4 Popular Objections to Theistic Ethics

I’ve had the opportunity to teach ethics and philosophy as an online adjunct for about five years now. During that time, I’ve noticed that students often express similar concerns about the moral argument specifically and theistic ethics in general. Here are the four most popular objections to theistic ethics I’ve encountered and a brief reply.

1.     People can be good without God. Theistic ethics says that people need God to be moral, but there are many good atheists. So, theistic ethics must be incomplete or incorrect.

First, it will help to settle what is meant by “good” atheist in this context. Most of the time, when we say Ms. Smith is a good person, we just mean it in a relative sense. Relative to other people, Ms. Smith is a good person. She is kind to others, she donates to charity, she is generous, and so on.

This objection usually comes from a misunderstanding of the implications of one of the premises of the deductive moral argument. That argument goes like this:

1.     If objective moral values and duties exist, then God exists.

2.     There are objective moral values and duties.

3.     Therefore, God exists.

A correct implication of (1) would be that morality requires God and, therefore, one needs God to be good. God must exist for there to be morality at all. However, (1) does not imply that atheists cannot be good, moral people. All that (1) implies is a view about moral ontology, and not a view about what it takes to be a moral person. Nothing in the moral argument suggests that an atheist cannot be a moral person. An atheist is someone who disbelieves in God. Disbelief of this sort does not make it impossible to be a good person. God can be the ground of morality and atheists can be good people. These are not contradictory statements.

Some may think that while the moral argument doesn’t say that one must believe in God to be good, the Bible nonetheless does. So, if one is committed to a theistic ethical theory that affirms the teaching of the Bible, then she is, at the end of the day, saying one must believe in God to be good. However, I am not convinced that is what the Bible teaches. A key verse in this debate comes from Romans 3:10 “…there is none righteous, not even one.” Often, the verse is interpreted to mean that, apart from salvation in Christ, there are no good people. However, “righteousness” here has a specific, forensic or legal meaning.[1] A better gloss might be “no one is justified, not even one.” In this case, at least, the Bible has in view something different than what me mean by “good person.”

Some may think that the Calvinist doctrine of total depravity stipulates that atheists cannot be good people. But this is not always the case. According to one theological dictionary, 

Total depravity refers to the extent and comprehensiveness of the effects of sin on all humans such that all are unable to do anything to obtain salvation. Total depravity, therefore, does not mean that humans are thoroughly sinful but rather that they are totally incapable of saving themselves.[2]

Total depravity only says no one can earn that forensic status of righteousness.

So, neither the moral argument nor the bible implies that an atheist cannot be a good person or do good things.  

2.     Theistic ethics is too narrow. Not everyone agrees that God exists, so not everyone could have moral knowledge. We need an ethical theory that’s accessible to all.  

This might be the most common of these four objections and it leverages an important concern: the availability of moral knowledge.  As a preliminary reply, we can point out that this sort of critique would work for any ethical theory. We could argue against the utilitarian: Well, not everyone believes that the good is identical to utility (or pleasure), so not everyone could have moral knowledge. Or against the Kantian: Well, not everyone agrees with the categorical imperative, so not everyone could have moral knowledge. The objector might say that in both those cases, one gains moral knowledge through common sense or introspection. These modes of investigation are available to all people, while access to divine commands are not.

There are three vital points to make in response. First, if some ethical theory implies that moral knowledge will be inaccessible, that does not entail it is false. It may be a problem for that ethical theory, but problems can be addressed. Plato’s ethical theory is a good example of this. Morality is grounded in the Forms, but from our present position and with our current abilities, we cannot access the realm of the Forms. Thus, Plato proposes some alternative means through which such knowledge can be attained, including his ambitious doctrine of pre-existence. Possibly, Plato’s ethical theory is correct and moral knowledge just is hard to come by.

Second, most versions of theistic ethics, despite the impression of many, say that moral knowledge is widely accessible, and by means like common sense and introspection. Clearly, this is the case with theistic natural law theories, but it is also the case for divine command theory, which is usually the target of this sort of objection. If we consider the sort of divine command theory offered by David Baggett and Jerry Walls in Good God, we can see how this is so. They say that God’s commands are not arbitrary, but flow from his nature. God’s nature, in their view, is identical to the good. Therefore, one can infer, purely based on reason and her implicit knowledge of the good, what is right and wrong in many cases and, thus, what God has likely commanded. For example, given these things, one should easily see that it is wrong to murder, even if she doesn’t know that God has prohibited murder. In this way, someone has access to much of moral knowledge without access to special revelation; a point consistent with the teaching of Romans 1.

Third, from the Christian perspective, God has revealed himself dramatically and publicly in the person of Jesus Christ and there is sufficient evidence of this (ably demonstrated by scholars like Gary Habermas and Michael Licona). That some people find the evidence unconvincing does not imply that evidence is, in fact, insufficient. If the Christian perspective is correct, then God has provided direct, sufficient, and accessible evidence for his moral authority and the authenticity of his commands through Jesus and his resurrection.

3.     The meaning of the Bible is unknowable. No one really knows that the Bible teaches. It’s all open to interpretation and we don’t know what it originally said anyway.

When I run across this objection, students often give one of two motivations for their view. First, they often say something like this: “The Bible has been copied so many times! All we have is a translation of a copy of translation. It’s been copied and translated so many times, who knows what it really said at the start!” This concern represents a widely held misunderstanding of the origin of our modern Bibles. Our modern Bibles are not copied from other translations; they are copied from the original languages. Some pieces of these texts even date to the second century for the New Testament and the seventh century B.C. for the Old Testament. The source texts for the modern Bible are early and they are in abundance. Through careful study, textual critics of the New Testament conclude that what we have now accurately represents over 99% of the original manuscripts. So, we know with a high degree of confidence what the books and letters of the Bible actually said.

The other motivation seems to come from a general skepticism about the clarity of the Bible. Certainly, there are unique interpretive challenges when it comes to the Bible. It was written in another time, place, and culture. Some passages remain deeply debated and mysterious. However, much of the Bible can be understood on its face, in a straightforward way. This is true in the case of the Bible’s central ethical teaching, presented by Jesus himself: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind” and “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27). This command in particular does not seem especially hard to understand or interpret. On many central ethical issues, the Bible is perspicuous. But even in those cases where the Bible presents readers with an interpretive challenge, one can still often discern the correct meaning with careful, methodical hermeneutics. Therefore, we do know what the Bible originally said, and we can know what it originally meant.

4.     The Bible is unenlightened. The Bible is full of bronze age ethics that we know are immoral now. Theistic ethics needs to be discarded in favor a more modern ethical theory that fits with a modern perspective.

My aim here is not to respond to all of the specific ethical issues in the Bible, but I will offer a general reply in two directions. First, in defense of the Bible, it is very likely that for many of the difficult passages, we are simply misreading them. The Bible can often be read and understood at face value, but not always. Not infrequently, our modern assumptions distort our reading and understanding of the Bible. A possible example of this comes in the Conquest of Canaan narratives. In the ancient world contemporary to the Conquest, it was common to exaggerate one’s victory over the enemy. Language of total destruction of cities, including its citizens, was often used, when it is clear from the surrounding context that such cities were not utterly destroyed. One example of such a text comes from Joshua 10:40:

Thus Joshua struck all the land, the hill country and the Negev and the lowland and the slopes and all their kings. He left no survivor, but he utterly destroyed all who breathed, just as the Lord, the God of Israel, had commanded.

Paul Copan notes of passages like this:

Joshua’s conventional warfare rhetoric was common in many other ancient Near Eastern military accounts in the second and first millennia BC. The language is typically exaggerated and full of bravado, depicting total devastation. The knowing ancient Near Eastern reader recognized this as hyperbole; the accounts weren’t understood to be literally true.[3]

It may be that similar interpretative issues exist for all the ethically difficult passages in the Bible. However, that is unlikely to be the case.

Second, it would be rather strange if the moral vision of the Bible comfortably fit our own. That some parts of the Bible cause us discomfort suggests that the Bible is not a mirror for our own views or some pliable clay to be shaped to our own liking. Rather, it suggests that in the Bible we encounter a moral perspective that is not our own. It belongs to someone else, even if we have adopted it in some measure.

In The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis wrote this:

Divine "goodness" differs from ours, but it is not sheerly different: it differs from ours not as white from black but as a perfect circle from a child's first attempt to draw a wheel. But when the child has learned to draw, it will know that the circle it then makes is what it was trying to make from the very beginning.

Lewis argues that our moral knowledge is not exactly correct. Our knowledge of the good is not univocal, but analogical. It’s off by some margin of error.

If morality is objective, this is what we should expect. If morality was made in our image, a mere human convention, then moral truth should cause us no discomfort or distress. But if morality comes from without and not within, then so long as our moral vision is imperfect, there will be some incongruence between what is actually the case and what we merely believe to be the case. That’s exactly the experience we have when reading the Bible. Significantly, though, this dissonance runs in multiple directions. The wrath of God on display in the Bible may make us shudder, but the Bible also teaches that we should love our enemies, that we should give without withholding to the poor and destitute, that we should love our neighbors as ourselves. This incredible calling sounds its own discordant note in our modern, Western minds. The horizons of our moral vision are widened by the Bible. An effect that should come as no surprise if in it we find an ethic from someone else.

[1] Moo, D. J. (1996). The Epistle to the Romans (p. 203). Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Here’s a fuller comment from Moo on this passage (including Romans 3:12):

10b–12 The quotations begin with a series of phrases taken from Ps. 14:1–3 (LXX 13:1–3) (Ps. 53:1–3 is almost identical). As is the case with most of the quotations in this series, Paul’s wording agrees closely with the LXX.28 But there is one important difference: where the Psalms text has “there is no one who does good,” Paul has “there is no one who is righteous.” Granted the importance of the language of “righteousness” in this part of Romans (cf. 3:4, 5, 8, 19, 20), the word is almost certainly Paul’s own editorial change.29 It will thus carry with it Paul’s specifically forensic nuance (cf. 1:17). What he means is that there is not a single person who, apart from God’s justifying grace, can stand as “right” before God. This meaning is not far from David’s intention in the Psalm, as he unfolds the myriad dimensions of human folly.

Here is what Kruse says in the Pillar commentary on Romans:

Paul’s purpose in listing these quotations is to say that as a people Jews are no better than Gentiles. Paul would certainly know of the many righteous persons spoken of in the OT, not least Abraham, to whom he refers in the next chapter (4:1–25). However, it must be said that such ‘righteous’ persons are not the morally flawless, but those who have responded with repentance to the goodness of God. Not one of them would have been declared righteous by God because of their peerless behavior. Thus Paul’s conclusion that follows in the next verse stands.

Still, some Calvinists, like R.C. Sproul, seem to understand total depravity and the thrust of Romans 3:10-12 to be teaching that only Christians can do good things. Sproul says this in his commentary on this passage:

Is Paul saying here that unless a person is a believer in Christ, he will not ever do a good deed? That is precisely what it means. It may seem outrageous, but nobody ever does a single thing that is good, we are so corrupt that our sin infects even the best of our deeds.

However, even in this very strong view of the implications of the passage, Sproul clarifies that Paul here is using “good” in a technical sense. A good deed consists in right and action and right motivation. Only Christians can have the right sort of motivation, pleasing God, so only Christians can do what is good. But if Paul has this technical sense of “good” in mind, that does nothing to undermine the idea that atheists or other non-Christians can do “good” things in the everyday sense of that word.

Sproul makes the dubious claim that actions are either motivated by selfishness or a desire to please God. It seems obvious from human experience that many actions are motivated by a sincere concern for others, without explicit reference to God (that this is appropriate is perhaps evidenced by the fact that Jesus says that there are two commands that sum up the law: Love of God and love of neighbor. cf. Matt 22:40). Further, even if my actions are motivated by a concern for my own interests, that does not entail that they are not good actions. If we suppose, for the sake of the argument, that Bill Gates, an atheist, works on eradicating malaria because it brings him satisfaction, the fact that he is the sort of person that finds satisfaction in curing malaria rather than spreading it is an obviously good moral quality. So, it seems to me, that Sproul’s binary understanding of moral motivation should be rejected.

[2] Grenz, S., Guretzki, D., & Nordling, C. F. (1999). In Pocket dictionary of theological terms (p. 37). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

[3] Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God, vol. 1 (Baker Books, 2011), 171.

Moral Apologetics 101: Ethical Theory and Moral Realism

Editor’s note: In this series, we introduce the basics of building a moral argument. In this first installment, we explore the concept of ethical theory and two main positions on ethical theory: moral realism and anti-realism.

Some people think the earth is flat and they have a theory about that; that is, they have a justification or explanation for why it is rational to think that the earth is flat. This theory might involve nefarious and shadowy figures working in the dark corners of power to fake the moon landings, among other things, but there is a theory that (attempts) to explain why the earth is flat.

The same is true for other claims. Us round-earthers have a theory about why it’s rational to believe the earth is sphere shaped. Maybe the theory is a simple as this: “That the earth is round has been the consistent testimony of people in a position to know for over 2000 years and that sort of testimony is trustworthy.” The sense of theory here is broader and looser than its use in a scientific context, where theory has a narrower meaning.

Our theories extend beyond these, roughly, scientific concerns about the shape of the earth. We have theories about mundane things as well. For example, I might have a theory about why my wife is angry. Likely, she is angry because I forgot to take out the trash, though I promised I would. I have a belief and I have reasons for my belief. We can call those reasons collectively my “theory” about why my wife is angry. Now, that theory could be right or wrong. It could be partly right and partly wrong. But it is my explanation for why my wife is angry.

When we think about “theory” this way, it seems fair to say that any time we assert that something is the case (that is, we take the attitude “What I am saying is true or correct”), then we have reasons for that view. We have a theory about why we are right.

Even though this is a simple idea, there’s an important objection to consider. Sometimes, we have not reflected on why we think something is true or correct. We do not have internal, cognitive (thoughtful/meaningful) reasons for some of our beliefs. Sometimes, we simply inherit a view from our culture or our parents or some other source. If one asks a sixth grader, “Why do you think the earth is sphere shaped?” she might not have a ready explanation for why she thinks that is the case. She simply “absorbed” the view of her culture or her parents. We might say this an “external” cause of belief. It’s not a belief that is held because of investigation or introspection, but because one was caused to believe by something external to one’s self. (Significantly, an externally caused belief can be correct and rational to hold. Our sixth grade would certainly be correct that the earth is a sphere, for example). 

So, one may find herself believing that certain things are true, like the earth is a sphere or that a spouse is angry, and she either has reasons for those views that internal to herself (they are her reasons) or they are external (she was caused to believe something). Or, to put it in other words, whenever we believe that something is so, we have a theory about that something that is either held on the basis of introspection and reflection or it is given to us by our surroundings (culture/parents/friends). We have considered theories and given theories.

This is a general point, true in all aspects of life, but it’s also true when it comes to ethical theory. We all have moral or ethical beliefs that we take to be correct or true. For example, we might consider the following statements:

Stealing is always wrong.

The government should pay for healthcare.

Sometimes, it is ok to tell a lie.

People have a right to defend themselves.

It is always wrong to torture children for fun.

The best sort of life requires good friends.

It is your duty to vote.

Claims about what one ought to do, what one should do or should not do, claims about what sort of life is worthwhile and whether people have essential rights, these are often moral claims.[1] Likely, most would have a certain attitude of affirm or deny to each of these moral claims. For example, someone might take the attitude toward the proposition “stealing is always wrong,” that this moral claim is false; one might disbelieve that it is always wrong to steal.  Perhaps, thinks this person, it is right to steal if it is the only way to feed one’s family.

These reasons for a moral belief, whether they come from within oneself or from their surroundings, are an “ethical theory.”

If one believes that at least some moral claims are true, then she thinks there are “moral facts” and she is a “moral realist.”

A moral fact is a true proposition that makes some morally relevant claim.

A moral realist is a person who thinks that there are at least some moral facts.

A moral anti-realist is a person who denies that there are any moral facts.

Sometimes people are tempted to say that there are no moral facts because of “grey areas.” We’ve all heard the term “moral grey area” before. A moral “grey area” occurs when there is not  an obviously right or wrong answer to a moral question. Some moral claims are more obvious than others and, in some cases, we might not have a specific attitude toward a moral claim. For example, if I ask whether it’s morally right that the government provide healthcare, someone could say that he sees good reasons for both sides and that he’s not sure whether it is a moral obligation or not. However, if one is not sure, that does not imply that there’s no fact of the matter about whether the government should provide healthcare. It could be there is a fact of the matter, but some simply cannot discern what that fact is very easily.

However, it may be that there is no fact of the matter about whether the government should provide healthcare. If that were the case, that would not imply that there are not “deeper” moral facts about the rights of individuals, the obligations for communities to care for those who need assistance, and so on. It is important to see that the moral realist claims only that there are some moral facts and not there is a fact about every moral issue.

When asked to give an example of a moral fact, moral realists want to give what they consider to be the most obvious, least controversial example. One oft used example is this: “It is always wrong to torture children for fun.” If anything is a moral fact, this would have to be a moral fact. If one agrees that it is really, actually true that “It is always wrong to torture children for fun,” then one is a moral realist.

Some moral philosophers deny that there are such things as moral facts. They are “anti-realists” about morality and their view is called “anti-realism.” According to this view, no moral claims are correct. All moral claims may be false or even meaningless. An anti-realist might say that proposition, “it is always wrong to torture children for fun” has nothing that makes it true; no moral proposition does. Perhaps moral claims are simply statements about one’s own feelings. In that case, if one asserts that “It is always wrong to torture children for fun,” she can only really mean that she dislikes child torture or that it makes her feel bad. Asserting it is wrong like saying, “Boo! Child torture Boo!”  Anti-realists may also say that moral claims are merely conventional statements that have only a provisional meaning based on custom, tradition, or habit.

Therefore, with respect to moral judgments, we can see that there are two camps: realist and anti-realist. The realist says that there are at least some moral facts, moral claims are cognitive (they have meaning and they are intelligible) and the anti-realist denies that there any moral facts. There’s nothing to ground moral truths, in this view, or, perhaps, moral claims are non-cognitive expressions of emotion or preference.  

As we can see, in terms of ethical theory, there are deep disagreements and the natural question, at this point, would be why. What motivates these fundamentally different views about ethical truth?

In general, moral realism is considered the “default” position and so, often, moral anti-realists are saddled with the burden of proof. According to an informal survey of philosophers (PhilPapers Survey), most agree that moral realism is the correct view while about 30% argue that anti-realism is correct. Geoff Sayre-McCord, a philosopher teaching at the University of North Carolina, claims that “moral realism can fairly claim to have common sense and initial appearances on its side.”

The reason that Sayre-McCord might say that moral realism has this advantage is that most of us simply find ourselves believing in moral realism and we find ourselves having a high degree of confidence in these beliefs. It seems obvious to most people that there are at least some moral facts. A simple argument for moral realism might go like this: “I am surer that it is wrong to torture children for fun than I could be of any argument against this belief.”

This might not seem like a very good argument for moral realism, and perhaps it is not. Although, this sort of reply is a widely employed reply to other kinds of skepticism.  For example, suppose that Joe looks at a tree outside the window. For Joe, this means he has the experience of looking out the window at a tree. For Joe, it seems there is a tree out there. In walks Jim. Jim just finished watching The Matrix and now Jim thinks that the external world is an illusion created by very sophisticated robots. Jim sees Joe looking at the tree and says, “There’s no tree out there, Joe. Wake up!”

What might Joe’s response be? Joe could develop a number of replies to this distressing assertion, but it also seems warranted for Joe to reply like this: “Jim, I am more sure that there is a tree out there than any harebrained argument you might give! I see the tree; it’s right there!”  For many, the truth of moral facts are impressed on the mind in a way analogous to the way the “tree out there” is impressed on Joe’s mind. It is a basic fact of experience and, therefore, one is rationally warranted in believing there are trees out the window as well as that there are moral facts.

Still, one might have good reasons for thinking there actually is not a tree out there and so that basic belief in “the tree out there” might lose its warrant. What if Joe had evidence that he actually did live in a simulation?

Anti-realists have two main strategies in defense of their view. First, anti-realists often argue that there is dis-confirming evidence of the existence of moral facts. In our analogy, they would offer Joe some evidence that undermines Joe’s belief in the tree out there. It’s important to see that anti-realists don’t need to show that there are no moral facts; he could simply show that we are not justified in believing there are any moral facts.

One of the most popular ways to argue this point flows from what is called “the diversity thesis.” The diversity thesis is the observation that there is widespread moral disagreement in the world. People disagree about what is moral, and they disagree frequently and substantially. That this is so is obvious from human experience (and is admitted readily by moral realists), but it may be that sometimes the depth of moral disagreements is exaggerated. Nevertheless, some anti-realists think this is an important piece of evidence. They might use this piece of evidence like this: If there were moral facts, then we would expect that people would mostly agree on these facts. However, people disagree on virtually any candidate for a moral fact. Therefore, the level of moral agreement is inconsistent with there being moral facts. Likely, then, there are no moral facts (or, at least, moral facts are indiscernible).

The diversity thesis is the observation that there is widespread moral disagreement in the world.

Anti-realists might also build a more positive case. They might begin by assuming a materialist perspective, or a sufficiently similar view. Materialism is the view that only material things exist, things like space, energy, and matter. For there to be moral facts, there must be something to make these facts true; there must be a moral “truth-maker.”  But there is no obvious way that facts about material things can ground moral facts. What sort of truth about atoms and energy could ground something as strange and exotic as morality? Moral facts, if such things exist, would seem to be facts about something qualitatively different than merely material things. Of course, that is not to say that all materialists are anti-realists. A good many are moral realists. Many materialists who are not, though, would argue there just is no real connection between the real (material) world and our moral assertions.

Realists might also develop a positive case. One common assumption among moral realists is that there are moral facts and there is something that makes these moral facts true. There is a reason or ground for moral facts. Earlier, I suggested that people are entitled to belief in some moral facts on the basis of a certain kind of impression on the mind, like someone is entitled to believe “there is a tree out there” when things align in such way that he has a certain kind of impression that “there is a tree out there.” But moral realists can go beyond appealing to moral experience (which many consider sufficient grounds). One might argue first for something that could ground moral facts and then that this thing actually does ground moral facts. Perhaps the most obvious and popular way to do this would be to argue that God exists. God would be the sort of thing that could ground moral facts, since he is the “greatest conceivable being,” or that is how God is thought of in the Western philosophical tradition. So, if God exists, it is natural to think that moral facts also obtain.

There are other ways to argue for a ground of moral facts, though. One might argue that some sort of realm of abstract objects is needed to make sense out of language and to solve the problem of the one and the many. If there is some non-material realm which gives sense and meaning to our concepts, perhaps this realm could also ground the sense and meaning of moral claims. Why think that claims about abstract ideas like triangles and mathematics are fundamentally different sorts of claims than moral ones? Perhaps, like Plato thought, the Good exists and has the power to determine the truth or falsity of moral claims.

What we see from these examples of positive cases is that different views about what is ultimately real or the ultimate nature of the world make a difference in how moral claims are justified (if they are justified) and they may, as we will see later in term, make a difference in what is considered moral in the first place.

To sum up: We have seen that people make moral claims and that when a moral claim is made, it assumes something about the world. If a person thinks that her moral claims are true, then she assumes some form of moral realism. This is how most people think about their moral claims; they think they are true. However, some people doubt that moral claims are true or that they can be known to be true. These are moral anti-realists.

[1]One can distinguish between a moral should/ought and a merely teleological should/ought. If I want to achieve X, then I should do Y which results in X.  If I want to be a better bowler, then I should invest bowling lessons. This is a merely teleological use of should/ought.