Volume 13, Issue 2, Fall/Winter 2010
Evan Fales
Pages 151-166
Divine Commands and Moral Obligation
A popular proof for the existence of God assumes that there are objective moral duties, arguing that this can only be explained by there being a supreme law-giver, namely God. The upshot is either a Divine Command Theory (DCT)—or something similar—or a natural-law theory. I discuss two prominent theories, Robert Adams’ DCT and Stephen Evans’ hybrid DCT/natural-law theory. I argue that they suffer from fatal difficulties. Natural-law theories are plausible, if God exists, but can’t be used to prove His existence; and are less plausible, on the evidence, than a naturalistic natural-law theory, which has the best prospects for providing an objective foundation for morality.