Authored by: Nocterro.

Ethicist James Rachels presents the following argument¹:

1. If any being is God, he must be a fitting object of worship.
2. No being could possibly be a fitting object of worship, since worship requires the abandonment of one’s role as an autonomous moral agent.
3. Therefore, there cannot be any being who is God.

It very strongly seems the case that no one will dispute (1), so I will move on to Rachels’ defense of (2).

He describes worship thus:

We can very well comprehend people loving one another or respecting one another, but not (unless they are misguided) worshiping one another. This is because the worshiper necessarily assumes his own inferiority; and since inferiority is an asymmetrical relation, so is worship.

Rachels argues that whether or not God exists, we are moral agents; that is, we are autonomous and make moral decisions. However, this seems to conflict with being a worshiper:

To say “I will follow so-and-so’s directions no matter what they are and no matter what my own conscience would otherwise direct me to do” is to opt out of moral thinking altogether; it is to abandon one’s role as a moral agent. And it does not matter whether “so-and-so” is the law, the customs of one’s society, or Jehovah. This does not, of course, preclude one from seeking advice on moral matters and even on occasion following that advice blindly, trusting in the good judgment, of the adviser.

The conflict between being a worshiper and a moral agent is this: While a worshiper must always defer to God on moral decisions without question, a moral agent must make his or her own moral decisions.

Objections

1) God’s only command regarding morality is that we make our own moral decisions.

This is in fact the complete opposite of what most major theistic religions claim. Judaism, Islam, and Christianity all have God giving many specific moral commands to humanity. This objection may work if one is a deist, however it fails if one is a member of the Abrahamic religions.

2) Our responsibility as a moral agent is to do right, and God only ever commands us to do what is right.

The problem here is this: a being worthy of being called “God” will always command what is right, however, how can we know whether what he commands is right without using our own moral judgment? It seems that our own moral judgment is logically prior to deciding if some being is worthy of the title “God”.

3) We cannot trust our own judgment to determine what is right and wrong, we must trust God’s judgment, as only He is morally perfect.

Rachels gives two responses to this objection; for the sake of brevity I will only discuss the second. He argues that if we determine that God requires us to take some action, and we state that this action is morally right because God requires it, we have still made a moral judgment – that whatever God requires is morally right.

4) The conscience is God speaking to the individual.

This objection seems to lead to the conclusion that God is “tricking” us; that we think we have moral autonomy but in reality we do not. Rachels applies the famous Euthyphro dilemna here:

If in speaking to us through the voice of conscience, God is informing us of what is right, then there is no reason to think that we could not discover this for ourselves–the notion of “God informing us” is eliminable. On the other hand, if God is only giving us arbitrary commands, which cannot be thought of as right independent of his promulgating them, then the whole idea of conscience, as it is normally understood, is a sham.

5) “Finally, it might be objected that the question of whether any being is worthy of worship is different from the question of whether we should worship him.”

Rachels writes:

Mrs. Brown, being a fine woman, may be worthy of a marriage proposal, but we ought not to propose to her, since she is already married. Or, Seaman Jones may be worthy of a medal for heroism, but still there could be reasons why we should not award it. Similarly, it may be that there is a being who is worthy of worship and yet we should not worship him since it would interfere with our lives as moral agents.

The response to this objection deals with circumstances. Under circumstances X, Mrs. Brown would be worthy of marriage, while under circumstances Y, she is not. However, according to the argument, there are no cases in which moral agents should, or even can, worship God. One could say that an example would be beings which are not moral agents should worship God, however how could a non-moral agent, such as a spider, or even a rock, possibly worship?

The argument, if sound, forces the theist to one of two possible conclusions:

1) God does not exist.
2) We are not moral agents.

The problems for the theist if he chooses to accept 1 are apparent. However, if the theist instead goes with 2, then he must conclude that we are merely moral robots, devoid of any accountability for our actions.

________________________

¹See: Can Ethics Provide Answers? : And Other Essays in Moral Philosophy by James Rachels