious. If God's authority to create morality stems from moral characteristics He possesses, then the morality of these characteristics must come from elsewhere. God cannot bestow on himself the authority to do this, as he must have authority in order to create any moral truths, including authority. The authority to create morality including authority must come from elsewhere. If God is to have any role in morality, it cannot be as its sole creator. There must be some background source of his authority.

The Reason Paradox

There is another problem with the idea that God can set morality that has occurred to me and which revolves around authority, a tension in the idea that God’s moral standards are the only valid ones. If they are, then they take precedence over any human moral beliefs. If God were to instruct one to torture a child, they would have to do so even if they found this abhorrent. This means that as far as morality goes, human reason is inadequate and useless. We must follow God’s morality instead.

So far, so good. This is accepted by many Christians. The problem is that if this is true, then humans are clearly not qualified to place God as the centre of their moral worldview. If their reason is inadequate to decide morality, then it cannot be adequate to work out that God determines morality.

The response to this will clearly be that while reason is inadequate to work out morality from scratch, it is still adequate to figure out other, logical things, like God’s supremacy over morality. But this is flawed. As was explained above, authority is a moral concept. Picking a basis for a moral system is a value judgement, whether it is by deciding that God’s rules are worth following, or that some human value should be the basis. To say that God has the authority to dictate morals is as much a moral opinion as is saying that Bob has that authority. Therefore even if God objectively had the ultimate authority to dictate morality, we would not have the necessary moral reasoning skills to appreciate it. Anyone claiming God had moral authority would be guessing at best. Therefore a claim that God is the ultimate moral arbiter is ridiculous. (Note that again this argument does not apply if God is merely taken as describing a morality that exists independently of him.)

The only argument which could really seek to counter this is that humans are capable of moral reasoning, but that this should tell them that God is the ultimate moral arbiter, who should take precedence when His word conflicts with other aspects of that reasoning. This is a clever argument but fails in its application. Even if God would never overrule a moral rule that we submit to His higher moral judgement ('the moral precept'), acceptance that our reasoning must be subservient to that of another is acceptance that our reasoning is inadequate. It is logically inconsistent to hold the moral precept in higher stead than the rest of our carefully thought out moral logic. Doing so would not just be having God overrule out views, but having one particular among our views override the rest of our views. A moral system cannot consistently come to a conclusion like that. If it holds two inconsistent views then it must hold that it was mistaken in some way, not that it was right in both but that one takes precedence over the other as the precedence condition is itself a moral view inconsistent with the overridden view. God's authority over us must come from a moral judgement which is just as fallible as any of our others, so it makes no sense for it to overwhelm others.

The results of these paradoxes is that it makes no sense for God or any being to create morality, as they would need authority to do so, and this comes from a moral code. Even if this hurdle were somehow overcome there would still be no way for people to know that God is the ultimate creator of morality as the claim itself would if true nullify the ability of the claimant to accurately make such a claim. These paradoxes do not necessarily damage theistic beliefs or even the idea that God has a role in morality. However, I believe that they do considerable damage to the belief in God as the sole and complete author of morality.