DCT in the place to be

In today’s post I’ll be discussing Divine Command Theory, but before I do I want to issue a disclaimer for any of those really religious type of people that thinks that anybody that speaks critically of God should be burned at the stake. Please don’t read this, because it most likely will offend you…

 ”Could I be… SATAN?!!!!”

Basically Divine Command Theory states that there is only one true God and what God commands is good. It’s simple, but flawed from a moral standpoint. Amongst the several flaws we talked about in our philosophy class, one of which is that if this theory is true, this would mean that there would be no reason to praise God. We arrived at this statement by saying that if good and God are one in the same, then it would simply just be a fact of life. Nobody would need to keep saying how good God is, because frankly it would just be redundant.

A religious person and avid churchgoer would be distraught. Most services center around the goodness of God and how glorious he is. This would definitely take some of the considerable vigor out of church services. It might not eliminate worship altogether; People could still thank God for all of the blessings they have, however, a song saying “Give thanks to the lord for he is good” or a prayer like the start of Apostle’s Creed would be pretty much redundant.

I would like to take the argument a little bit further than that though. Suppose the DCT is true, and God issued an order stating: Praising God is good therefore all must praise him. Where is the validity in that? After conferring with my professor, he came up with this: “Just because God makes a rule doesn’t make it true”. I interpreted it to mean one of two things: 1) Just because something is moral does not make it true (which opens up a whole new can of worms- one I unfortunately won’t dare to open yet) or 2) The idea of praise is completely subjective in the first place and would need further clarification.

To wrap things up, DCT does seem appealing to some at first, however not only does fail to establish sensible morals, but its implications could offend even the most avid churchgoer. Maybe this wasn’t so offensive to religious people after all.            

Cultural Relativism and Mike Vick

If you haven’t turned on a t.v. in the past month, I’ll give you an update: American football star Mike Vick has pleaded guilty to leading a dogfighting ring.

Side Note: Apparently this guy didn’t get the memo either

However according to Cultural Relativism, dogfighting isn’t necessarily wrong. While it may be wrong in the U.S. as well as Ireland and the UK to name a few countries, if Mr. Vick wanted to take his dogfighting operation to say, Japan (except in Tokyo), India, and most countries in Latin America (wikipedia link), he would be morally right to do so.

The problem with this argument is that the majority of the world thinks that training a domestic animal to fight others of its kind is morally wrong. The fact that most countries have statutes protecting the treatment of animals affirms that there is a definitive moral truth on this issue. It’s one thing to train a dog to protect one’s land, family, and property, but to train them to fight one another is just plain wrong.  

What does the cultural relativist have to say about this? According to cultural relativists, and Ron Burgundy, “Sometimes you just have to look yourself in the mirror and say…When in Rome…”