I just God & Morality: A Debate. It's excellent! I want to discuss the following objection from critics of divine command theory. The objection is this: Divine Command Theorists fail to provide a satisfying explanation of why we should obey God. Here are some explanations Divine Command Theorists have provided. We should obey God because:
(1) because He commanded us to do so.
This is unsatisfying due to how circular it is. Unless we add a further premise about why God's commanding something makes us morally obligated to to it, we're left with a viciously circular explanation.
(2) because God knows what's best for us.
This is satisfying, but only because I've left the original question ambiguous. (2) tells us we should obey God in the sense that doing so would be very good for us given God's knowledge. Just as we should obey our doctor's medical advice because of her medical expertise, we should obey God because of his moral expertise. But this is not the sort of question we are interested in when we ask why we should obey God. We are interested in whether we have a moral obligation to obey God, not whether it would be advantageous for us to do so. With this tweaked question, I find it obvious that God's knowledge is insufficient to generate a moral obligation to obey his commands.
(3) because you just should.
The average religious person probably thinks this. We don't have a further explanation for why we should obey God; if he exists, it just seems like we should obey him. But it is not obvious to me that this is true. Why is it that theism just entails categorical obedience to God? I'm not clear it does.
This is obviously a very quick post; much more could be said in defense of these explanations and other ones. But I did want to jot something down before I transitioned to the next phase of my work for today.
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