Critically assess the claim that religion provides a basis for moral values
Mock (in-person) Exam, IB HL Philosophy
This essay is a critical assessment of the view that religion provides a basis for moral values. In particular, I will consider this claim with reference to Christianity, though elucidating how each point may be abstracted to ‘religion’ more generally. I will evaluate the merits of this approach with reference to the following criteria: whether the view endorses good actions, and disowns bad ones; whether it provides an acceptable conception of the property of good; whether the ethical framework it implies or recommends is sufficiently prescriptive; and whether it is universalizable.
We shall begin by considering what exactly the claim is. In short, it may be understood (in a Christian context) as the claim that “A good action is one that God says is good”.
There are, already, a number of issues we must seek to clarify. The first is known as the ‘Euthyphro dilemma’, a dichotomy presented by Socrates to Euthyphro, in the dialogue of that name by Plato. In fact, they are discussing this question with reference to the Greek gods, but it generalises.
The first ‘horn’ of this dilemma is the proposition that God is the source of moral value. That is, an action that God says is good, is only good because God decrees it so.
The second is that God is not the source of moral value and goodness and so on, but these things are objective and beyond God. He could not influence the moral worth of an action, but being all-knowing, He simply tells us what is good and bad.
The problem is that whichever of these alternatives are picked, this view seems to land into trouble. Let us first consider the second: that God simply tells us what is good and bad. Then, it is not so clear that ‘religion [is] the basis for moral values’. Instead, what we ought to do is to seek the source of objective moral value that God is just communicating. Effectively, we can bypass the ‘middle-man’, and use reason to determine our objective moral duties. Indeed, Kant’s ethical project is to do exactly that – the extent to which he succeeds is beyond the scope of this essay.
Since this choice seems to result in a view that is not identical to the claim, I will instead take the claim in the sense of the first horn: that a moral action is moral precisely because God says that it is.
There are, of course, issues with this view. One of the criteria according to which I am judging this view is the extent to which it endorses actions that we collectively intuit are ‘good’, and disown those we collectively suppose are ‘bad’, like murder. But if a good action is good only because ‘God says so’, then this opens the door for us to accept as good things which are bad, if God were to command for example, that rape is justified.
The response of the divine command ethicist (the view which I identify in support of this claim) is that God would simply not allow such things. Man is made in the image of God, and as children of God, we will surely share moral intuitions.
However, this argument ignores stories in the Bible that suggest the contrary. For example, there is a story in which God tells Abraham, to whom he had gifted a son long after it should have been possible, to kill his son Isaac, as a sacrifice to Him.
This story illustrates why the second branch of Euthyphro’s dilemma is not fundamentally aligned with the claim. For example, if Kant had had a vision in which God told him to do this, then he would wonder if this is, in fact, God. Since God is a perfectly rational, totally autonomous being, He must follow the categorical imperative, Kant would reason. And since the categorical imperative shows us we have a perfect duty not to murder. Therefore, the apparition would not be God, and so the moral course of action is not to murder the son.
Clearly, this is not actually identical to the claim that religion provides the basis for moral values. Instead, we can identify this view with Kierkegaard, who impels us to make a choice (‘Either-Or’) between the religious life and the life of pleasures.
It is according to this view we see that the claim supports the notion that it is morally good to kill if God commands it, that we see it fails. After all, it is clear and agreed that taking one’s son to a mountain to be slaughtered is wrong – even if God eventually tells Abraham he doesn’t have to.
This example also illustrates some other ways in which this claim, and divine command ethics fail. For instance, there are several problems with understanding how we ought to act since most of us have no direct interaction with God. We must therefore take our moral guidance from the Bible, indirectly; but there are hermeneutical issues here, due to the nature of the Bible seeming to be contradictory in places (as, for example, between this story, and one of the Ten Commandments, namely, “Thou shalt not kill.”
The Bible’s moral guidance is often implicit rather than explicit, baked into parables and allegories, and so it is open to interpretation.
It is worth conceding that this is not necessarily generalisable to all religion – some may have clear doctrines that are explicit and prescriptive. Often, however, it is the case that such doctrines and theses were formed centuries ago, and therefore clash with our modern day understanding. Hence, it is often necessary for modern theologians to ‘creatively’ parse and interpret certain passages, if for example, they violate women’s rights as understood today.
Hence I claim that in general, religion fails first on the count of failing to endorse all good actions and disown bad ones; and secondly of failing to give clear, decisive, prescriptive, intelligible moral guidance.
Furthermore, this line of enquiry exposes more issues still. In the first place, there is the problem of other religions. It is a corollary of the first two failures that it is not a universalizable system of morals; how could it be, if it fails to offer prescriptive ethical guidance an conflicts with our sense of morality? However, even setting aside this point, we should notice that religions are cultural phenomena, and different cultures hold onto mutually exclusive religions. It may therefore be said that it is impossible to universalise any religion as a source of moral value, since it will inevitably be disregarded by those of other religions.
This criticism of religion as a basis of moral values, however, is among the weakest. After all, there is as yet, no ethical system universally accepted. This does not suggest that it is no less or no more universalizable in principle than any other moral system. Suppose culture X dogmatically and indelibly believes morality comes from religion X. Then, even if we had a moral system the rest of the world agreed on, it would not be universalised as culture X refused to accept it. But then, we could not universalise X either, if there is a culture Y with the same attachment to religion Y; and between first two cultures, it is therefore impossible to universalise any moral system in this way.
More crushing is the fact that the claim presupposes the existence of God, a proposition that is far from accepted in the secular age of modern natural science. As such, it is clear that ‘good is what God says’ fails utterly as an acceptable conception of ‘good’, unless you first can demonstrate the existence of God. The same holds of any religion which says that the source of good is an unproven, unprovable, metaphysical deity.
Hence, in conclusion, the claim that religion provides a basis for moral values fails on every level. It does not hold up to the test of any of our initial criterion: according with our intuition; providing a prescriptive framework; hence, universalizability; and providing an acceptable conception of what ‘good’ is. It is ethically unsound.
Result
Mark: 22/25 (Level 7)
Feedback:
This is a v. impressive essay given that it is (a) a mock and (b) written under timed conditions.
PS That said, you might have developed this sort of point: it does potentially avoid "relativism" & given ultimate sanction - should be discerned.