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Date Posted: 15:11:08 04/22/01 Sun
Author: OPB
Subject: Re: Question concerning the "Might Makes Right" ethic.
In reply to: Steve A. 's message, "Question concerning the "Might Makes Right" ethic." on 13:15:31 04/22/01 Sun

Isn't holding to a theological might makes right position bordering on moral relatavism, ie: "love" can be deemed any behavior god wants to exercise over you, be it driving a steak knife through your hand, or incinerating you for eternity, or letting you eat grapes and sing "lord i lift your name on high" forever and ever and ever?

You've hit near the classic problem for divine command ethics, originally noticed by Plato. It's not moral relativism (which holds that different rules are correct for different people) but a form of moral anarchy: as it winds up, God really has no reasons for making the rules he does; ethics are based on God's whims and not any identifiable reasons.

If right = God's commands, then saying that "God is morally righteous" only means that God's commands are in harmony with God's will. Well, no shit; you haven't told us anything we didn't already know. And there's a deeper practical problem, which you mention above: God could command _anything_ and it would by definition be right.

Of course, the YHWH slave will retort that God would never command murder because murder is wrong; but, owing to his probable intellectual deficit, he'll generally not grasp the implication that murder would be quite right if God commanded it.

(And if he tries to wiggle out of the problem by saying that God's commands are based on love, then notice something important: he's abandoned divine command theory by saying that. DCT holds that right = God's commands; basing ethics on love would mean that right = actions consistent with love. And once you go there, you've provided a source for ethics distinct from God's will; i.e., love. And this source is explorable in its own right, apart from theology and religion; you don't need the Babul to understand love.)

(But he then might try to say some shit such as "Humans are flawed and can't understand True Divine Love; ergo, you need a relationship with God to understand True Divine Love." But this move is based on a twisting of Xian theology. Point him to Aquinas' analysis of original sin; Aquinas lays out very logically the implications of the doctrine, one of which is that while human moral will (the will to do right) is flawed, it's not the case that human faculties of understanding are likewise flawed. The two concepts are not the same, and original sin covers only the former.)

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