Religion and Ethics

1. C. S. Lewis argues that the idea of an absolute moral law fits better with a religious worldview, on which this moral law is Someone’s plan for us, than with a materialistic worldview on which all that exists is matter that does its stuff.  It’s not that it is impossible for there to be ethical truths given materialism, but that the ethical laws that apply to humans are very different in kind from the laws of nature that apply to matter.  The latter laws are always followed—a stone has no choice but to fall.  But the laws that apply to humans seem rather different.  They seem rather like the expression of a plan for human life.  And this fits well with the notion of a Someone who has such a plan. 

• Moreover, that there is a certain way that we should act, a certain plan, suggests to CSL that it is likely that there is a plan for how non-humans, like dogs, plans, rocks and electrons, should act, a plan from the same Mind.  Thus, this Mind is rather like a God.

2. But what is the relationship between that Someone and ethics?  Here is one specifically religious worry.  Is it not the case that saying, with Socrates, that one must always follow morality is a way of going against the First Commandment, because ethics becomes a god one worships before God?  Many theistic philosophers try to avoid this conflict by giving an account of how ethics “comes from” God, and hence in obeying ethical commands one is in some way obeying God.

3. One particularly popular view of the relationship of religion and morality is that what makes something right is that God commands it and what makes something wrong is that God forbids it.  All moral values are defined by God.  This is the divine command theory, and the reading from the Euthyphro concerns this theory.

• Plato discusses a view like this in the Euthyphro.  Recall the setup.  Euthyphro, a priest, is going to accuse his father in a very dubious case.  Socrates says that if E. is going to do this, E. had better be a wise man: without wisdom, he surely would not dare to take such a horrible risk.

• E. admits he has wisdom.  (Big mistake!)  4e-5a.

• Now S. is getting ready for the big question.  What is piety or holiness?  5cd.  There are a lot of cases of holy actions.  What is there in common between them?  We use the same word “holy” for them all, even though they are different actions.  But this is not like with “bank” for a financial institution and the edge of a river.  We use “holy” in the same sense when we say that praying to the gods and sacrificing to them are holy.  There is one word used in the same sense.  So there must be something that all these things have in common.
• E. answers: “what I am doing now, … to prosecute the wrongdoer.”  E. misses the point of the question.  When S. asks what is pious, he is not asking for examples, but for a definition.  “What is green?”  It won’t do to say “The grass, the blackboard, some people’s eyes…”  One should say something like: “Something is green if the visible light it reflects falls mainly in the 4912 to 5750 angstrom range of wavelengths.” 
• Finally, E. gets it and answers: “what is dear to the gods is holy, and what is not dear to them is unholy” (~7a).  In other words, holy=beloved by the gods.  Compare to the divine command theory.
• First, S. has a quick reply.  But don’t the gods in Greek mythology have all kinds of fights and disagreements between them?  So what one god might hold dear another might dislike.  This is not S.’s main objection.  S. himself notes there are two ways around this.  First, one could say that the gods never disagree on moral principles, but simply on facts.  Second, one could just modify the definition to be: “what is dear to all the gods is holy.”  S. is not really worried about this, because his own religious beliefs are not exactly the Greek ones and although E. believes the gods disagree, S. does not.
• Now S. gets to his big objection.  I’m going to simplify it a little.
• He asks: Why do the gods love holy persons or actions?  For instance, why do I like my friend Jeremy?  I like him because he is intelligent and knowledgeable.  There is something about him which I like.  I have a reason for my liking.  Likewise, the gods should have a reason why they like holy persons and dislike unholy ones. 
• Surely the reason is that the holy persons are holy.  The gods love certain actions between these actions are good or holy.
• But “holy”=”loved by the gods”.
• Therefore, the gods love holy actions because these actions are loved by the gods.
• This is viciously circular!
• It is very important to remember that S. is not disputing that the gods love every pious action and that the gods hate every impious action.  He agrees that they do, but disputes that the definition of “holy” is “loved by the gods”.  E.g., suppose I define a human being as “an animal that has a sense of humor”.  Is that a good definition?  Let’s suppose for the purposes of the argument that all human beings in fact have a sense of humor (though maybe they don’t know how to use it!)  Would that make it a good definition?  No.  (It’s not because someone is an animal with a sense of humor that he or she is human.  Rather, the reason she has a sense of humor is that she is human.  Also, we could imagine a non-human animal having a sense of humor.)

• According to Socrates, the problem is that E. did not give a definition of holiness but only said “something that has happened to this holiness, namely, that it is loved by all the gods.  But you did not tell me what it really is” (11ab).
• The basic idea behind the argument is this.  Why do the gods love holy actions?  The gods being perfectly wise must have some reason for loving holy actions.  What is this reason?  Well, surely, they love these actions because the actions are holy.  So, the actions are holy even before the gods love them.
• S. is not asking: “Suppose the gods commanded you to kill your father and sleep with your mother…”  E. could say: “They would never command that!”  But that doesn’t remove the problem.  Even if the gods necessarily love the holy action, there is still the question of why they love it. 
• Or, to put it in terms of a more modern religion, why does God love the idea of people being honest?  He loves it because being honest is the right thing.  He loves the right thing because it’s right, Socrates would say.  So you can’t define “the right thing” as what God loves.
• Another example.  Fire burns us.  Could I define “nice” as “the kind of person I like”?  Well, why do I like someone?  I like him because he is nice.  There is something about him that I may like.  I don’t just arbitrarily decide to like him.  There is something there in him that I like, something because of which I like him.  I like him because he is nice.  If I defined “nice” as “the kind of person like” then I would end up saying: I like him because is the kind of person I like.  But that would be circular.  It would mean that I like him arbitrarily, for no reason.  But we do have reasons for liking people.
• The crux of the argument is step (2).  What do you think?
• Someone could deny step (2) and say that the gods just arbitrarily decide what to love.  Would such gods be worthy of love and respect?  After all, then one could ask: “So if they decided torturing children was the pious thing to do, that would make that a holy and pious and right thing to do?”  Suppose one answers: “But they couldn’t decide that.”  But then one asks: “Why not?”  And if one says “Because it’s not right”, then one is missing the point, because on this view it would be right if the gods wanted to like it.
• Note: Not all religious people accept the divine command theory.  Some of them hold that God doesn’t decide what is right and what is wrong.  God knows everything, so he knows what is right and what is wrong, and then commands what is right to us because it’s right.  On this view, what is right is right even before God commanded it.
• Another view is that what is right is rooted in God’s nature, and God’s nature is something God does not choose.
• In favor of divine command theory:
• The idea of morality as a law makes it sound like it’s there because it’s commanded, like human laws.  (But it’s a metaphor!)
• Some religious people will want to say that God decides everything.  (Does it make sense to say that God decides whether 2+2=4?)
• Against the divine command theory:
• If ethics could make sense without a God, divine command theory is wrong.
• If God were to command something awful, would that make it right?
• Why does God choose to command what he commands?  Does he choose arbitrarily?  This does not seem consonant with God’s dignity as a rational being.  (If the commands are a part of God’s nature, though, things might be different.)
• How do we find out what God has commanded?  (Answers: Bible, Qu’ran, etc.?  Or maybe God writes it in each human being’s heart, if only the human being doesn’t obscure it.)
• Variants of the divine command theory:
• God does not decide what is right and what is wrong, but God’s unchangeable nature requires him to command certain things and prohibit others.
• Not all moral values are decided by God.  Maybe God doesn’t decide what kinds of things are good, but only what kinds of things are obligatory.

4. MacIntyre's argument: Which of the divine qualities makes God the definer of the right and wrong?

5. A different approach is that of St. Thomas Aquinas.  If we follow the Aristotelian views in ethics, ethics is centered on the idea of happiness.  But, Thomas argues, one cannot be fully happy without God.  His argument for this is that we naturally have a desire to know the causes of things.  So we have a desire to know the cause of the universe.  If we didn’t know the cause of the universe, we would not be fully happy.  But God is the cause of the universe, so we need to know God to be fully happy.

· Others have approached this from a more existential angle.  St. Augustine said that our hearts cannot rest until they are in God.  The idea is that nothing short of God—who is the source and fullness of all goodness—can fully satisfy human beings, and so if ethics is supposed to tell us how to become  fully happy, ethics needs to involve God.  If these people are right, then if there were no God, ethics would have a hole in its middle, since happiness would be something that human beings could not attain if there were no God.