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Arguments Against Divine Command Theory

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The Divine Command Theory

The Divine Command Theory is an ethical theory that states that God decides what is morally right and what is morally wrong. The theory argues that to be morally good one must do what God says and abstain from doing what God forbids. The question that is going to be discussed in this essay is if The Divine Command Theory provides an acceptable account of what makes an action morally right and others morally wrong. In this essay I will argue against the previously mentioned statement using the following arguments: The inconsistency between theists, the dependence of morality on religion and finally, Euthyphro’s dilemma.
One problem with the Divine Command Theory is that it assumes that all its followers agree on what …show more content…

My next argument namely, the dependence of morality on religion, is divided into three sub-arguments that show the different claims of how morality is dependent on religion.
I shall start off with the argument that morality is prudentially dependent on religion
This statement argues that one follows the command of God only out of the fear of being eternally punished for wrong doing or being rewarded for good behavior (going to heaven).This imposes a problem because it means that the goodness of an action does not depend on its moral value but rather on following God’s command and fulfilling our ulterior motives to please God. Surely that does not seem to be right because one ought to do the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do without having any ulterior motives – for example, the vast majority of people, theists and atheists, with or without knowing of God, know that raping a person is wrong and so they abstain from doing it not necessarily for pleasing God but just because it is the right thing to

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Euthyphro’s Dilemma is when Socrates asks Euthyphro, “Does God love goodness because it is good, or is it good because God loves it?” Euthyphro’s Dilemma is that God determines what is good and evil, right and wrong. This dilemma challenges the Divine Command theory because according to Euthyphro’s Dilemma we would be obligated to do something wrong because God commanded it. This conflicts with the Divine Command theory because it would imply that cruelty could be morally right if God told us to do so. The idea that cruelty can be morally right goes up against the belief in the Divine Command Theory because it proposes that an action's status that is morally good is equivalent to whether it is commanded by God

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