Rachels, Ch 4
“Does Morality Depend on Religion?”
1. REASONS PEOPLE THINK RELIGION AND MORALITY ARE CONNECTED; THAT MORALITY IS PART OF OR DEPENDS ON RELIGION
2. Church provides moral guidance on practical issues
a. Consider the ten commandments
3. Many children get part of their morality from a religious upbringing
a. If you don’t take your child to church/Sunday school, he or she will turn out badly
4. Members of clergy often treated as moral experts, e.g., appointed to hospital ethics committees or presidential ethics committees
a. Are the clergy morally wiser (or morally better?) than other people?
5. Religion is a world view that gives meaning, purpose and value to the world, and so assume this includes moral value
a. In contrast to a purely scientific world view
i. Which is silent on values and suggests that all life (including human life), the earth and the universe are eventually doomed to end
b. Religion sees world as created by all powerful, loving God who make this our home and we are his children
c. Seems natural that the values of right and wrong (moral values) also come from this world view
6. God is a powerful sanction for morality
a. Fear of punishment by an omniscient being who knows what you are doing makes people moral
b. But morality requires being moral for its own sake (and not out of fear of punishment)
c. There are other sanctions (laws, social pressure) to help motivate people to be moral
d. Fear of sanctions can get people to act morally and eventually this can lead to being moral for its own sake (true moral behavior)
7. God provides an account of objective morality
a. Right and wrong are objective
i. They are not decided by what individuals think (subjectivism); individuals can be mistaken
ii. Nor are they decided by what cultures think (cultural relativism); entire cultures can be mistaken
b. So who decides what is right and wrong?
i. God does. And his pronouncements are objective in the sense that human individuals and cultures have to live up to standards independent of their choices and decisions
8. REASONS TO SEPARATE MORALITY AND RELIGION
9. Many (including Rachels) believe that morality depends on reason (and common sense), not religion and that reason can provide the objectivity needed
a. Many moral theories have been developed that attempt to specify objective criteria for right and wrong without any appeal to religion
i. Utilitarianism, respect for persons or sentient beings or all living things, contractualism
b. Rachels has argued that where the weight of reason lies is not something we decide; “reason says what it says, and this is not determined by what an individual or culture thinks it says”
i. In this sense a morality based on reason is objective, separate from our subjective or cultural beliefs
10. Common-sense objections to morality being dependent on religion
a. If morality depends on religion does it follow that atheists are necessarily immoral people (which seems implausible) or lack morality?
b. If we accept Dostoevsky’s statement that “If there is no God, then everything is permissible”
i. Then in a world without God, driving drunk thought a school yard at recess would not be morally wrong.
ii. But it seems clear that it is
iii. What does God have to do with the wrongness of such actions?
(1) Wrong because God hates such behavior or wrong because it hurts innocent children (whether or not God hates/forbids it)?
c. If you sincerely believed God told you to “kill the infidel” should you do it?
i. If no, then either
(1) You believe in morality separate from God
(2) Or, you question the authenticity of “your revelation”
11. DIVINE COMMAND THEORY
12. Divine Command Theory of Right and Wrong (DCT)
i. The most famous and obvious way to ground morality on religion
b. Morally right means commanded by God
c. Morally wrong means forbidden by God
13. Two possible relations between God’s commands and rightness
i. (1) Conduct is right because God commands it (this is DCT), or
ii. (2) God commands conduct because it is right (already)
(a) (Right is prior to and independent of God’s commands)
14. Problems with the Divine Command Theory
15. (1) Conduct is right because God commands it (DCT)
a. God’s commands make things right
b. Conduct right/wrong only after God commands/forbids it
c. Before God commanded truthfulness it was neither right nor wrong; only became right after God commanded it
16. Unfortunate consequences of the DCT
a. It makes God’s commands arbitrary
i. There can be no good reasons for them
ii. Specifically, God’s reason for commanding truthfulness rather than lying can’t be because truthfulness is right
(1) For on this view it isn’t right until God commands it
iii. If God had commanded dishonesty, that would be right
b. Provides the wrong reasons for moral judgments
i. Child abuse wrong because it involves unnecessary infliction of pain and causes long term negative psychological effects
ii. Not wrong simply because God forbids it
17. Two: God commands conduct because it is right (already)
a. God’s commands are not arbitrary but wise choices
b. God realizes that truthfulness is better and so he commands it
i. Rightness exists prior to and independent of God’s commands
ii. And is the reason for those commands
c. On this view there is some other standard of right and wrong besides God’s commandments
i. One plausible alternative standard is reason.....
d. This view gives up the “religious conception of right/wrong”
18. Theory of Natural Law
a. This is the dominant theory of ethics in Christian thought (not DCT)
19. One: World is rational order with values and purposes built into its nature
a. Everything in nature has a purpose (as intended by God)
b. It makes sense to ask of everything in nature, what is it for?
i. We have teeth so we can chew, eyes for seeing, heart for pumping blood
ii. Rain falls in order that plants may grow
c. World a orderly system with each thing having its own proper place and serving its own special purpose
d. With Aristotle (and others) this is understood as involving a hierarchy: Rain for plants, plants for animals, animals for people; so in final analysis, God made all things for people
i. Rachels criticizes this as “stunningly anthropocentric” (human-centered)
20. Two: Laws of nature describe how things are but also specify how they ought to be
a. Things are as they ought to be when serving their natural purpose
i. Eyes that can’t see are defective
b. Some ways of acting are natural and some unnatural and the second are wrong
c. This is true because we were created by god with a specific human nature as part of his overall plan.
i. People naturally care for others; someone who does not or who is unable to care for others is defective
(1) Just as eyes that can’t see are defective.
ii. Many religious sexual ethics condemn masturbation, oral sex and gay sex as unnatural as it is sexual activity not connected with making babies–and that is the purpose of sex
a. Assumption that “what is natural is good” is problematic
i. Many natural things are bad
b. Theory of natural laws confuses is with ought, facts with values
i. That something is the case does not mean it ought to be
ii. That sex does produce babies doesn’t mean sex ought to be engaged in only for that purpose
c. Theory of natural law with values packed into the world based on the purpose of things goes against a scientific view of nature that has no room for values, only facts
i. The view described is not a scientific position, but philosophical (metaphysical) interpretation of nature
22. Natural law theory says God gave us reason to figure out this natural order and to determine what is right/wrong.
a. This puts believers and nonbelievers in the same moral universe, using their reason to figure out what is right
b. This also fits with Rachels’ account of morality: based on reason
23. USING RELIGION TO ANSWER IMPORTANT AND CONTROVERSIAL MORAL QUESTIONS
24. On using religion to decide particular moral issues
a. Are there distinctively religious (e.g., Christian) positions on major moral issues like abortion and homosexuality?
i. E.g., if one accepts abortion or homosexuality then one is not Christian?
b. Many people accept this idea
25. Reasons to worry about finding specific moral guidance in the scriptures
a. Our problems are not the same as those faced by the Jews and early Christian writers of the Bible
b. The general helpful moral guidance the Bible gives (e.g., love one's neighbor) not likely to give us definitive answers to issues of today
c. Many scriptures and church traditions are ambiguous and authorities disagree on how to interpret them
i. E.g., The view that fetuses are human from the very beginning is not clear in the Scriptures or church tradition
d. Using religion to justify predetermined beliefs: Often when people think they are deriving their moral views from their religious commitments, what is really going on is they make up their minds about moral issues first and then interpret the scriptures and church tradition in a way to support those conclusions
i. This suggests the arrogant position that God must share one's moral views
Rachels, Ch 4: Does Morality Depend on Religion?
1. Describe the divine command theory of morality. What are the two interpretations of this theory that Rachels discusses. Explain how they are different from each other. What are the strengths and weaknesses of each interpretation?
2. Describe the Natural Law Theory of the relationship between religion and morality (in Chapter Four of Rachels). Explain the senses in which it ties religion and morality together and also how it keeps them separate. Do you agree with this theory of the relationship between religion and morality? Why or why not?
3. Explain in what sense Rachels thinks the relation between religion and morality is like the relation between religion and science. Do you agree with him about this? Why?
4. Discuss some of the problems that Rachels identifies with accepting the dictates of one's church or of a holy book as morally authoritative. In what way does Rachels' own position on the nature of morality conflict with such approaches to ethics?