Is Something Good Because God Says So?

In Plato’s dialogue, Euthyphro, Socrates asks just this questions:

“Do the gods love holiness [the good] because it is holy [good], or is it holy [good] because the gods love it?”

The Divine Command Theory

The first position is known in Ethics as “Natural Law Theory” and the second is known as “The Divine Command Theory”

If your answer is the second one, (it is holy because the gods love it) then you relegate morality to the whim of the gods. It’s a kind of moral relativism, depending on what God thinks is good at the moment. So whatever the gods love is automatically good, no matter what it is. So conceivably God could think murder is okay on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but not on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, leaving Sunday up to the individual’s choice. The next week he could change it to the opposite.

Ethicist Judith Boss, in her book, Ethics for Life, defines the Divine Command Theory as,

“Divine command theory is a type of ethical relativism. According to this theory, morality is dependent on or relative to God. Morality does not exist independently of God’s will. Just as morality for the cultural relativist is relative to cultural norms and commands, for the divine command theorist, morality is relative to what God commands or wills whether it is an act of charity or an act of terrorism. There are no independent moral standards by which to judge God’s commands.”

Can We Put Limits on God?

Some people might object to that, saying God would never condone killing or terrorism, being too moral for that. Which is why the first choice, (the natural law choice) is preferable. It says, the gods love holiness [the good] because it is good. In other words, there is a moral law embedded in the universe that even the gods have to follow.

If the gods don’t have to follow it, then we flip back to the latter position which says something is holy because God says it is, and we just saw the problems with that view.

Some people might further object and say, the gods created this moral law, so of course they would follow it. That makes perfect sense, but some believers don’t like this view because it puts limits on the gods’ power. If the gods are the gods, they should be able to do whatever they want, and who are we humans to say gods can’t violate their own laws. If we believe that, then again we are back to the latter choice which says something is holy because the gods say it is.

The Natural/Moral Law Theory

So, the first choice, as I said, is the natural law choice. It says there is moral law embedded in the universe that even the gods, or God has to follow.

However, the great thing about natural law is you don’t have to actually believe in God or the gods to follow it.

Great philosophers like Cicero and Aristotle believed in Natural Law without believing in the gods or any God. They believed that natural law was just a part of the natural order. That is the belief I have when discussing the “Magical or the Intelligent Universe”. Moral law is just naturally a part of the universe, implying an intelligence is integral to the whole shebang.

Judith Boss frames it this way,

“According to natural law theory, morality is universal and grounded in rational nature rather than being particular and relative to God’s commands. Natural law does not mean laws of physics, but laws of rational human nature, which, unlike fixed laws of physical nature are free and autonomous. Natural or moral law is unchanging and eternal. Natural law is universally knowable to humans through reason. It is also universally binding on all humans.”

Natural Law and the Intelligent Universe

So, natural law is very much in harmony with the view of an Intelligent or Magical Universe. And here, I am siding with Cicero and Aristotle that this intelligence, embedded in the universe, is natural and not the product of an outside God.

In my next article I will delve more deeply into the ties between natural law theory and the Intelligent Universe.

To learn more about the Intelligence and Magic of the Universe: Click this link: The Magical Universe.