5.1.2 Defending DCT

There are two major arguments for DCT, one of which is based on an explicitly religious assumption and the other of which is not.

A very clear and simple argument it seems, but is it very convincing? Well it is valid, since if the premises are true then the conclusion must also be true. OK. So are the premises true? The first simply defines what a creator God would do, if such a God really existed – this is a standard understanding of God shared by all of the great western monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. So far so good. The second premise, however, is not necessarily true. Granted that people who are true believers in one of these religions take this as an article of faith, it certainly requires much more argument before anyone else is willing to accept it. So in the end this argument will be found appealing only to those who are members of certain religious faiths. As we will see in a moment, however, even true believers may have reason to reject DCT despite this argument.

The second argument is a classic argument from the philosophy of religion, where it is sometimes used in the attempt to prove that a God exists in the first place. For our purposes, that is not as important as its role in the attempt to put ethics in a religious foundation.

Once again this is a valid argument. So our evaluation of it needs for its completion a discussion of whether the premises are true. The obvious starting point for critical analysis of this argument is the second premise “It is just not true that anything goes.” How can we just assert that this is true, if this is exactly the kind of thing that is up for grabs in a discussion of philosophical ethics? After all, relativists deny this very claim. Well, at the very least, this premise makes a believable claim – some kinds of behavior are just flat out wrong. If you deny this, you will end up in the uncomfortable position of having to explain how it is that some rather awful kinds of behavior might be acceptable. For example (and this is the classic example used by defenders of this argument), it is simply unacceptable to kill babies for fun. Try to respond that this is just a matter of culturally relative preference, and you will look like a monster.

Perhaps this discussion is best avoided by shifting our focus to the first premise. Is it true that “If there is no absolute moral authority, then anything goes?” At first it may seem that this is true. But if we stop and think for a second, we soon realize that this claim sounds suspiciously like what DCT is ultimately claiming. Isn’t the point of the theory to defend the claim that the absolute authority of God is the only thing capable of preventing moral anarchy? If that is the case, then rewriting the conclusion as a premise and basing our argument on this premise is a clear example of the fallacy of begging the question. While an argument that begs the question may be valid, it is terrible as an argument because it assumes the very thing it is claiming to be proving. So this argument does not do so well in our analysis – it will only convince people who already buy DCT, and that is not enough to show that DCT is true.