God and Morality

I can't help you with a duty that "depend[s] on the existence of God," but it seems to me that the one you suggested is untenable.

First, I doubt that I have a duty to love everybody. I agree that I have a negative duty not to harm others, but that does not mean that I must love them. I would need to see an explanation of why this was a duty in the first place.

Second, it seems to me that there would be many ways to justify the duty without reference to God. An Aristotelian might suggest that loving everyone leads to the good life, a Kantian could justify the duty to love everyone on the basis of the categorical imperative--saying that that act could be universalized and its contrary could not, a utilitarian might suggest that loving everyone would bring about the most desirable consequences, etc. These, however, are all on the meta-ethical level so I'm not sure if that is what you are looking for.

Third, what would keep someone from claiming that "everybody is lovable" because everyone is co-human or related by common ancestors, etc.?

There are radical Christian duties to the poor, or the least among the brethren, that I don't think any other moral theory can justify. It certainly cannot be done on utilitarian grounds (since this does not in general maximize utility), or Kantianism (which at most makes it an imperfect duty) or Contractarianism (which generally excludes those that cannot reciprocate). We can make some progress towards a secular justification with Rawlsian theory (or liberal egalitatarianism), but even that won't justify the radical Christian duty here, I think.
It might be worth noting that (as I understand the duty) some are called to live it out in a more radical way than others; and this is related to the metaethical question of how morality varies from world to world on the assumption of Christianity. What any particular moral agent is called to do--the ideals he/she is called to live out--will certainly vary, and one's duties along with that, from one world to the next. God certainly has that sort of flexibity wrt what morality requires. But, however you're called ot it, it is an extremely difficult duty to live up to.

Alex, by loving here do you just mean "to will the good of"? If so, then if I think its plausible that there is some kind of Aristotelian-Kantian (Mortimer Adler) justification for this. It's the action befitting their nature. If I found out God didn't exist I'd wonder why I shouldn't continue to will the good of all persons (indeed to will the perfection of all natures).

Maybe this is related. I wonder if the doctrine that all being is as such good depends on theism. If not, then my willing the perfection of all natures is just willing being and is surely the rational thing to do.

This is a really great question, we've been discussing it a good bit here at Rochester.

Alex, by loving here do you just mean "to will the good of"? If so, then if I think its plausible that there is some kind of Aristotelian-Kantian (Mortimer Adler) justification for this. It's the action befitting their nature. If I found out God didn't exist I'd wonder why I shouldn't continue to will the good of all persons (indeed to will the perfection of all natures).

Maybe this is related. I wonder if the doctrine that all being is as such good depends on theism. If not, then my willing the perfection of all natures is just willing being and is surely the rational thing to do.

This is a really great question, we've been discussing it a good bit here at Rochester.

I'm also glad that you've reopened the question. You might know that Ted and I respond to your article on Pojman on faith and belief in our Hiddenness paper. Though we took the position there and it seems right to me now that duties not directly God-involving don't rely on Him in any obvious way bothers me a bit. I wonder what Lewis was getting at then and there seems to be *something* to moral arguments for theism. I just can't tell what it is at this point.

The most promising line I'm aware of is a Thomistic move involving the eternal law "emanating" from God's nature or a doctrine of the transcendental unity of being with a Leibnizan twist: it's being logically necessary that all being is God's being. In that case the evasion I mention above would not work (and it could be that the gambit cuts off all evasion strategies).

Trent:

1. Here's a modal intuition, take it or leave it. If theism is true, then a metaphysics on which being is necessarily good is true (because all being either is God or is sustained by God, and the natures of things reflect God). If theism is false, then probably it is possible for there to be an entity whose perfection (in the sense of: "completion of nature") is a bad thing--imagine, for instance, animals like us but where it is a part of the nature of males to commit rape.

2. By love, I mean a bit more than "will the good of". There is an appreciative and/or unitive element in all love, I think.

3. There certainly are derivative duties that are not directly God-involving that depend on the existence of God. For instance, I am forbidden to spend from 4 pm Saturday to 11:59 pm Sunday attending a rock concert. This prohibition is not directly God-involving. But it derives from the directly God-involving obligation to worship God at some point during that time window in ecclesial communion with others.

4. I think it is plausible that some duties that do not specially depend on God ontologically, may depend epistemically on belief in God in the case of a particular believer. For instance, while Christian sexual morality can be argued for in a way that does not specially depend on God, nonetheless most Christians do not know these arguments, but accept the wrongness of, say, fornication on the grounds of divine revelation. There is nothing at all wrong with that. Indeed, even someone like me who thinks he has good philosophical arguments in this area can say: "Of course even if the arguments are shown to be unsound, I will continue to accept the conclusion based on a reasonable faith." In my piece on Pojman, it is this sort of epistemic dependence that I had in mind. In this thread, I am interested in both epistemic and ontological dependence.

Please send me a copy of your paper--I am looking forward to it.

Another example that might be worth thinking about is the duty to obey the state (within reasonable limits). St Paul seems to think that the authorities get their authority from God. This is not to say that there aren't secular stories as to how the state gets its authority (though I am at least somewhat sceptical of them), but it is suggestive: it suggests that divine authority enters in into a justification of secular authority. My sovereign, Elizabeth II, is--as the coinage of her realm proclaims--"dei gratia regina", queen by grace of God. Now maybe divine authority only enters into it in the way it enters into all morality. But I suspect there is more to it than that.

Dr. Pruss,
If I understand you correctly, you are looking for moral duties we might have that only exist if God exists but these moral duties don't make explicit reference to God. Okay, I have three that come to mind. The first two bounce off your thankfulness suggestion.

1. Some Christians think we have a duty to take good care of our bodies - to not be gluttonous or smoke/drink unhealthily. We have a prima facie duty not to do self-destructive things to our body, but to treasure our bodies and take care of them. I say that this duty is because our bodies are precious gifts from God. So perhaps there are duties not only to thankfulness, but to treasure a gift one has been given. If somebody gives me a gift out of love for me, even if the gift is intrinsically worthless, it seems it would be wrong for me to just rip it up in front of the giver. Rather, I have a duty to honor that gift. Somebody might say that the duty here is really not that I ought to honor the gift, but that I ought not hurt somebody's feelings. I'm not convinced by this, but suppose so. Then it follows that we have a duty to God not to hurt his feelings. So a special duty we have in virtue of God's giving us our bodies, so I say, is that we treasure and take good care of the bodies he's given us and not hurt God's feelings.

A utilitarian could say that our duty to take care of our bodies is grounded by our duty to maximize utility. But it seems that one act could fulfill two duties: a duty to maximize utility and a duty to honor a gift somebody has given you. So I say the duty to honor one's body by taking care of it is a special one that only exists if theism is true. The acts required to fulfill this duty might be coextensive with what maximizes utility, but they are still different duties.

(Along with this duty might be the duty not to look negatively at our bodies or be scornful/shameful of our body image. Media today teaches people, especially women, to feel inadequate and scornful of their bodily appearance. What I learn from David in Psalm 139 is that I am fearfully and wonderfully made. So perhaps there is a duty that we not look scornfully or shamefully at our bodies - our bodies are God's handiwork, woven in the depths of the earth. So perhaps there is a duty to view our bodies with thankfulness and to treasure and honor them as God's creation. This goes back to the above point.)

2. Could we not say similar things about our duty to the environment? When I look at a tree or an animal, I really feel like it is God's precious creation - there's a sort of honor I feel obligated to bestow on these objects. Of course, the utilitarian might say that our duty to the environment is grounded by maximizing utility for people and animals. I say that there is still the separate duty of honoring creation as a gift, even though the acts taken to fulfill the obligation might be coextenstive with the acts taken to maximize utility. (It would be interesting if they weren't coextensive.)

3. Here's a third duty: the duty not to swear (or not to swear in certain ways). This duty does not make explicit reference to God, but there is this weird phenomenon that people have... this temptation to say "God!" or "Jesus Christ!" when they're mad or want to curse something. I'm not sure if this really is a duty, but if it is a duty, then it might be grounded in the fact that we shouldn't take God's name in vain because it is dishonoring to him.

Andrew:

I like your suggestions, especially the stuff about the body. Grounding duties to self--the duty to care for the body, the duty to develop the mind, etc.--in duties to God is a nice way of reconciling three ideas:
1. You can't owe anything to yourself.
2. Duties are something you owe someone.
3. You have a duty to take care of your body, develop your mind, etc.

Here's a sociological hypothesis: Non-theists are less likely than theists to believe you can do wrong just by thinking a certain way (e.g., imagining torturing one's intellectual opponent). Why? Is it because if theism is true then someone other than you knows your thoughts, and so you are responsible to him for them? (Or can one be responsible to oneself?)

Here's another moral difference theist can make. A theist can bind himself (say, to refrain from eating chocolate) in a way in which a non-theist can. This might be helpful in fighting an addiction, for instance. For the theist can make a vow to God. But a non-theist can at most make a promise to herself, which is useless, since the person to whom you make a promise can always release you from the promise, and so a promise to yourself has no real force.

Dr. Pruss,
Wait, what did you think about the duty to honor gifts that are given to us? This is especially theistic because if there are any duties we have towards gift-givers, then theism is unique since there is an ultimate gift-giver. This brings in a whole load of duties since we now see much of the world (and our own bodies) as gifts to treasure and take care of.

I'm not sure why one would believe (1) - why think we don't have duties to ourselves (generally)? Also, I like your addiction example. But in the practical sense, an atheist, provided he can't practically make such promises to himself or God, can make them to other people. Of course, maybe promises to God might have a sort of "oomph" that promises to other mere mortals don't. But I'm not sure if this is correct.

Oh, on your sociological hypothesis, I'm not sure. In terms of logical space, an atheist could hold that they have duties not to have such thoughts, even if nobody else is around to 'hear' them (perhaps on utilitarian grounds?). But since you're talking sociology/psychology, I guess that letting atheists answer for themselves on this question would be the best bet!

It seems to me that an atheist could quite easily reject the claim that we have a duty to honor our body as a gift someone has given us. Indeed, it seems an atheist *must* reject this claim, since the only plausible candidate for the person giving the bodies is God. The atheist should, I think, be puzzled about what is, on her premises, a needless proliferation of coextensive duties.

An atheist might also be able to reconcile (1)-(3) by adding a premise, and identifying someone or group to whom the duty is owed. In this case, it doesn't see outlandish to hold that the reason we have a duty to take care of our bodies is that failure to do so puts strains on the collective life of a nation--in terms of rising health care premiums and the like, or something along these lines. There are also common cases where, e.g., I have a duty to maintain my health because of my relation to my wife and daughter--I owe it to them to do everything I can not to have a heart attack too young, etc. I don't see the need to appeal to God here.

Luke,
I guess we're missing each other. Alex was asking for duties whose existence depend on God's existence but don't explicitly do so (like the duty to worship God) (see his opening post and my summary in the first paragraph of my first comment). So of course for any duty we mention that we think depends on God (nonexplicitly), an atheist is going to have to reject that they're real duties or reject that they're dependent on God. Yeah?

Hi Andrew,

I thought the deeper point of the post was to ask into the possibility of there being fairly widely accepted duties--those most or at least many will acknowledge--that depend on the existence of God.
If there were, this would point the way to a moral argument for God's existence, which I thought was what Alex was ultimately after (of course, I very well could have the intent of the post wrong!).

My point's just that the putative duty to be grateful for our bodies probably isn't going to be all that widely acknowledged among atheists, esp. insofar as we're requiring that gratefulness requires being grateful to another person. So this doesn't seem to me a promising candidate for the type of duty that could work in a premise for God's existence; it's too easily rejected.

Luke,
Ah, gotcha, that's sensible - I wasn't thinking about arguments for God's existence. I thought it was just intrinsically interesting where theists and atheists might end up being committed to different moral duties where it wasn't explicitly clear one way or another.

For example, my Mom works as a nurse in mental health and she'll come home and tell me that I should be thankful that I was born with a sound, healthy mind. Even people who don't think much about God will say stuff like this. I think it's interesting that it only makes sense in these cases to be thankful if God exists, but an atheist should say that, strictly speaking, there's nobody to thank for my sound, healthy mind.

I think an atheist can argue that no moral duties depend necessarily on God’s existence (of course, an atheist would feel no moral obligation to thank God for anything). For the atheist, while there is no higher authority than man, he nonetheless is bound by certain moral requirements. This includes moral duties to himself (e.g., moral duty not to kill himself) and to others (e.g., duty not to murder others). For the theist, creation and revelation may support the sanctity of life and, therefore, provide the bases for these moral duties. But the atheist can ground the same moral duties on other things, e.g., one’s natural inclination toward self-preservation, a theoretical agreement to some social compact, and the power of government (deterrence and punishment). The atheist will never find the moral argument for God’s existence persuasive because, as usual, he will consider the same evidence and interpret it differently. For any possible moral duty X, he either will deny that X is a moral duty or, if he agrees that he is obligated to do X, he will justify this obligation on other grounds. While we may argue that these other grounds are inadequate (e.g., self-preservation explains survival, but not good will), he will respond that what we see as good will is in fact simply and ultimately a pretext for self-preservation.

Unless there is some ethical reason for seeing an apparent duty as a pretext for self-preservation, I worry that this move would be little different from the move of a hypothetical creationist who, when faced with a fossil inconvenient for his theory, says that the fossil doesn't exist--rather, the devil is making people hallucinate the fossil. In both cases, the data is denied. I see little reason to privilege observational over moral data (I actually see significant reason to privilege moral over observational data, but that's a different story.)

Luke:

"In this case, it doesn't see outlandish to hold that the reason we have a duty to take care of our bodies is that failure to do so puts strains on the collective life of a nation--in terms of rising health care premiums and the like, or something along these lines. There are also common cases where, e.g., I have a duty to maintain my health because of my relation to my wife and daughter--I owe it to them to do everything I can not to have a heart attack too young, etc. I don't see the need to appeal to God here."

If one takes a utilitarian line, then it's easy to justify duties to care for one's body on instrumental grounds, because we have a wide array of duties to help other people, for which we need our body to function well.

Atheists who reject the utilitarian line may well, indeed, cite duties to others. These will give a more limited duty to care for the body than the Christian ethic yields. The Christian ethic implies that one should care for one's body even if one is imprisoned for life in solitary confinement with no hope of release.

That said, logical space does contain the atheist natural law theorist, who says most of the things Aquinas says about ethics, minus the things about God. The atheist natural law theorist will say the good is what fulfills our nature, we have a duty to seek the good, and hence the care of our bodies is a duty (though only prima facie).

It is an interesting question why a natural law atheist is so rare in physical space. Is it because of the modal intuition that, if there is no God, it is likely that there could be natures whose fulfillment is not a good? Or is there a merely sociological explanation?