Morality without God
Good evening,
I am familiar with your well-known claim that a commitment to morality also compels belief in God. But from all the arguments I have heard on various platforms, I have not clearly understood the following two things:
- In your opinion, is God also necessary for the existence of ethical facts, that is, is he a kind of creator of ‘good’ and ‘evil’, is he the one who determines what is good and what is evil? Or do good and evil exist independently, and in your opinion, God is only necessary so that we are obligated to them.
- According to both options – in your opinion, if God says to do something immoral, then there is no longer an obligation to obey the rules of morality? That is, God himself is not subject to morality?
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0 Answers
The basic argument is explained in column 456. Your question 1 is discussed in column 457.
For question 2, I was asked this there, and as far as I remember I answered: There is an obligation to obey him, and I might be in conflict about whether to obey because there is also an obligation not to act in an immoral way. But this is a hypothetical question because in the case that God is not good, it is not certain that He is God at all (it is like asking me about a world where 2+4=11). What is more, in such a situation it is not clear whether a valid morality is even defined.
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For example, there is the experience of our forefather Abraham, who was clearly commanded to do the most serious thing, to kill his son, out of necessity, for nothing stands in the way of a divine command.
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