Sunday, January 18, 2009

Divine Command Theory is Crap

I'm sure you all know the standard complaints about Divine Command Theory. I'm going to be a-rambling in some of those directions and a few others.

In the real world, people can reason what the most moral action is. We can talk about who it helps, who it hurts, why some costs or sacrifices are acceptable, why some aren't, the dangers of some precedents and so on. We can ask all those questions and make our decisions based on the answers. With DCT, however, there is no reasoning. Morality is arbitrary. You look at the stone idol's dice roll and look at the charts. If the charts don't cover a scenario, you have to do crazy jury-rigging to make 'em fit. No Rule Zero to let you figure out what makes things the most fun for all of the players. Just follow the charts, no matter how crazy or impractical the result is.

When a stone idol that (allegedly) randomly popped into the universe, was randomly given powers from nowhere, including randomly having a rule saying that it can make up new rules (the laws of physics, magic), I don't see any reason it'd need a "transcendent mind" (whatever that means) in order to make up morality. The arbitrary standards it makes up don't have any reason to add up to anything, except maybe this random being's amusement.

Take a look at some of the "transcendent" morality this stone idol is often associated with: If a rapist's victim is unengaged, he gets to marry her. Stone your kids if they're disobedient. No multi-species plowing. No fabric blends. No church if you have a certain bit of flesh injured. Certain (nonexistent) abilities randomly labeled "supernatural" by postmodernist hippies are wrong.

...Random ass shit, isn't it?

This thread is hereby WILD!

3 comments:

King of Ferrets said...

Don't they also murder the victim if she's discovered being raped and she's married?

Bronze Dog said...

If she's in the city and isn't heard crying out.

William said...

When I saw those links in the last paragraph, I thought, "I bet he links to the Brick Testament." And it was so!

I guess this means I'm psychic.