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ETHICS - MODULE 2

Religion and Morality

Overview

In this module, you are going to learn the different roles that God may play in morality, narrowing down on
the metaphysical grounding of objective morality in God as expressed by the Divine Command Theory.
Then, you will learn the five objections to Divine Command Theory and responses to each. You will also
learn how objective moral values, moral duties and moral accountability fit better in theism (the view that
God exists) than any other secular alternative. You will learn the nature of God’s authority, especially in
giving out commands to both believers and nonbelievers alike. Finally, arguments for and against religious
morality will be laid out so you can see and assess which of them are the most or the least rationally
convincing.

Intended Learning Outcomes

At the end of this module, the student is expected to:

a) Understand the various roles that God may play in morality

b) Evaluate the arguments for and against Divine Command Theory
c) Explain how certain elements of morality fit better with theism than with naturalism
d) Assess the nature of God’s authority in issuing commands

LESSON PROPER

Lesson 1. The Relationship between Religion and Morality

The relationship between religion and morality is a deep one. Many people have thought that the two are
necessarily interconnected so that you cannot have morality without religion or vice versa. However, this
dependence view, as we may call it, is quite controversial. On the view that religion necessarily requires
moral rules, the polytheistic religions of ancient Greeks and Romans can be cited as a counter-example.
These religions serve to explain natural phenomena, not prescribe certain behaviors and categorizing them
as right or wrong. Although the major religions of the world like Christianity are known for moral rules that
their followers must obey, the fact that some religions are not in the business of moralizing seem to show
that religion is not necessarily tied to morality. Before we may ask whether morality is dependent on
religion, it is therefore helpful to ask first, “what religion are we talking about?” But in fact, the question goes
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deeper than that. We are not simply asking whether morality is historically inseparable from religion but
whether morality can in principle be separated from religion because as philosopher Robert Audi noted,
“The historically inseparable may be logically independent.” 1 In other words, what we are asking is, “Is it in
principle possible to make sense of morality apart from religion?”

Now, defining religion is a messy affair and it is not necessary to define it for our purposes since we shall
focus only on the aspect of religion that refers to God; after all, one defining characteristic of major religions
is its belief in supernatural beings, the greatest of whom is God. As such, the deeper question we are
asking is, “can we have morality without God?” To answer this question, let us look at the three roles that
God is assumed to play in the moral life and deliberation of people:

1) God plays a metaphysical role in morality such that the objectivity of morality can only be grounded
in God’s commands and/or nature.
2) God plays an epistemological role in morality such that God provides us the way to know what is
right and wrong.
3) God plays a motivational role in morality such that the proportionate incentive to be moral can only
be given by God. As David Brink stated: “It is a common view that if we reckon only the earthly
costs and benefits of virtue, we cannot show that one is always better off being moral. But if God
rewards virtue and punishes vice in an afterlife, then he can provide a prudential motivation for
morality.”2

Let us look at the first contention: God is the metaphysical ground for the objectivity of morality. The
argument runs as follows: If God does not exist, objective morality does not exist. This implies that absent
God, there is no adequate foundation for objective morality. But since objective morality exists, then it
follows that God exists. This is a powerful argument, traditionally called the moral argument for God’s
existence.

The first premise states that God is the only adequate foundation for objective morality. If God indeed is the
only adequate foundation, then this proves that objective morality is necessarily dependent on God.
However, this proposition will be falsified if a purely natural or nonreligious foundation can be provided to
show that objective morality does not have to depend on God. Throughout the history of ethics, many
natural and nonreligious foundations have been provided to ground objective morality. However, they all
suffer from two weaknesses: they ground morality on something that constantly changes (laws, society,
evolution) whereas objective morality does not change, and the moral foundation is imperfect whereas
people assume that there is a perfect moral standard that we constantly fail to live up to.

1
Robert Audi, Democratic Authority and the Separation of Church and State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 9.
2
David Brink, “The Autonomy of Ethics” in The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, ed. Michael Martin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 150.
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ACTIVITY FOR LESSON 1

Answer the following questions reflectively. The activity is meant to refresh the lessons you’ve
learned and expand them for further exploration. (200 words each question)

1. Suppose no religion has ever existed. Is it ever possible for human beings to come to know
moral truths? Justify your answer. (15 Points)
2. From the 20 Arguments of St. Augustine, give at least one/two arguments and
expand/explain his idea/s. (15 Points)

Lesson 2a. Divine Command Theory

How does God actually explain the nature of objective morality? According to the Divine Command Theory
(DCT), what is objectively good is what God commands as good. What is objectively bad is what God
commands as bad. There is no objective good or bad apart from what God commands. From this it follows
that if God does not exist, then it is hopeless to think of an objective morality that binds all humans because
there would be none. This theory has an intuitive appeal for many religious believers. After all, most moral
rules that we know are alleged commandments from God that He relayed to humans (The Ten
Commandments immediately come to mind.) From this it follows that God is the only being who can make
morality objective simply by issuing His commands. But can one really accept all the logical implications
that the Divine Command Theory seem to imply?

Lesson 2b. Euthyphro Dilemma

Let us say that the argument about objective morality being dependent on God is plausible. However, this
idea is beset with a problem that has been discovered since Plato’s time, the so-called Euthyphro Dilemma.
The argument (although not in its original form) is stated as a question:

Is something good because God commands it to be good or God commands it good because
it is good?

In a more specific form:

Is murder bad because God commands it to be bad or God commands murder to be bad
because it is bad?

A dilemma is a situation where there are only two possible ways out, both of which are unacceptable. As
we shall see, the reason why the question is called a dilemma is because both options are allegedly
unacceptable for the DCT defender.
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Let us turn to the second horn first: God commands murder to be bad because it is bad . If this is the case,
then God does not play any metaphysical role in morality. Murder is bad because of its very nature not
because God commands it be so. Thus, murder would be bad regardless of whether God exists or not. We
can call this divine independence theory. It is understandable to see why most theists don’t subscribe to
any form of divine independence theory. For one, if the divine independence theory is true, then morality
would be constituted as something independent of God. This would imply that God is not sovereign
because there is a realm of ethics to which even God is subject. However unappealing this theory may
seem to appear to believers, some prominent theists like Thomas Aquinas and Richard Swinburne have
formulated (generally as a counter-response to DCT) some versions of it.

Lesson 2c. Five Problems for Divine Command Theory

Now let us look at the first horn: Murder is bad because God commands it to be bad. This is what the divine
command theory claims. What makes an act wrong is precisely because God commands it to be wrong,
and the same applies to moral goodness. However, several problems arise from this. First is the problem of
arbitrariness: if morality is dependent on God’s commands, then moral laws (such as thou shall not kill) are
arbitrary since God could have commanded their opposite or not command them at all. But if morality is
arbitrary, then there seems to be no strong reason to abide by it (even if it’s commanded by God), much
less override other considerations. To take an example, two people joined a chess competition and both
ended on top. The final decision, however, is decided simply by a toss coin. It seems then that by such an
arbitrary way of determining who won, nobody seems worthy to be called a champion. After all, any of them
could have won by luck, not by skills. The implication of this situation seems similar to the charge of moral
arbitrariness of the DCT. If morality is simply decided by God, not for any other reason than that it is
commanded by God, then we seem to have no good reason to follow it such as we have no reason to call
someone a champion if the final game is decided simply by a toss coin.

Second is the problem of emptiness. If good simply means “being commanded by God, then saying God is
good is no more than saying, “God follows what God commands.” But this is compatible with God
performing what we commonly deem as inherently bad actions, such as murder or deception. But it seems
odd to say that God is good when such claim can meaningfully entail, that God follows His command to
deceive. The problem points to the discrepancy between one’s commitment to Divine Command Theory
and how religious believers commonly understand the claim that God is good. It would be difficult to find a
believer who agrees that the claim God is good can actually mean the claim that God follows His command
to murder.

Third is the problem of moral abhorrence: if morality is dependent on God, then cruelty and rape can be
right and charity and kindness wrong if God commanded them to be in those particular ways. But it seems
that there are some things that are inherently wrong such as rape and cruelty that would not be right merely
because a being like God commanded that they be right. The term moral abhorrence is telling: it seems
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unacceptable for rape to be right just because God would command that it be right. The conclusion may be
uncomfortable but that seems to be entailed if DCT is true.

Another concern is the problem of divine incomprehensibility: if moral laws are such because they are
commandments from God, there is a problem of comprehending what the act of God commanding would
be like. We get our ideas of giving a command from human beings actually giving a command. But God is
known to be nonspatial, nontemporal and vastly incomprehensible, so unlike humans that we constantly
communicate with and encounter. Thus it would be difficult for a theist to claim of God making commands
when it seems incomprehensible how a nonspatial and nontemporal being like God could perform such a
thing.

Last problem for divine command theory is divine hermeneutics. Assuming that God giving a command is
comprehensible to some degree and has already been done to some people (as some religious scriptures
would claim), the next problem is how to interpret those commands given by God. For instance, in the
Christian tradition, the commandment “thou shall not kill” ‘has been interpreted in various ways. Some
Christians claim that this commandment explicitly states the immorality of death penalty but some
Christians disagree. Some Christians use the Scriptures to condemn divorce but there are others who use
the same Scriptures to claim that God allows divorce in some unique cases. In the Philippine context, some
Christians are against the RH Law allegedly because it has provisions that promote the use of artificial
contraceptives which according to them violate God’s commandment on the sanctity of life. However, there
are Christians who disagree. I’ve even seen a rally of people with caption on their shirt that says: I am a
Catholic, and I support RH Bill. All these moral disagreements suggest that God’s commandments are far
from clear and are subject to different, even opposing, interpretations.

With all these problems, it would seem that the Divine Command Theory would easily be overthrown by
other ethical theories that are immune to such difficulties. However, this is not the case especially in the
contemporary discussion on ethics. It has been revived and strengthened by contemporary philosophers
such as Robert Adams, Philip Quinn, William Wainwright and William Lane Craig whose versions try to
adequately answer the problems mentioned above. In our case, we will utilize the version of Craig as it is
very clear, non-technical and has the opportunity to be tested by fire in the many ethical debates, both oral
and written, that Craig has participated. We will however utilize the insights and arguments of others when
appropriate.

Lesson 2d. Responding to the Problems

According to the DCT, whatever is morally good or bad is whatever God commands as such. This may
seem to make morality arbitrarily dependent on whatever God commands as though God decides simply
on a whim or a coin toss. But the accusation does not hold if God’s commands have an ultimate basis for
making something right or wrong, and there is: the basis is God Himself. Since God’s nature is all-good, all-
just and all-loving, God does not arbitrarily make something good or bad. His moral commands are
reflection of His just and loving nature. Remember that God is not one among just and loving beings, God
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Himself is the standard of perfect love, goodness and justice. In addition to that, it should be understood
that God is simple. This is to say that God’s will and intelligence and moral nature are not on a par of each
other. Rather, God’s will is the perfect expression of God’s knowledge and moral excellence. With that
understanding, we can see that human beings don’t decide or act that way. Sometimes, we will something
which we know is not good for us or we do something even if we perfectly know that it’s morally wrong.
None of those conflicts arise in God.

Having answered the charge of arbitrariness, this clarified version of DCT also answers the second
accusation: the moral abhorrence of the DCT. By recognizing that God Himself is the source and locus of
moral values, then God cannot command something that is against His just and loving nature. God
therefore cannot make rape or cruelty right and kindness and charity wrong because such commands
would contradict God’s all-loving nature. The question, what if God commanded genocide to be right?, is
like the question, what if God created a square circle? or what if God created John who exists and does not
exist at the same time? The question requires an impossible conditional so the question about genocide
does not hold water just as the questions about square circle and John existing and not existing are nothing
but pseudo-questions.

Now onto the third question: the problem of divine incomprehensibility. Admittedly, this is a thorny problem
that requires sustained thought, and the response provided here only opens up for the readers to do their
further research if they want to personally delve deeper. 3 If we start from the idea of mere theism as a
paradigm, then the problem shows to be difficult to answer. The theist faces a challenge: he must provide
sufficient and necessary conditions for something to count as a revelation from God. This challenge is
exacerbated by a working assumption in science called methodological naturalism: the idea that only
natural, as opposed to supernatural, explanations are acceptable in science. Any supposed revelation from
God is likely to be assumed by the methodological naturalist as a currently unknown phenomenon with a
yet to be discovered natural explanation. Now, the problem seems to be that it is humans, with our limited
intellectual capacity, that attempt to reach God. But the problem would be addressed, if not fully resolved, if
it is God that decides to reveal Himself to humans. What we need to bear in mind is that there is nothing
logically contradictory with God revealing Himself to human beings. If God can create human beings, then it
must be within the power of God to communicate with them. However, the challenge is to find a way by
which God’s revelation would be most understandable to human beings. As has been laid out in the
presentation of the problem, the only communication we know is human communication. But this
component of the problem already contains the solution: if that is the only understandable communication
we know, then the best way for God to reveal Himself must be by taking a human form and be one
ourselves, which is exactly what the Christian story narrates. Of course, this response does not resolve all
questions since further concerns arise, such as whether Jesus Christ is really God incarnate. But by itself,
the Christian worldview is fit to provide a reasonable answer to the problem of divine incomprehensibility.
Bear in mind that even if there has been no religion of Christianity, this would remain to be the most
persuasive answer.

3
For an introduction, see Nicholas Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the claim that God Speaks (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1995).
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And onto the last one: the problem of divine hermeneutics. Again just like the other problems, this one to be
addressed more adequately requires a broader treatment than what can be provided here. In any case, it is
enlightening to note the insights we’ve discussed on the notion of moral disagreement since they can
similarly be applied here. The fact that religious denominations disagree about truth claims does not
automatically prove that all such interpretations are false (or true for that matter); it may simply be that they
disagree, and their claims are contradictory. It is important to remember that the nature of contradictory
claims necessarily entails that if a claim is true, the contradictory must be false (and vice versa). Now if a
certain religious tradition has a set of good evidence on its side and possesses virtues such as internal
coherence, historical accuracy and intuitive appeal, then we can be assured that their claims are likely to be
true, and its contradictory claims likely to be false. Of course, the challenge is to determine exactly what
religious tradition possesses that kind of evidence, a challenge that is up to each one of us to embark.

ACTIVITY FOR LESSON 2

Answer the following questions reflectively. The activity is meant to refresh the lessons you’ve
learned and expand them for further exploration. (50 words only)

1. Suppose that you are fully convinced of a certain revelation of God, and this revelation is
asking you to deceive an innocent person. Would you follow the command? Justify your
answer. (5 points)

Lesson 3. God as Basis for Morality

Now let us turn to the three essential elements of morality whose existence and nature depend on God to
even make sense.4 The first of these elements is objective moral values. To say that something is an
objective moral value is to assert that something is good or bad regardless of human opinions. For
instance, any heinous crime is a morally evil action even if the criminal thought that it was morally justified.
We could only say that the criminal was mistaken about his idea. In fact, even if we or anybody thought that
it was good, it is still wrong. That is what makes it an objectively evil act. But if there is no absolute standard
that transcends human opinions, ignorance and frailties, it would be weird to appeal to the existence of
such objective moral values. In fact, this is the line that J. L. Mackie took. Coming from a purely secular
perspective, Mackie characterized moral values as queer since they cannot be physically located in the
universe. As such, his conclusion is that ethics is not something we discover but something we invent. But
this conclusion is difficult, if not practically impossible, to follow. If ethics is something we invent, then it
makes no difference if we invent an ethics similar to Hitler’s as opposed to something similar to Mother
Theresa’s. But this seems clearly absurd: Hitler’s ethics is different from Mother Theresa’s in such a way

4
Paul Kurtz and William Lane Craig, “The Kurtz/Craig Debate: Is Goodness without God Good Enough?” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough?, ed. Robert
K. Garcia and Nathan L. King (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inac., 2009), 30-33.
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that to choose the former is not like choosing vanilla over chocolate. Ethics is not a matter of taste but of
objective reality. So, our intuition about objective moral values is grounded in our moral experience and
cannot be dismissed easily. And since they are real, they can only be grounded in something that
transcends the natural world. And since God transcends the natural world and God is the most perfect
being, it is only in God that we can ground these objective moral values. As Craig said,

God is the locus and source of moral value. God's own holy and loving
nature supplies the absolute standard against which all actions are
measured. He is by nature loving, generous, just, faithful, kind, and so
forth.5

The second element is objective moral duties. To say that something is an objective moral duty is to state
that a particular act is something that we ought to do regardless of whether we think we ought to do it or
not. On theism which is the belief in a personal God, objective moral duties are constituted by God’s
commands. Also, some moral duties arise from the way the created order is arranged by its Creator. For
instance, murder is wrong because it is the wrongful killing of a human being. But why is it wrong? In the
animal kingdom, killing happens all the time. In fact, there is a textbook term for animals that prey on other
animals in order to survive: predators. But these animals aren’t committing any wrongful act. In fact, they
are not even morally blameworthy. Murder only applies to human beings because it is a moral term. The
same with terms like rape, theft and oppression. Similar acts are committed by the lower animals but we
don’t use those moral terms mentioned above because they are moral terms. These acts are violations of
our moral duties to other human beings which are absent in any lower animals. But without God who
created us in His image which became the basis for our rights, what makes us any different from the lower
animals? Why should we have any duty at all? A lion does not have a moral obligation not to kill a deer or
another lion. A vulture does not have a moral obligation not to steal from the food of another vulture. So if
we are just animals, evolved primates with no ultimate value and purpose, there would be no basis for our
moral duty towards other human beings. But since we know that we have real moral duties towards others,
the only legitimate ground for such duties seems to be God.

The third element essential to morality is moral accountability. From a secular perspective, there is no
ultimate moral accountability. It does not matter if you live as a Mao Zedong or a Karol Wojtyla, we will all
die anyway. Without moral accountability, there would seem to be no reason not to cheat if one knows that
one will not get caught. Unfortunately, I often hear that way of thinking uttered by some people, “it’s not
wrong as long as you don’t get caught.” Such mentality illustrates the importance of moral accountability to
the morality of an act. Indeed, if we are all going to die anyway, to whom shall we be accountable? If one
answers by saying that we are accountable to each other, why should it matter if death is all that awaits us
in the end? But from a theistic perspective, there is no problem of moral accountability: because everyone
is accountable – to God. Every injustice in the world will be accounted for. There is cosmic justice with God.
There is only moral nihilism without Him. In order for an ethical theory to satisfy ultimate moral
accountability, it should be able to adequately answer the question: “Why should anyone not be immoral if
5
Ibid., 30.
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they can get away with it?” With theism, there is a simple answer: because you can’t. You can’t hide from
God who is the ultimate moral judge.

Not only are moral aberrations that will be accounted for but also moral heroism and sacrifices. Without
God, the heroism displayed by a firefighter who died trying to save strangers from a burning house is just
stupid. From an evolutionary perspective, such martyrdom does not help one survive obviously nor help
one reproduce. Or take the example of what John Hare calls Good Samaritan altruism.6 This is the kind of
altruism that is exhibited not only to strangers, but one’s enemies, as anyone familiar with the parable of the
Good Samaritan would know. From a purely secular perspective, such an altruistic act might not only be
seen as stupid, but also morally reprehensible. Such an act runs counter against one’s self-interest. But it is
surprising how such altruism morally inspired people and moved people to change their lives for the better.
Take for instance a real-life example of Christian missionaries in the Middle East: they go to parts of the
Middle East, knowing full well that some Muslims in those places will be bent on killing them, in order to
preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. Many of them have been tortured and killed in the process. From a
purely secular perspective, this form of Good Samaritan altruism is downright silly. However, from the
viewpoint of Christianity, this form of self-sacrificial altruism is not only good but worthy of being emulated./

ACTIVITY FOR LESSON 3

Answer the following questions reflectively. The activity is meant to refresh the lessons you’ve
learned and expand them for further exploration. (100 words only)

1. Suppose that there is no afterlife. Provide the most plausible explanation why Good
Samaritan altruism would still be morally commendable in a purely naturalistic world. (10
points)

Lesson 4. The Authority of God’s Commands

It cannot be denied that religious believers have followed God’s precepts for many different reasons. Some
have followed out of tradition, or because it is what some authorities like their family or community have told
them to do. Others may follow largely because of the fear of punishment, with hell being the worst.
However, as Alasdair MacIntyre pointed out, the oughtness which gives God’s commands its force is the
contention that God is perfectly and essentially good . Indeed, if God is not understood to be perfectly good,
it would seem questionable to follow God’s commands. If God is perfectly good, whatever God commands
would be an expression of God’s benevolent nature and so would be worth following.

So what reasons do theists have for thinking that God is good? One strategy is to understand the
definitional concept of God and infer from such definition the essential goodness of God. God is traditionally
6
John E. Hare, The Moral Gap (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1996), 89.
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defined to be the greatest conceivable being (Anselm). Being the most perfect being, God contains all the
great-making attributes to its maximal degree that a being can possess. Since goodness is a great-making
attribute, then God must not only be good, but is supremely and perfectly good. Thus supreme goodness is
an essential characteristic of being God. If somebody is not supremely good, that being cannot be God.

But there is a problem of identifying whether the ethical principles which believers receive are genuinely
from God. How will the theists know whether the commandments they rightly acknowledge are from God?
The contemporary philosopher Kai Nielsen points out that the theist cannot justify that such a being is God
simply because he says he is or because he claims that the commandments he gave are good. After all, a
being can be very powerful and intelligent but wicked. Mere assertions do not prove anything. Rather, the
only valid response according to Nielsen is for the theist to admit that he is using an independent ethical
standard by which to judge the commandments of this being who profess to be God. Upon reflection, this
makes a lot of sense. Indeed, there are many people who claimed to have been prophets of God or God
themselves but harmed people in rather unfortunate and tragic ways. We can already make the judgment
that these guys are mistaken, deluded or just skilled scam artists. But one thing is clear: they cannot be
genuine prophets of God or God Himself. According to Nielsen, this testifies to the truth that the religious
believer already has an idea of what acts are good or bad, a standard by which he judges what are claimed
to be acts of God or God’s commands. Thus, it is not God’s commands that are the basis but the shared
ethical intuitions that human beings possess.

Should we grant Nielsen this conclusion? Only if it can be established that the shared ethical intuition that
human beings possess are ultimately their own, not God’s. But according to classical theism, the universe
and everything in it, including humans, are creation of God. In fact, these shared ethical intuitions are
expected in a world created and sustained by God. As made clear in Christianity, humans possess such
intuitions because the law is written in their hearts (Romans 2:14-15). In religious language, this intuition is
called conscience, which has been traditionally interpreted as the voice of God. Such language and
interpretations clearly suggest that the moral intuitions possessed by humans do not have to be seen apart
from God but can actually be illuminated from a theological perspective.

Although the arguments for a theological basis of morality seem strong and persuasive, this creates a
problem with regard to a certain kind of people: those who don’t believe in God. If God is the ultimate basis
of objective morality, does it follow that nonbelievers cannot be good? And how can nonbelievers know
moral facts if these facts originate from God’s commands to whom the nonbelievers don’t believe?

At this point, it is important to be clear about this issue. Atheists, agnostics and other nonbelievers can be
good without believing in God. You don’t need to believe in God to be moral (although believing in God can
greatly help.) Also, nonbelievers can know that rape and murder are wrong without reading any Scriptures.
Indeed, the reason why many atheists seem impassioned against the Divine Command theory is the idea
that it seems to imply that atheists are immoral because they don’t know or they disagree with some of
God’s commands. But it seems clearly false that all atheists are immoral. Nonbelief does not necessarily
lead to immorality just as religiosity does not necessarily lead to good moral behavior. Thus, it seems that
there is no need for God in order to discern objective moral facts and principles.
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Does this follow that the DCT is false because of atheists who exhibit an admirable morality? Not quite. It
should be clear that the Divine Command Theory is an explanation not of how we come to know of moral
facts but of the existence of objective moral facts themselves. It answers the question of moral objectivity
(Why is there an objective morality?), which is a metaphysical issue, not of moral knowledge (How do we
know this objective morality?), which is an epistemological issue. To make this clear, imagine that two
people have found a book and read it. Now, they can understand what the book says without knowing
about its author but they cannot claim to have read a book that has no author whatsoever. Books require
authors. Similarly, laws require lawmakers. That is how we should understand the nature of moral facts.
Atheists can know about moral facts (they can understand what a book says) without acknowledging its
origin (the author) but they cannot claim to have known an objective moral fact without acknowledging an
ultimate basis that transcends human opinions. Indeed, if there is no objective moral standard to which
human beings must adhere, then each one is left with his own preferred morality. Fyodor Dostoevsky is
right on point when he claimed that without God, everything would be permitted.

But if the DCT is understood as a metaphysical explanation for objective morality, then how does one know
God’s commands? In fact, how can a nonbeliever know and understand God’s commands if she does not
recognize the existence of such God? The theist has an answer. As mentioned above, the epistemological
basis for objective morality can be the same for theists or atheists. It can be conscience, reason, careful
judgment and understanding of the facts or a combination of all of these. The theist need not grant that she
has a unique way of knowing objective morality just because she believes in God. Thus, theists and
atheists can use the same mechanisms and tools in determining the content and principles of objective
morality but as argued above, only the theist has a metaphysical basis for objective morality.

ACTIVITY FOR LESSON 4

Answer the questions reflectively. The activity is meant to refresh the lessons you’ve learned and
expand them for further exploration. (100 words each question)

1. Provide a justification for the existence of conscience without using the assumptions of the
theistic/religious worldview. Justify how such secular conscience can be reliable in
determining moral truths even if reliant on purely naturalistic assumptions. (10 points)
2. Do you think religious believers have access to moral truths that is not available to
nonbelievers? Justify your answer.(10 points)
3. What makes God’s commands to atheists authoritative if atheists do not know that these
commands are from God? (10 points)
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Lesson 5. The Case For and Against Religious Morality

Let us first turn to 5 arguments against religious morality.

Many religious people have committed atrocities in the name of religion. Seen as “arguably the most
powerful and pervasive force on earth” 7, it is not surprising that religion would cause lots of atrocities and
immoralities in the name of God. History is replete with instances of religion being used as justification to
burn witches and heretics, start wars and conquer nations, and for people to occasionally throw airplanes
into buildings. Also, there seems to be many wars that ensued because a particular religion wants to win
over other religions that compete for converts and followers. These are extreme examples that, if true, merit
headlines and careful study and scrutiny. Indeed, these examples are now ubiquitous that such
phenomena invite an impassioned attempt for some writers to obliterate religion from the face of the earth.
These thinkers believe that the absolutistic thinking found in religion is the reason for so many wars, killings
and discrimination to occur in history and are still going on today.

Religious morality closes off critical thinking on moral issues. In the Philippines, there have been many true
stories of families deceived by so-called “religious pastors” into selling their lands and giving all their money
to these religious leaders. The women were even abused by these pastors. Why would such a horrible
thing happen? Because these families and victims were brainwashed into thinking that their actions are
done because it is God’s will. From their perspective, they are just following what God commands them to
do. Since no one should question God’s will, religious believers cannot question those commandments
from God that are supposed to have been passed to these religious leaders. Religiously based morality
seems to close off ethical dialogue by simply asserting that something is wrong because God (or God’s
prophets) said that it’s wrong or right simply because they say it’s right. Period, end of discussion. You can’t
question God, so you can’t question these pronouncements. But this is inimical to the virtue of critical
thinking, which is to doubt mere assertions and to search for good and satisfying reasons for one’s
convictions. Since morality is one, if not the most, essential element in living a good life, then it is very
important to use critical thinking in discerning about moral truths and discussing moral convictions. But this
is what religious morality seems to discourage.

There are many religions that contain different and even conflicting moral principles and laws. Christians
think that polygamy is wrong and immoral but the Muslims think that it is permissible as long as the male
can fulfill his functions as a husband and father. They disagree over this matter primarily because of their
religious convictions. Who is right? It seems next to impossible to settle this issue simply by invoking God
as giving command to a certain group of people because both sides can claim to have God on their side. In
this case, religious morality would have a problem because the believer has to painstakingly decide whose
religion has the right God. To go through all the evidence and arguments and history of all religions would
take a lifetime for one person to do. Aside from that, we have to consider the rational and intellectual
capacities and other important considerations (such as time and opportunity) for a person to make such a
commitment. Since not everybody can and will be able to do that, it seems simplistic to give the last word
about moral issues to any religion. It would seem better to discern moral principles by rational discussions
7
Charles Kimball, When Religion Becomes Evil (New York: Harper Collins, 2008), 1.
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of the issue and decide as thinking and empathizing community what is the best and most moral action to
take.

Religious morality is dependent on God whose existence is not well-established. Religious morality would
seem to convincingly ground the objectivity of morality in God but only if God exists. But the question of the
existence of God remains a controversial matter in philosophy. Since the time of Epicurus hundred years
before Jesus was born, philosophers are already giving arguments purporting to disprove the existence of
God. Until the 21st century, philosophers are still continuing to debate the issue of God’s existence. There
seems to be no definitive way that would ultimately establish the truth of the matter that it prompts some
thinkers to conclude that the issue generates a rational stalemate in which both sides can be reasonable to
hold their beliefs even if there are others who are reasonable enough to disagree. But if the existence of
God is such that it is open for others to doubt with good reasons, then it is equally doubtful to base morality
on religion whose ultimate ground is God.

Some religious precepts about certain behaviors seem inherently immoral. Remember that the divine
command theory as explained above clarifies that God’s commands follow from God’s essentially good and
loving nature so that it would be vacuous to ask whether God could command something wrong as
genocide to be right because God would never command such a thing because it is contrary to His
essentially good and loving nature. This is well and good until one finds a litany of immoral acts
commanded by God in the Scriptures. In the Christian Scriptures that is the Bible, one finds the following:
God commanding the Israelites to plunder all the Egyptians (Exodus 12:35-36); God commanding the
stoning of any son to death whenever he curses his mother or father (Leviticus 20:9) or disobey his parents
(Deuteronomy 21:18-21); and the most famous of all, God commanding Abraham to kill his son Isaac as a
sacrifice to God (Genesis 22:1-19). How should a Christian believer make of all this? It seems that she is
committed to either of these two options: a) believe that God is essentially good, just and loving so that God
would never command something that is immoral or b) God as the ground of morality can actually violate
His own moral commands and even command others to do the same. These are two conflicting options
that cannot be both upheld by the religious believer for pain of contradiction. And since option 2 is more
consistent with the seemingly barbaric laws cited in the Scriptures, the religious believer, if she wants to
remain consistent, doesn’t seem to have a choice but to opt for it.

Now let us turn to 5 arguments in favor of religious morality.

Religious morality guarantees cosmic justice. As mentioned before, one of the advantages of a morality
based on God is how it makes sense of ultimate moral accountability. With God, every good thing that is
done will be rewarded and every bad action will be punished. Without God, there would seem to be no
reason to refrain from committing an immoral act if one can get away with it. Moreover, it is not hard to
witness bad people thriving in their crimes and immoralities, living a life of pleasure and comfort while
people who stick by their moral principles are left with a life of mediocrity and simple sustenance. Sidney
Sheldon, a novelist, through one of his memorable characters said: “Life is unfair and it’s up to us to even
things out.” Even if we give the best concerted efforts to achieve justice in the world, it is a fool’s dream to
believe that we by our best human effort would achieve complete justice in this life. Just imagine the case
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of Adolf Hitler. He killed millions of Jews and non-Jews and yet he was not even made to suffer because he
immediately committed suicide when he knew that the authorities are already looking for him. It seems
unfair to think that after all the moral atrocities that Hitler had committed, he will never have the punishment
that he rightly deserves. Realizing that everything ends in death may likely lead one to lose hope in the
moral life. But God guarantees that all these actions will be met with their appropriate deserts. God gives
meaning and hope to the overriding value of the moral life.

God is the best answer to the problem of the moral gap. This problem is raised by the philosopher John
Hare in his book with the same title. 8 According to Hare, there are two gaps regarding human being’s
relation to morality: the gap between those animals who have only the affection for advantage and humans
who have also the affection for justice, and the gap within our own lives between the demand to be moral
and our actual performance. How does God answer these gaps? With regards to the first, a theological
answer, as Hare suggested, would be “that God appears to humans by self-revelation in a way God does
not do to other animals, and this revelation can silence the human preoccupation with self in a way that
allows love of what is supremely good in itself, namely God. 9 This answer implies that the gap can hardly
be bridged by man alone so that we would naturally need God’s assistance. Human beings have the great
tendency to be selfish. Without God’s help, life would be, to use Thomas Hobbes’ memorable description,
“solitary, nasty, brutish and short”. With regards to the second gap, it is striking that its truth is felt in
everyday lives. We constantly feel the demands of morality but we fail to live up to the moral standard.
Even the atheists I’ve had conversations with admit that they fail this moral standard. But if our actual
performance constantly betrays our failure to moral demands, then it seems vain to try to perfectly live up to
them. Therefore, there must be a way to achieve such moral perfection and that way cannot be in this life. It
is only with the assistance of God that we can achieve such perfection because only God can guarantee
that death will not be the end.

Throughout history, religion has been the only transmission belt of basic morality . How did children learn
that it is wrong to steal or kill? These children would answer because those actions are prohibited by God
as made clear by the Ten Commandments. Indeed, no child seems to have learned his morality from Kant
or Mill or Aristotle.10 These children and young people would say that they learned basic morality from their
religion. Whether that be the Decalogue, the Five Pillars of Islam, or the Way of Tao, most people
acknowledge the essential role played by their religion in shaping and honing their moral sensibilities.
Indeed, it seems impossible to imagine what kind of morality would we develop if not for the influence of
religious, especially Christian, morality. As such, we all owe a lot to religion in creating a world that is more
peaceful, more dignified and more moral than one without religion in it.

Religion has been an essential factor in promoting rights and dignity to all human beings. Take slavery for
example. Under the civilization of ancient Greece and Rome, slavery had no defenders because it had no
critics. It is like the institution of family, natural and taken for granted. Aristotle, one of the greatest

8
John E. Hare, The Moral Gap (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1996).
9
Ibid., 90.
10
I have yet to hear of a child or teenager who claims to have learned basic morality from a philosopher.
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philosophers of all time, claimed that some people are just born slaves. So for hundred years, slavery
perpetuated until some people decided that it is immoral and a grave violation of the human person. How
did some people come to the idea that everyone has rights so that no one can enslave another human
being? Largely through Christian principles. When Paul claimed that everybody is equal in the eyes of God,
it gave people the idea that slavery is wrong because it treats others as unequal and inferior. Indeed, when
one comes to think of the origin of human rights and the nature of human dignity, they are hard, if not
impossible, to explain from a secular point of view. It seems clearly wrong to think of rights as things that
people invent. Rather, rights are endowed to all human beings by virtue of their being human. That includes
future generations, the stranger and the unborn. And who else has the unique power to endow that other
than the Creator of all things?

Religious morality is inspired by an all-good, all-just and all-loving God who cares for mankind and all
creation. When a devastating hurricane or storm swept up a whole city or country, it is not uncommon to
hear real-life stories of religious believers immediately going to the rescue. Indeed, there have been many
philanthropist organizations that have their roots in religious principles and ideas. How do philanthropy and
religion relate? If God exists and He is personal, then God cares for His creation. Some religions are even
more explicit than that. In Christianity, God became man in the form of Jesus Christ and sacrificed himself
in order to show God’s love for humanity. Such a noble act of sacrifice on the part of God inspires gratitude
on the part of human beings who are shown God’s overflowing love. With this in mind, it is not surprising to
hear of religious believers who have offered their lives for others’ sake, such as Mother Theresa and
Maximilian Kolbe just as God has done to them.

ACTIVITY FOR LESSON 5

Answer the questions reflectively. The activity is meant to refresh the lessons you’ve learned and
expand them for further exploration. (100 words each question)

1. Is religion by itself bound to make people more terrible than they really are? If yes, identify
the factors pertinent to religion why this is the case. If no, explain why there is such a
widespread bad impression of religion. (10 points)
2. Is faith really bound to be close-minded? What are the ways by which faith precludes open-
mindedness on the one hand and ways which make faith conducive to open-mindedness on
the other? (10 points)
3. Suppose there is no religion and no God. Would it be possible to ground human rights on
something purely secular? Justify your answer.(10 points)

Conclusion
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To analyze the relationship between morality and religion is to traverse deep and muddled territories.
Although we have only delved through the metaphysical role God plays in morality, we have seen that the
Divine Command Theory which takes God’s commands as the ultimate ground for objective morality is
explanatorily fruitful in ways that other secular basis of morality is not. However, we have seen that there
are also strong objections against the Divine Command Theory that can weaken its case. That said, there
are rooms for further development to make it a full-blown theory, such as countering the claim of divine
incomprehensibility and the charge of different scriptural interpretations. However, as ground for objective
moral values, duties and moral accountability, it seems that a morality that is grounded on God is more
persuasive than any secular morality that purports to explain them. However, we have also seen one
argument to the effect that ordinary morality implies the non-existence of God. This argument is also strong
and needs to be addressed by anyone who sees morality as ultimately dependent on God. But although
critical thinking needs to be exercised when the idea of God is involved in moral deliberation, it seems best
to conclude that God has no strong peers when it comes to making sense of morality and inspiring us to
live a noble moral life.