(May 24, 2018 at 11:41 am)Catholic_Lady Wrote: ...Except I don't think murder is objectively wrong "just because God said so." That's a really simplistic way of putting it. Murder is objectively wrong because it is contrary to natural law. Since God created this natural world, natural law comes from God's nature. It reflects how He created this natural world to work.
Here's from Wikipedia:
"Natural law is a philosophy asserting that certain rights are inherent by virtue of human nature, endowed by nature - traditionally by God or a transcendent source - and that these can be understood universally through human reason. As determined by nature, the law of nature is implied to be universal, existing independently of the positive law of a given state, political order, legislature, or society at large. Historically, natural law refers to the use of reason to analyze human nature to deduce binding rules of moral behavior from nature's or God's creation of reality and mankind. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law) "
My ethics professor taught natural law theory from a secular perspective. He told us that it was normally associated with theism but tried to present arguments for it that work regardless of God's existence. IMO, It's not the most compelling moral theory (it has problems like any other), but it has its merits.
I think it was a good thing that my prof. presented it a as theory which does not depend on the existence of a deity because that kept me from dismissing it out-of-hand. However, because of his approach, I feel ill-prepared to discuss God's existence in relation to it. To be honest, it's a gap in my knowledge concerning ethics. I don't know what role God plays in validating the theory. In my view, even if God exists, his existence alone can neither validate nor invalidate moral reality. How exactly does that work?
I said in my former post that I was pretty sure you didn't think things are morally wrong "just because God said so." We agree that morality is 100% objective. We also agree that morality can be understood through human reason. I reject that morality is subjective which is why I reject divine command theory. Divine command theory assumes that something can be wrong only if God says it is. Why is stealing wrong? Because God said so. Not because you are depriving someone of their hard-earned property--that's irrelevant. With divine command, it's subjective morality, but based on God's opinion. Thus divine command becomes incoherent without a deity. Natural law does not suffer from this limitation.
I think we agree on everything except this single point: an immoral action remains immoral in a godless universe. After all, if morality can be "understood universally through human reason" why is God necessary to distinguish moral values? It seems that all that is necessary is human reason. Thus--to return to your original point--even in a universe that exists by accident, we can discern objective moral values with our capacity of reason alone. No God required.
