Gestión de ecosistemas de montaña para la regulación del agua, el clima y la conservación de

Socrates, the first major philosopher of ancient Greece, was a religious person who tried to follow God’s will. He saw ethics as closely connected with religion. But he rejected SN, largely on the basis of a penetrating question. I’ll express his question in my own words.

Let’s suppose that there is a God and that he desires all good things. We can ask this question:

Is a good thing good because God desires it? Or does God desire it because it is good?

Let’s assume that kindness is good and that God desires it. Which is based on which? Is kindness good because God desires it? Or does God desire kindness because it’s already good?

Socrates and most other people take the second alternative. God desires kindness because he knows that it’s good. His desires don’t make it good. Instead, he wouldn’t desire it if it weren’t already good. But then kindness is

good prior to and independently of God’s will. It would presumably be good even if there were no God. This alternative involves giving up SN.

SN must take the first alternative. Here kindness is good because God desires it. Kindness wouldn’t be good if God didn’t desire it. Prior to God’s desires, kindness is neither good nor bad. This answer, while possible, seems to make ethics arbitrary.

Here’s another example. Let’s assume that hatred is bad, and that God forbids it. Is hatred bad because God forbids it (so if he didn’t forbid it then it wouldn’t be bad)? Or does God forbid it because it’s already bad? This second alternative is more plausible, but it involves giving up supernaturalism.

This point is subtle but important. If you don’t get the point, I suggest that you reread the last few paragraphs a few times until the idea comes through. This might surprise you, but relatively few Christian philosophers take a clear stand in favor of SN (that God’s will makes things good or bad). William of Ockham of the late Middle Ages was the most famous defender of SN. Suppose that we take the SN alternative (that God’s will makes things good or bad). We might then ask, “What if God desired hatred; would hatred then be good?” Ockham would have shouted, “Yes, if God desired hatred then hatred would be good!” But this is implausible.

Imagine that an all-powerful and all-knowing being created a world and desired that its people hate each other. Would hatred then be good? Surely not! Such a creator would have an evil will. But then we can’t say that “good” by definition is what the creator desires.

Some respond that God, being loving, wouldn’t desire hatred. The mere desires of a creator wouldn’t make a thing good; but the desires of a loving creator would make things good. But then wouldn’t the loving act be good regardless of whether the creator desired it? If so, then again we must reject SN.

3.5 SN arguments

Ima had three arguments for SN. Supernaturalism must be true, she thought, because

1. the Bible teaches it,

2. all basic laws of every sort depend on God’s will, and 3. God is the only plausible source of objective moral duties. But these arguments fall apart if we examine them carefully.

(1) “Supernaturalism must be true, because the Bible teaches it.” The prob- lem here (even if we assume that what the Bible teaches must be true) is that the Bible doesn’t really teach SN. The Bible, properly understood, doesn’t take a stand for or against SN.

Years ago, my Bible teacher cautioned me against using the Bible to answer questions that the Biblical authors didn’t ask and that wouldn’t have made immediate sense to them. The Biblical authors weren’t concerned with Socrates’s question. Nor would it have made immediate sense to them. Thus it seems illegitimate to use the Bible to prove SN.

The Bible teaches that we ought to obey God; but this is compatible with other approaches to ethics. Maybe we ought to obey God because his com- mands reflect a deeper knowledge of an independent moral order. On this non- SN view, stealing isn’t bad because God forbids it; instead, God forbids it because it’s already bad. This non-SN approach is consistent with the Bible; nothing in the Bible contradicts it. If so, then believing in the Bible doesn’t require that we be supernaturalists.

(2) “Supernaturalism must be true, because all basic laws of every sort de- pend on God’s will.” The problem here (even if we assume that there is a God) is that it’s doubtful that all basic laws depend on God’s will. Is “x = x” true because of God’s will, so it would have been false if God had willed otherwise? The law seems true of its very nature, and not true because God made it true. Maybe basic moral laws are the same. Maybe hatred is evil in itself, and not just evil because God made it so.

(3) “Supernaturalism must be true, because God is the only plausible source of objective moral duties.” The problem here (even if we assume that there are objective moral duties) is that it’s doubtful that such duties need a source. To say that they need a source assumes that “A ought to be done” means some- thing of the form “X legislates A.” But why accept this? Maybe basic moral truths (like the logical truth “x = x”) are true in themselves, and not true because someone made them true. Then they wouldn’t need a “source.”