religion and morality

The Divine Command Theory: There are objective moral facts. Statements of the form “x is right/good/moral” mean “God approves of x” and statements of the form “x is wrong/bad/immoral” mean “God disapproves of x”.

Socrates: What is piety?Euthyphro: Piety is doing as I am doing; that is to say, prosecuting any one who is guilty of murder, sacrilege, or of any similar crime-whether he be your father or mother, or whoever he may be-that makes no difference; and not to prosecute them is impiety…

Socrates: I did not ask you to give me two or three examples of piety, but to explain the general idea which makes all pious things to be pious. Do you not recollect that there was one idea which made the impious impious, and the pious pious? Euthyphro: Piety, then, is that which is dear to the gods, and impiety is that which is not dear to them. 

Socrates: Euthyphro, in thus chastising your father you may very likely be doing what is agreeable to Zeus but disagreeable to Cronos, and … there may be other gods who have similar differences of opinion…  [So] upon this view the same things, Euthyphro, will be pious and also impious? Euthyphro: So I should suppose… I should [instead] say that what all the gods love is pious and holy, and the opposite which they all hate, impious. 

Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is

loved by the gods?

Does God approve of things because they are good, or are they good because God approves of them?

1) Either (a) things are good because God approves of them or (b) God approves of things because they are good.

2) If (a), then morality is contingent and God is arbitrary.

3) Morality isn’t contingent and God isn’t arbitrary.

4) If (b), then the Divine Command Theory is false.

5) The Divine Command Theory is false.

The Euthyphro Argument

1) Either (a) things are good because God approves of them or (b) God approves of things because they are good.

2) If (a), then morality is contingent and God is arbitrary.

3) Morality isn’t contingent and God isn’t arbitrary.

4) If (b), then the Divine Command Theory is false.

5) The Divine Command Theory is false.

pew research centerhttp://www.pewglobal.org/2007/10/04/chapter-3-views-of-religion-and-morality/

moral nature is stamped on human act… according to reason. If the object as such implies what is is in accord with the reasonable order of conduct, then it will be a good kind of action; for instance, to assist somebody in need. If, on the other hand, it implies what is repugnant to reason, then it will be a bad kind of action… To disparage the dictate of reason is equivalent to condemning the command of God.

-St. Thomas Aquinas

To the moral agent intent on discovering what she should do, religious considerations are not to the point. What she wants to know is: What are the reasons for and against the various options? What do reason and conscience require of me? Believers and nonbelievers may approach these questions in the same way, and if both are conscientious and rational, the may arrive at the same answers… In this way, even though they disagree about religion, believers and non-believers nevertheless inhabit the same moral universe.

-James Rachels