Is God the maker of morality?
Now consider the second question from above: What is the relationship between religion and morality? For many people, the most interesting query about the relationship between religion and morality is this: Is God the maker of morality? That is, is God the author of the moral law? Those who answer yes are endorsing a theory of morality
and careful analysis. No wonder then that many great religious minds—Aquinas, Leibniz, Descartes, Kant, Maimonides, Averroës, and others—have relied on reason to examine the nature of moral- ity. In fact, countless theists have regarded reason as a gift from God that enables human beings to grasp the truths of science, life, and morality.
Moral Philosophy Enables Productive Discourse Any fruitful discussions about morality under- taken between people from different religious tra- ditions or between believers and nonbelievers will require a common set of ethical concepts and a shared procedure for deciding issues and making judgments. Ethics provides these tools. Without them, conversations will resolve nothing, and par- ticipants will learn little. Without them, people
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2G. W. von Leibniz, “Discourse on Metaphysics,” in Selections, ed. Philip P. Wiener (New York: Scribner, 1951), 292.
CHAPTER 1: ETHICS AND THE EXAMINED LIFE Á 11
hand, if God wills an action because it is morally right (if moral norms are independent of God), then the divine command theory must be false. God does not create rightness; he simply knows what is right and wrong and is subject to the moral law just as humans are.
For some theists, this charge of arbitrariness is especially worrisome. Leibniz, for example, rejects the divine command theory, declaring that it implies that God is unworthy of worship: