I think it’s best to reserve the word “unethical” for behavior that violates the written standards of a profession, the word “unprofessional” for behavior that violates the unwritten standards of a profession, and the word “immoral” for behavior that violates the standards of God. Since there is worldwide dispute about what God demands of us, I typically suggest that we not use the word, “immoral.” Instead, if someone does something you disapprove of, you can say you don’t like it.
Still, I acknowledge that there is another sensibility, one that I agree with, that is often associated with the words “ethical” and “moral.” This might be described as not exploiting others, or adhering to something like the Golden Rule or the categorical imperative. General rules like these don’t work in practice, however, because one person’s idea of exploiting others is another’s idea of expecting them to pay their fair share or do their duty. As for the Golden Rule, there are many people who don’t wish to be treated as I do. And a rule that I would recommend for all occasions may be one that you’d just hate. I’ve resisted such declarations of morality because as soon as you agree that forcible rape is immoral, someone somewhere will tell you that masturbation is, too. And then you’re back to personal opinions.
For now, though, I am assuming that when people claim that a belief in God grounds their morality, they mean by morality their reluctance to abuse, exploit, or harm others. I readily agree that the sort of morality meant by a disinclination to masturbate is rooted in faith. But now I am disputing the idea that treating other people well—that morality—is based on a belief in God.
If a man refrains from raping women because it’s wrong to do so in the eyes of God, I don’t want that man anywhere near me. I like men who would not rape a woman whether it was wrong or not, simply because of the effect on the woman. If a woman refrains from beating a child because it is wrong, I don’t want that woman anywhere near my grandson. I don’t want him to have to cope with her rage or her experience of him as beating-worthy whether or not she acts on them. I don’t really think that people who believe that morality is based on religion construe themselves and others as rapacious, brutal sociopaths who needs strict rules to keep them in line. It’s a cute argument, but the truth is that people who believe that morality comes from God just haven’t thought it through. They associate good behavior with images of Jesus or passages in the Koran or the temple in which kindness was praised; they connect their good intentions with associated images.
Morality comes from empathy and identification, not faith. [Behavioral aside: People act morally in this sense as a result of reinforcement of prosocial behavior. The well-being of others becomes a conditioned reinforcer.] If you appreciate the harm done to others, and if you see them as members of your group (as objects of your concern), you won’t hurt them; you won’t want to hurt them. We learn empathy and identification by being empathized with and identified with, and we apply empathy and identification to others according to lessons we are taught about who is in our group and who is not. That’s why gang members can treat each other exceedingly well and outsiders exceedingly poorly—ditto for members of a religion. One way to understand the members of PETA is that they identify with animals almost as much as they identify with humans, so for them, it is immoral to mistreat a pig. I don’t know how I feel about that, because I definitely believe that we are pretty closely related to pigs, but eating them just doesn’t bother me. I know how I feel about other humans though. They are all in my group, objects of my concern.
If you pee in the pool and your dad reproaches you, you stop peeing in the pool when your dad’s watching you, but we don’t really consider that to be moral behavior. You’re worried about getting caught, not concerned with the well-being of the other swimmers. If someone who cannot possibly get caught goes to the trouble of getting out of the pool, drying off, getting to the bathroom, and returning to the pool, that’s what we mean by morality. It’s not moral if you act that way only when you’re being watched. If you believe in a God who watches everything you do, then far from being a basis for morality, the presence of God makes it impossible to be truly moral.
Michael Karson, Ph.D. 
Euthyphro’s dilemma more or less defeats divine command theory. You can grant the existence of God, you can even grant omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence, still divine command theory will be logically incoherent. Under divine command theory things are either commanded by God because they are right or right because they are commanded by God.
The first horn is that if something is commanded by God because it is right then there is an independent standard for rightness which means that God himself is following some sort of moral code.
The second horn is that is something is right because it is commanded by God, then that seems to be arbitrarily good. At this point, someone who is defending divine command theory typically chooses the first horn by saying something like “god is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent” in which case God would be using his power to observe the world and apply some sort of other moral code and then give commands. This response would revert back to the first horn thus showing that God cannot be the originator of a moral code.
It might also interest you to note a study, where it was asked to fundamentalist children, “Suppose God has commanded that Christians should steal. Would it then be right for Christians to steal?” (Nucci, 1986) 69% of subjects ages 10-13 responded no and 81% of subjects ages 14 to 17 said no. A high number also reported that actions such as hitting, stealing, ect. would be wrong even if God did not prohibit them.
What this study shows is that what makes actions wrong, even to fundamentalist christians who adhere to divine command theory, has to do with the nature of that action moreso then commands regarding it.
Cool study. Not having read the study, is it clear that the kids were comparing an inner compass to God’s hypothetical command, or were they comparing an older command of God with a hypothetical command? I originally wrote that the older command was scriptural, but I changed it because I don’t think most religious people read their scriptures; I think they go by what teachers and parents tell them scriptures say.
Michael, if we’re going to get behavioral about it, and you know me well enough to know that I want to, then let’s dive in. What it comes down to is whether the behavior falls under appetitive or aversive control. Example: When we’re young, and our parents prompt us to say “thank you” for getting a gift, and we say “tank tank” and our parents clap, smile and do a happy dance, we get reinforced for saying that even though we don’t know what the heck it means, it’s just sounds coming out of our mouths that were occasioned by a prompt from our parents, and reinforced through the happy dance. As this behavior takes shape, our parents might shift the prompt to “now what do you say to Mrs. Smith for giving you chocolate?” and we say “tanks!” and we still get praised, but probably not some super happy dance. Then as we get older, maybe we still need some prompting, but the prompts ultimately fade and we learn to say “thanks” because it’s socially appropriate. Then, as we get even older, we start to say “thanks” because after this behavior being shaped for us, it adopts reinforcement naturally (i.e. we feel genuinely grateful; we learn that the more gratitude we give, the more we get in return, etc). This is an example of a moral kind of behavior that has been shaped through appetitive reinforcers, even though it wasn’t always naturally reinforcing.
However, if we got the lesson from our parents “you were supposed to say thank you, you little shit” in response to a gift, then we may do as you said… learn to use the “thank you” behavior in the specific context of being watched by our parents, and then when they leave, not do it, since aversive learning is context dependent and does not generalize well. We also may learn that the only reason to do these things is to escape punishment, without developing any naturally reinforcing feelings for it.
So, I guess it may come down to this: is your religion one that preaches doing the right thing because it’s good for humankind, or is your religion the one that tells you bad things will happen to you if you don’t behave. The former is likely to generalize to many contexts, while the latter may not.
I was with you until the end. I don’t think the words the religion uses are nearly as important as the consequences of disobedience. Also, no matter how positive the phrasing, if the rule is attributed to the same God who ordered wholesale murder or eternal damnation, well, you know what he really means regardless of how he phrases it.
What I meant to emphasize is if a religion emphasizes acting morally because it’s good for humankind, and God hopes that you’ll act in the best interests of your fellow human, then it could be. I see what you’re saying though, that if the whole consequences i.e. heaven/hell, thing is also emphasized (along with the other judgy nonsense like gay people being put to death and blowing up Gommorah to smithereens), then it probably undermines the whole operation.
One of the things that was swirling around in my head as I wrote this was that in order to establish behavior, the form that motivation takes is often irrelevant, so long as it serves as an appropriate reinforcer to the targeted behavior. Once the behavior is established, and after an effective fade of the arbitrary reinforcement (which in this case, could be God but I imagine only people who have shifted from religious to atheist/agnostic can vouch for this), then the natural reinforcers of doing the behavior take over. But yes, I agree that if there’s a part of it which is an attempt to escape aversive consequences, then the whole system is built on grounds that won’t sustain the behaviors in the absence of the watchful eye.
It was from you that I learned that it is not really possible to be only reinforcing, because then when reinforcement is withheld it is subjectively punishing (I remember your specific example was about praising clients–withholding praise then becomes punishing). If faith is conceptualized more relationally (following gods law brings connection/relationship) and violating Gods law is the absense of this, wouldn’t this still relate to your idea of empathy? Maybe the concept of eternal damnation is subjectively equivalent to absence of a relationship with god. Mass genocide I don’t know what to do with 🙂
It’s a good idea (obviously) and accounts for the derivation of the word atone from “at one.” But as you say, it’s an idea that has its limits, as with John 3:16, where you get to heaven just believing regardless of how you’ve behaved, not to mention what you’re supposed to do to stay relationally connected to a figure who tells you kill all the living creatures in the land before inhabiting it, or to kill your daughter because she got raped.
During the North African campaign in WWII as the story goes: the Nazi’s were attacking from the east and allies from the west. There was a hand-to-hand combat and many people were killed from both sides. Corpses were littered all over the desert. A band of “man-eaters” (carnivores) happened to walk over the battlefield. Looking at all the slaughter he could not contain himself and went to the commanding general and asked, “Why did you kill so many people at the same time? Who is going to eat them all?” The commander replied, “We don’t eat humans” while making a condescending face. The chief asked, “Then why do you kill them?”
Whose ethics is moral?