God, Morality, and Human Rights
Remember at the beginning of the course that we discussed different foundations for assessing the morality of our actions. I mentioned briefly divine command theory (go back to your notes if you don’t remember)–the belief that something is moral just because God has said it is.
Some, including President Bush, argue that human rights are not only God-given, but that without God, they (human rights) would not exist. What does Plato have to say about this? Here’s an excerpt from an interesting letter from a reader of Andrew’s Sullivan’s blog.
Ponnuru believes that without God there could be no human rights. And many others – not all of them Christianists – seem to agree.
But there’s a very serious problem for this view, one which philosophers have known about since Plato wrote his dialogue Euthyphro. Unfortunately, it never gets mentioned in popular discussions of theism and morality.
The problem is simple. Ponnuru claims that human rights – and moral values more generally – derive their authority from the fact that God has ordained them. (This is the position philosophers call “theological voluntarism” or “divine command theory.”) But what if God had ordained murder and rape as the morally obligatory ways of treating others?
You can read the rest of the letter at the link above.
