rachels chapter 4 does morality depend on religion?

Rachels Chapter 4

Does Morality Depend on Religion?


On the surface, religion seems connected with morality, and atheism

seems to have no place for it.


The Divine Command Theory:

God decides what is right or wrong – whatever God commands is right, and

whatever God forbids is wrong.



God decides what is right or wrong – whatever God commands is right, and

whatever God forbids is wrong.

(If God did not command or forbid, then nothing would be right or wrong.)



Advantages:1) Solves the objectivity problem for

morality.

2) Solves the motivation problem for morality.


The Divine Command Theory:Problems:

The Euthyphro Dilemma

Plato427-348 BCE



Do the gods love something because it is already good,

or is something good only because the gods love it?





God Morality

God Morality





God Morality

God Morality

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The Divine Command Theory:Something is right or wrong only because

God commands it.

Problems:1) How could anyone do this, including

God? It’s mysterious.


The Divine Command Theory:Something is right or wrong only because

God commands it.

Problems:2) This makes God’s commands arbitrary

(without any moral reason).


The Divine Command Theory:Something is right or wrong only because God

commands it.

Problems:3) This theory provides the wrong reasons for moral principles (e.g., “Child abuse is wrong”)

– if God did not exist, they would not hold.


The Natural Law Theory:

1) Everything has a nature, which includes a specific purpose.

2) The natures of things determine what is good for them to do.

3) Morality knowledge comes from reason, which helps us to discover the natures of things.


The Natural Law Theory:Objections:

1) What is natural is not always good: self-centeredness and disease, e.g.



2) You cannot determine how things ought to be just by learning how they are

(Hume on fact vs. value)

You cannot derive a statement of the form

“X ought to be”

from any number of statements of the form

“X is the case.”

David Hume1711-1776

For instance, consider the following argument:

P1. People value their own children more than they value the children of others.

C. People ought to value their own children more than they value the children of others.

The Explanation Question

P1. People value their own children more than they value the children of others.

C. People ought to value their own children more than they value the children of others.

--Even if this conclusion is true, this is a bad argument for it: it moves from an “is” to an “ought”.

The Explanation Question



3) Modern science has shown us that not everything has a purpose: things happen because of cause and effect, not in order

to fulfill a natural purpose.


Apart from the Divine Command Theory and Natural Law Theory, is there any

connection between morality and religion?


Rachels: Consider a particular question, like the morality of abortion.

Does religion tell us how we should think about this?


Obstacles in applying religion:

A) The moral advice given in scriptures is old, and does not clearly address contemporary problems (workers’ rights, extinction of species, funding of medical research, etc.).



B) The scriptures can be ambiguous (e.g., being rich, abortion).



C) Tradition can be ambiguous (e.g., Catholic teaching concerning abortion, slavery, women’s rights, the death penalty, etc.).



It looks like people first make up their minds about morality, and then look to scriptures or the tradition to back them up.


Rachels’ conclusion:Morality and religion may be connected in

some ways, but at bottom they are independent: morality is a matter of reason

and conscience, not faith.

*The arguments offered here do not assume that any specific religions are true or false.*

rachels chapter 4 does morality depend on religion?

Documents

bcedoes morality

morality knowledge

god commands

natural law theory

wrong reasons

gods commands arbitrary

euthyphro dilemma plato427

natures of things