John Arthur: Religion, Morality, and Conscience 

Quote: 

“God rewards those who follow His commands by providing for them a place in heaven or by ensuring that they prosper and are happy on earth. He also punishes those who violate the moral law.”

What I Expect To Learn:

I would want to know what the divine command theory is and John Arthur’s stand about it. I also wish to learn on this part the difference between religion and morality and how conscience relates to both.

Chapter Review:

          John Arthur’s discussion of Religion, Morality and Conscience are divided into four parts. The first part is about morality and religion itself. Here, Arthur has defined morality as an instance where we evaluate our behaviours and sometimes feel guilty about some of our actions. Morality also involves one’s attitudes towards a different person’s behaviour. On the other hand, religion is described as a person’s belief in something of the supernatural level. This involves God, worshipping Him and praying to Him. Religion is our belief in a supernatural being that we worship, pray to and praise. This is a very clear description of morality and religion which shows the distinction of the two from each other. Contrary to this, on the first part of his discussion, Arthur has named the similarity of morality and religion which is that religion serves as a motivation for someone to do the right thing. This means that religion serves as a motivation for morality although morality does not entirely depend on religion alone.

          The second part of Arthur’s topic is the religious motivation and guidance. Here, he is telling us why religion is not necessary for moral motivation and why religion is not a source of moral knowledge. According to Arthur, religion is not necessary for moral motivation for the reason that most of the time, before a person does something, he thinks of the possible outcomes if he did that certain something. This means that he thinks of the consequences of his actions and how other people would react towards his action and what other people would think of his action. This alone, is a proof that religion is not necessary for moral motivation because if it was necessary, then people would no longer think of what the consequences of their actions would be and what other people would think of them. Religion, according to Arthur is not a source of moral education because not all of the time that we can use the revelations as a solution to what we should do. Most of the time, we look at the pros and cons of the actions if we were to do it or not.

          The third part is all about the divine command theory. The divine command theory states: “God made us and all the world. Because of that He has an absolute claim on our obedience... From [this] it follows that a thing is not right simply because we think it is. It is right because God commands it.” Arthur has questioned the idea of the divine command theory because he thinks that morality does not rely only on religion, let alone anything else. This means that for Arthur, morality does not revolve entirely around religion it cannot even be said that it has a specific or actual basis.

          The final part of his discussion is his stand on John Dewey’s idea that morality is social. Arthur defined this as a person disregarding his own perspective in favour of the perspective of another person and for the sake of that other person and giving consideration as to how it would affect them.

What I Learned:

            On this topic, I have learned the definition of morality and religion. I have learned the difference and the similarity of the morality and religion with each other. At the end of this topic, I have also learned that morality does not entirely depend on religion only sometimes and it is also possible for it to have no specific basis at all.

Integrative Questions: 

1.    What is John Arthur’s stand with regards to the divine command theory?

2.    How is religion different from morality?

3.    What is the divine command theory

4.    How are obligations towards animals derived?

5.    Why is morality social? 

Review Questions 

1.    According to Arthur, how are morality and religion different?

According to Arthur, morality tends to be an instance wherein we evaluate our behaviours and sometimes feel guilty about our certain actions this also involves our attitude towards other people’s behaviour. Religion, on the other hand is a person’s belief in the supernatural phenomena. Religion is the belief of supernatural forces which we pray to and worship. This refers to our belief towards God in which we pray to him and worship him. 

2.    Why isn’t religion necessary for moral motivation?

Religion isn’t necessary because people usually think of the consequences of their actions and a person also does what he thinks is right (what he knows is right). This means that most of the time, people would think first of what would happen if they did something and what people would think about them.

3.    Why isn’t religion necessary as a source of moral knowledge?

Unlike the previous question which involved motives, this question involves moral guidance and knowledge. Arthur doesn’t think that religion is a necessary source of moral knowledge because there are a lot of issues which is better solved by considering the situation’s pros and cons rather than looking for answers in the controversial and difficult revelation route.

4.    What is the divine command theory? Why does Arthur reject this theory? 

The divine command theory tells us that “God made us and all the world. Because of that He has an absolute claim on our obedience... From [this] it follows that a thing is not right simply because we think it is. It is right because God commands it.” 

Arthur is rejecting the said theory because for him, it is wrong to conclude that morality relies on religion alone. In fact, he thinks that there may be no basis for it at all.

5.    According to Arthur, how are morality and religion connected?

Morality and religion relates to each other to the motives that people have. Religion is often necessary to do the right thing. Religion serves as a motivation for people and as we all know, morality is the instance wherein a person does the right or wrong thing. Another relation between the two is the historical influence of religion to morality.

6.    Dewey says that morality is social. What does this mean, according to Arthur?

Arthur said, “to think from the moral point of view, as opposed to the selfish one, for instance, demands that we reject our private, subjective perspective in favour of the perspective of others, envisioning how they might respond to various choices we might make.” This means that morality is social in a sense that we would reject our own perspective for the sake of others’ perspective and how they would be affected and respond to our choices.

Discussion Questions 

1.    Has Arthur refused the divine command theory? If not, how can it be defended?

As far as I have understood, Arthur did not refuse the divine command theory. He just questioned the idea of divine command theory but it does not mean that he totally rejects the idea of it. He just made his point that we can never say that morality depends on religion alone which I would agree on. There are just some instances in which it would depend on religion but not all the time. 

2.    If morality is social, as Dewey says, then how can we have any obligations to nonhuman animals? (Arthur mentions this problem and some possible solutions to it in footnote 6.)

Our obligations to nonhuman animals are derived from our conscience alone. It depends on our compassion and sympathy towards these nonhuman creatures created by God.

3.    What does Dewey mean by moral education? Does a college ethics class count as moral education?

Moral education, as Dewey have said, means “thinking of education, listening to others, reading about what others think and do and reflecting within ourselves about our actions and whether we could defend them to others are part of the practice of morality itself”. I would say that a college ethics class does indeed count as a moral education because based on the definition given by Dewey, and observing our ethics, I would say that the things we do in our ethics class meet the description of moral education itself.

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