according to rachels, in order to answer the question "why be moral?" we must show what?
�Does Morality Depend on Organized religion? �
by James Rachels
(Chapter iv of Rachels� The Elements of Morality 4th ed )
The Good consists in e'er doing what God wills at any particular moment.
Emil Brunner, The Divine Imperative (1947)
�I respect deities. I practice not rely upon them.
Musashi Miyamoto, at
1. The Presumed Connection betwixt Morality and Religion
In 1987 Governor Mario Cuomo of
But who, exactly, would sit on such a panel? The respond tells usa a lot about who, in this country, is thought to speak for morality. The answer is: representatives of organized organized religion. According to the New York Times , �Mr. Cuomo, in an appearance at
Few people, at least in the
Why are clergymen regarded this way? The reason is not that they have proven to exist amend or wiser than other people - as a group, they seem to be neither better nor worse than the residue of united states. There is a deeper reason why they are regarded as having special moral insight. In popular thinking, morality and faith are inseparable: People commonly believe that morality tin can exist understood only in the context of faith. So considering the clergymen are the spokesmen for organized religion, it is assumed that they must exist spokesmen for morality equally well.
It is non difficult to see why people think this. When viewed from a nonreligious perspective, the universe seems to be a cold, meaningless identify, devoid of value and purpose. In his essay �A Free Man�southward Worship,� written in 1902, Bertrand Russell expressed what he called the �scientific� view of the world:
That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the cease they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are simply the issue of accidental collocations of atoms; that no burn, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an private life across the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of man genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Homo�s achievement must inevitable exist buried beneath the droppings of a universe in ruins - all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet and then nigh certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand up. Just within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul�s dwelling house henceforth be safely built.
From a religious perspective, however, things look very different. Judaism and Christianity teach that the globe was created by a loving, all-powerful God to provide a home for us. We, in plow, were created in his image, to be his children. Thus the world is not devoid of meaning and purpose. It is, instead, the arena in which God�s plans and purposes are realized. What could be more than natural, and then, than to call up that �morality� is a part of the religious view of the globe, whereas the atheist�s world has no identify for values?
2. The Divine Command Theory
In the major theistic traditions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, God is conceived every bit a lawgiver who has laid down rules that we are to obey. He does non compel us to obey them. We were created as free agents, so we may choose to accept or to reject his commandments. But if nosotros are to alive as we should live, we must follow God�s laws. This formulation has been elaborated by some theologians into a theory almost the nature of right and wrong known as the Divine Command Theory. Essentially, this theory says that �morally right� means �commanded past God� and �morally wrong� ways �forbidden by God.�
This theory has a number of attractive features. It immediately solves the old problem about the objectivity of ideals. Ethics is non merely a affair of personal feeling or social custom. Whether something is right or wrong is perfectly objective: It is correct if God commands information technology, wrong if God forbids it. Moreover, the Divine Command Theory suggests an answer to the perennial question of why anyone should carp with morality. Why not forget nearly �ethics� and just await out for oneself? If immorality is the violation of God�s commandments, in that location is an piece of cake reply: On the day of final reckoning, you will be held accountable.
There are, however, serious problems for the theory, Of course, atheists would not take information technology, because thy do no believe that God exists. But there are difficulties even for believers. The main problem was first noted by Plato, the Greek Philosopher who lived 400 years before the birth of Jesus.
Plato�south writings were in the form of dialogues, normally betwixt Socrates and i or more interlocutors. In ane of these dialogues, the Euthyphro , there is a discussion concerning whether �right� can be divers as �that which the gods command.� Socrates is skeptical and asks: Is comport right considering the gods command it, or practice the gods command it because it is right? This is 1 of the most famous questions in the history of philosophy. The British philosopher Antony Flew suggests that �one skilful examination of a person�due south aptitude for philosophy is to discover whether he can grasp its strength and point.�
The bespeak is that if we accept the theological conception of right and wrong, we are caught in a dilemma. Socrates� question asks us to clarify what nosotros mean. There are two things we might mean, and both lead to trouble.
1. First, nosotros might mean that right behave is correct because God commands it . For instance, co-ordinate to Exodus 20:16, God commands us to exist true. On this option, the reason nosotros should be true is merely that God requires it. Autonomously from the divine control, truth telling is neither good nor bad. It is God�s command that makes truthfulness correct.
But this leads to problem, for information technology represents God�due south commands as capricious. It means that God could have given different commands just as easily. He could have commanded us to be liars, and and then lying, not truthfulness, would be right. (You may be tempted to reply: �But God would never control united states to lie.� But why not? If he did endorse lying, God would non be commanding us to do wrong, because his command would make information technology right.) Recall that on this view, honesty was not right earlier God commanded it. Therefore, he could have had no more reason to command it than its opposite; then, from a moral signal of view, his command is arbitrary.
Another problem is that, on this view, the doctrine of the goodness of God is reduced to nonsense. It is important to religious believers that God is not only all-powerful and all-knowing, just the he is likewise good; yet if we accept the thought that good and bad are divers by reference to God�south will, this notion is deprived of any significant. What could it hateful to say that God�southward commands are good? If �X is adept� means �X is commanded by God� so �God�s commands are good� would mean just �God�southward commands are commanded by God,� an empty truism. In 1686, Leibniz observed in his Discourse on Metaphysics :
Then in saying that things are not good by any dominion of goodness, but sheerly by the will of God, it seems to me that one destroys, without realizing it, all the honey of God and all his glory. For why praise him for what he has done if he would be every bit praiseworthy in doing exactly the contrary?
Thus if we cull the first of Socrates� two options, we seem to be stuck with consequences that even the well-nigh religious people would discover unacceptable.
2. In that location is a way to avoid theses troublesome 
consequences. Nosotros can accept the 2nd of Socrates� options. Nosotros need not say that correct conduct is right because God commands it. Instead, we may say that God commands u.s.a. to do certain things considering they are correct . God, who is infinitely wise, realizes that truthfulness is better than deceitfulness, and and then he commands us to be truthful; he sees that killing is incorrect, then he commands us not to kill; and then on for all the moral rules. If we have this choice, nosotros avoid the troublesome consequences that spoiled the commencement alternative. God�southward commands are non arbitrary; they are the result of his wisdom in knowing what is all-time. And the doctrine of the goodness of God is preserved: To say that his commands are expert ways that he commands but what, in his perfect wisdom, he sees to exist best.
Unfortunately, nonetheless, this 2nd selection leads to a dissimilar problem, which is equally troublesome. In taking this option, we accept abased the theological conception of right and incorrect - when we say that God commands u.s.a. to be truthful because truthfulness is correct, we are acknowledging a standard of right and wrong that is independent of God�southward will. The rightness exists prior to and independent of God�south command, and it is the reason for the control. Thus, if we want to know why we should be truthful, the respond �Considering God commands information technology� does not really tell u.s., for we may still ask �But why does God control it?� and the answer to that question will provide the underlying reason why truthfulness is a skillful thing.
All this may exist summarized in the following argument:
1. Suppose God commands us to do what is correct. Then either (a) the correct actions are right because he commands them or (b) he commands them because they are correct.
ii. If we take pick (a), the God�s commands are, from a moral bespeak of view, arbitrary; moreover, the doctrine of the goodness of God is rendered meaningless.
3. If nosotros have option (b), and so we will take best-selling a standard of correct and wrong that is independent of God�s will. Nosotros volition have, in effect, given up the theological conception of right and wrong.
4. Therefore, we must either regard God�s commands as capricious, and give upward the doctrine of the goodness of God, or admit that there is a standard of right and wrong that is independent of his will, and surrender the theological formulation of right and wrong.
5. From a religious point of view, it is unacceptable to regard God�due south commands as capricious or to give upward the doctrine of the goodness of God.
6. Therefore, even from a religious indicate of view, a standard of right and incorrect that is independent of God�south will must be accepted.
Many religious people believe that they must accept a theological conception of right and incorrect because it would be impious no to practice so. They feel, somehow, that if they believe in God, they should say that right and wrong are to be defined in terms of his volition. But this statement suggests otherwise: Information technology suggests that, on the contrary, the Divine Command Theory itself leads to impious results, so that a devout person should not accept it. And in fact, some of the greatest theologians, such equally St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), rejected the theory for just this reason. Thinkers such equally Aquinas connect morality with faith in a different style.
3. The Theory of Natural Law
In the history of Christian idea, the ascendant theory of ideals is non the Divine Command Theory. That laurels goes to the Theory of Natural Law. This theory has iii main parts.
i. The Theory of Natural Constabulary rests upon a sure view of what the world is like. On this view, the globe is a rational order with values and purposes congenital into its very nature. This formulation derives from the Greeks, whose fashion of agreement the world dominated Western thinking for over 1,700 years. A central feature of this conception was the thought that eastward verything in nature has a purpose .
Aristotle incorporated this idea into his arrangement of thought around 350 B.C. when he said that, in order to understand anything, 4 questions must be asked: What is information technology? What is it made of? How did it come to be? And what is information technology for? (The answers might be: This is a knife, it is made of metal, information technology was fabricated by a craftsman, and it is used for cutting.) Aristotle causeless that the last question - what is it for? - could sensibly exist asked of anything whatever. �Nature,� he said, �belongs to the class of causes which act for the sake of something.�
It seems obvious that artifacts such as knives have purposes, because craftsmen have a purpose in mind when they make them. Only what about natural objects that we do not make? Aristotle believed that they have purposes as well. Ane of his examples was that we have teeth so that we can chew. Such biological examples are quite persuasive; each part of our bodies does seem, intuitively, to accept a special purpose - optics are for seeing, the heart is for pumping blood, and so on. But Aristotle�south merits was non limited to organic beings. Co-ordinate to him, everything has a purpose. He thought, to accept a dissimilar sort of example, that rain falls and then that plants can grow. As odd equally it may seem to a modernistic reader, Aristotle was perfectly serious about this. He considered other alternatives, such as that the rain falls �of necessity� and that this helps the plants simply by �coincidence,� and rejected them.
The world, therefore, is an orderly, rational system, with each thing having its own proper place and serving its own special purpose. There is a neat bureaucracy: The rain exists for the sake of the plants, the plants be for the sake of the animals, and the animals exist - of grade - for the sake of people, whose well- beingness is the point of the whole organization.
[W]e must believe, offset that plants be for the sake of animals, 2d that all other animals be for the sake of homo, tame animals for the apply he can make of them as well equally for the food they provide; and equally for wild fauna, most though not all of these can be used for nutrient or are useful in other ways; clothing and instruments can be made out of them. If and so we are right in believing that nature makes nothing without some end in view, nothing to no purpose, it must exist that nature has fabricated all things specifically for the sake of man.
This seems stunningly anthropocentric. Aristotle may be forgiven, still, when nosotros consider that virtually every important thinker in out history has entertained some such idea. Humans are a remarkably vain species.
The Christian thinkers who came later found this view of the world to exist perfectly congenial. Only one thing was missing: God was needed to make the picture consummate. (Aristotle has denied that God was a necessary part of the picture. For him, the worldview we accept outlined was not religious; it was simply a description of how things are.) Thus the Christian thinkers said that the pelting falls to aid the plants because that is what the Creator intended , and the animals are for human being use considering that is what God made them for . Values and purposes were, therefore, conceived to be a cardinal function of the nature of things, because the world was believed to have been created according to a divine programme.
2. A corollary of this way of thinking is that �the laws of nature� not only describe how things are , they specify how things ought to exist as well. Things are as they ought to be when they are serving their natural purposes. When they practise not, or cannot, serve those purposes, things have gone wrong. Optics that cannot run into are defective, and drought is a natural evil; the badness of both is explained by reference to natural police. But there are as well implications for human comport. Moral rules are non viewed equally deriving from the laws of nature. Some ways of behaving are said to be �natural,� while other are �unnatural�; and �unnatural� acts are said to exist morally incorrect.
Consider, for example, the duty of beneficence. Nosotros are morally required to be concerned for our neighbor�s welfare as nosotros are for our own. Why? According to the Theory of Natural Police, beneficence is natural for us, because the kind of creatures we are. We are by our nature social creatures who want and need the visitor of other people. It is also part of our natural makeup that nosotros intendance about others. Someone who does not care at all for others - who actually does non care, through and through - is seen as deranged, in the terms of modern psychology, a sociopath. A malicious personality is lacking, just every bit optics are lacking if they cannot run across. And, it may be added, this is truthful considering we were created by God, with a specific �human� nature, equally part of his overall programme for the earth.
The endorsement of beneficence is relatively uncontroversial. Natural law theory has also been used, however, to back up moral views that are more contentious. Religious thinkers have traditionally condemned �deviant� sexual practices, and the theoretical justification of their opposition has come mostly from theory of natural law. If everything has a purpose, what is the purpose of sex? The obvious respond is procreation. Sexual activity that is not continued with making babies can therefore exist viewed as �unnatural,� and so such practices as masturbation and oral sex activity - not to mention gay sex - can be condemned for this reason. This manner of thinking nigh sex activity dates back to at least to
Outside the Catholic Church, the Theory of Natural Police has few advocates today. Information technology is by and large rejected for 2 reasons. Commencement, it seems to involve a confusion of �is� and �ought.� In the 18th century David Hume pointed out that what is the case and what ought to be the case are logically different notions, and no determination about one follows from the other. We tin can say that people are naturally disposed to be beneficent, but it does non follow that they should be beneficent. Similarly, it may be that sexual practice does produce babies, but information technology does not follow that sexual activity ought or ought not to be engaged in only for that purpose. Facts are i thing; values are another. The Theory of Natural Police force seems to conflate them.
Second, the Theory of Natural Police force has gone out of fashion (although that does not, of grade, prove information technology is false) because the view of the world on which it rests is out of keeping with mod science. The world as described by Galileo,
Thus mod science gives united states of america a picture of the world as a realm of facts, where the only �natural laws� are the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology, working blindly and without purpose. Whatever values may be, they are not office of the natural order. As for the idea that �nature has fabricated all things specifically for the sake of man,� that is merely human vanity. To the extent that one accepts the worldview of modernistic science, then, one will be skeptical of the Theory of Natural Law. Information technology is no blow that the theory was a product, not of modernistic idea, but of the Middle Ages.
3. The tertiary part of the theory addresses the question of moral noesis. How are we to get most determining what is correct and what is incorrect? The Divine Control Theory says that we must consult God�s commandments. The Theory of Natural Constabulary gives a different answer. The �natural laws� that specify what nosotros should do are laws of reason, which we are able to grasp because God, the author of the natural order, has made us rational beings with the power to understand that lodge. Therefore, the Theory of Natural Law endorses the familiar thought that the right thing to practise is whatever class of conduct has the all-time reasons on its side. To use the traditional terminology, moral judgments are �dictates of reason.� St. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest of the natural-law theorists, wrote in his masterpiece the Summa Theologica that �To disparage the dictate of reason is equivalent to condemning the control of God.�
This means that the religious believer has no special access to moral truth. The laic and the nonbeliever are in the aforementioned position. God has given both the aforementioned powers of reasoning; and so laic and nonbeliever akin may listen to reason and follow its directives. They office every bit moral agents in the same way, even though the nonbelievers� lack of organized religion prevents them from realizing that God is the author of the rational order in which they participate and which their moral judgments limited.
In an important sense, this leaves morality independent of religion. Religious belief does not affect the calculation of what is best, and the results of moral enquiry are religiously �neutral.� In this style, even though they may disagree about religion, believers and nonbelievers inhabit the aforementioned moral universe.
4. Religion and Particular Moral Bug
Some religious people will find the preceding discussion unsatisfying. It will seem likewise abstract to have whatever bearing on their bodily moral lives. For them, the connectedness between morality and religion is an immediate, practical thing that centers on particular moral issues. Information technology doesn�t matter whether right and wrong are �defined� in terms of God�s will or whether moral laws are laws of nature: Whatever the merits of such theories, there are all the same the moral teachings of one�s faith about particular issues. The teachings of the Scriptures and the church are regarded every bit authoritative, determining the moral positions one must have. To mention just one example, many Christians call up that they have no selection but to oppose ballgame because it is condemned both by the church building and (they presume) past the Scriptures.
Are there, in fact, distinctively religious positions on major moral bug, which believer are bound to take? If so, are those positions different from the views that other people might reach simply by trying to reason out the best matter to exercise? The rhetoric of the pulpit suggests that the reply to both questions is yes. Simply there are several reasons to retrieve otherwise.
In the offset place, it is often hard to notice specific moral guidance in the Scriptures. Our problems are not the same as the problems faced by the Jews and the early Christians many centuries agone; thus, information technology is not surprising that the Scriptures might be silent most moral bug that seem urgent to united states. The Bible contains a number of full general precepts, such a the injunctions to beloved one�s neighbor and to treat others as i would wish to be treated oneself, that might be thought relevant to a diversity of issues. Simply worthy as those precepts are, they do not yield definite answers well-nigh exactly what position one should accept concerning the rights of workers, the extinction of species, the funding of medical research, and then on.
Another problem is that in many instances the Scriptures and church tradition are ambiguous. Authorities disagree, leaving the believer in the awkward position of having to choose which element of the tradition to have and which authority to believe. Read apparently, for example, the New Attestation condemns being rich, and there is a long tradition of cocky-denial and charitable giving that affirms this educational activity. Only there is also an obscure Old Testament figure named Jabez who asked God to �enlarge my territories� (I Chronicles four:x), and God did. A contempo volume urging Christians to prefer Jabez as their model became a best-seller.
Thus when people say that their moral views are derived from their religious commitments, they are ofttimes mistaken. In reality, something very different is going on. They are making up their minds nearly the moral problems offset and and then interpreting the Scriptures, or church tradition, in such a manner equally to support the moral determination they accept already reached. Of course this does not happen in every case, but it seems fair to say that it happens often. The question of riches is one example; abortion is another.
In the argue over ballgame, religious issues are never far from the center of give-and-take. Religious conservatives hold that the fetus is a human existence from the moment of conception, and so they say killing it is actually a form of murder. They practise non believe it should exist the mother�s choice whether to have an abortion, because that would be like proverb she is free to commit murder.
The cardinal premise in the conservative argument is that the fetus is a human beingness from the moment of formulation. The fertilized ovum is non only a potential human being but an actual human existence with a total-fledged correct to life. Liberals, of grade, deny this - they say that, at least during the early weeks of pregnancy, the embryo is something less than a full human being.
The debate over the humanity of the fetus is enormously complicated, but here we are concerned with just ane small part of it. Conservative Christians sometimes say that, regardless of how secular idea might view the fetus, the Christian view is that the fetus is a human existence from its very offset. But is this view mandatory for Christians? What evidence might be offered to show this? 1 might entreatment to the Scriptures or to church building tradition.
The Scriptures . Information technology is difficult to derive a prohibition of abortion from either the Jewish or the Christian Scriptures. The Bible does not speak plainly on the thing. At that place are certain passages, however, that are often quoted past conservatives because they seem to suggest that fetuses have total human being status. I of the most frequently cited passages is from the first chapter of Jeremiah, in which God is quoted every bit saying: �Before I formed y'all in the womb I knew y'all, and before yous were built-in I consecrated you.� These words are presented as though they were God�south endorsement of the conservative positions: They are taken to mean that the unborn, as well as the born, are �consecrated� to God.
In context, however, these words obviously mean something quite different. Suppose nosotros read the whole passage in which they occur:
Now the give-and-take of the Lord came to me saying, �Earlier I formed you in the womb I knew y'all, and before y'all were born I consecrated you; I appointed you lot a prophet to the nations.�
Then I said, �Ah, Lord God! Behold, I practice not know how to speak, for I am but a youth.� But the Lord said to me,
�Practise not say �I am only a youth� for to all to whom I ship you yous shall become, and any I command you you shall speak. Exist non afraid of them, for I am with y'all to deliver y'all,� says the Lord.
Neither abortion, the sanctity of fetal life, nor anything else of the kind is existence discussed in this passage. Instead, Jeremiah is asserting his authority every bit a prophet. He is saying, in effect, �God authorized me to speak for him; even though I resisted, he allowable me to speak.� Simply Jeremiah puts the point more poetically; he has God maxim that God had intended him to exist a prophet even earlier Jeremiah was built-in.
This often happens when the Scriptures are cited in connexion with controversial moral issues. A few words are lifted from a passage that is concerned with something entirely unlike from the issue at hand, and those words are then construed in a way that supports a favored moral position. When this happens, is it accurate to say that the person is �post-obit the moral teachings of the Bible?� Or is it more accurate to say the he or she is searching the Scriptures for support of a moral view he or she already happens to think is right, and reading the desired conclusion into the Scriptures? If the latter, it suggests an peculiarly impious attitude - an mental attitude that assumes God himself must share one�south own moral opinions. In the instance of the passage from Jeremiah, it is hard to see how an impartial reader could think the words have anything to do with abortion, even by implication.
The scriptural passage that comes closest to making a specific judgment most the moral status of fetuses occurs in the 21st chapter of Exodus. This chapter is part of a detailed clarification of the law of the ancient Israelites. Here the penalty for murder is said to be expiry; however, it is also said that if a pregnant woman is caused to have a miscarriage, the penalty is only a fine, to exist paid past her husband. Murder was non a category that included fetuses. The Law of Israel apparently regarded fetuses equally something less than total human beings.
Church building Tradition . Fifty-fifty if there is picayune scriptural ground for it, the gimmicky church�due south stand is strongly antiabortion. The typical churchgoer will hear ministers, priests, and bishops denouncing abortion in the strongest terms. It is no wonder, and then, that many people experience that their religious commitment binds them to oppose abortion.
But it is worth noting that the church has not always taken this view. In fact, the idea that the fetus is a human being �from the moment of conception� is a relatively new idea, fifty-fifty within the Christian church. St. Thomas Aquinas held that an embryo does not have a soul until several weeks into the pregnancy. Aquinas accepted Aristotle�due south view that the soul is the �substantial grade� of man. We need not go into this somewhat technical notion, except to note that i implication is that ane cannot have a human soul until one�southward body has a recognizably man shape. Aquinas knew that a human embryo does non take a human being shape �from the moment of conception,� and he drew the indicated determination. Aquinas�southward view of the matter was officially accepted past the church building at the Council of Vienne in 1312, and to this 24-hour interval information technology has never been officially repudiated.
However, in the 17th century, a curious view of fetal evolution came to be accepted, and this has unexpected consequences for the church�s view of ballgame. Peering through primitive microscopes at fertilized ova, some scientists imagined that they saw tiny, perfectly formed people. They called the lilliputian person a �homunculus,� and the idea took hold that from the very kickoff the man embryo is a fully formed creature that needs but to get bigger and bigger until information technology is ready to be born.
If the embryo has a man shape from the moment of conception, then information technology follows, according to Aristotle�s and Aquinas�s philosophy, that it tin have a human soul from the moment of conception. The church building drew this conclusion and embraced the conservative view of abortion. The �homunculus,� it said, is clearly a human being, and then it is incorrect to impale information technology.
Even so, as our understanding of human biology progressed, scientists began to realize that this view of fetal development was wrong. At that place is no homunculus; that was a fault. Today we know that Aquinas�due south original thought was right - embryos start out equally a cluster of cells; �human form� comes subsequently. But when the biological error was corrected, the church�southward moral view did non revert to the older position. Having adopted the theory that the fetus is a human being existence �from the moment of formulation,� the church did not permit it go and held fast to the bourgeois view of ballgame. The council of
Because the church did not traditionally regard abortion as a serious moral issue, Western constabulary (which adult under the church�southward influence) did not traditionally treat ballgame as a offense. Under the English common law, abortion was tolerated even if performed late in the pregnancy. In the
The purpose of reviewing this history is not to suggest that the gimmicky church�s position is wrong. For all that has been said here, its view may be right. I only want to brand a signal about the relation between religious potency and moral judgment. Church tradition, like Scripture, is reinterpreted by every generation to support its favored moral views. Abortion is just an instance of this. We could just as easily have used shifting moral and religious views about slavery, or the condition of women, or capital punishment, as our example. In each case, people�due south moral convictions are not and so much derived from their religion as superimposed on it.
The various arguments in this affiliate signal to a common conclusion. Right and wrong are not to exist defined in terms of God�south will; morality is a matter of reason and conscience, non religious religion; and in any case, religious considerations do not provide definitive solutions to the specific moral issues that confront us. Morality and faith are, in a word, different. Considering this conclusion is contrary to conventional wisdom, it may strike some readers as antireligious. Therefore, information technology should be emphasized that this conclusion has not been reached past questioning the validity of religion. The arguments we take considered do not presume that Christianity or any other theological system is false; these arguments simply show that even if such a system is true, morality remains an independent thing.
Source: https://faculty.uca.edu/rnovy/Rachels%20--%20Does%20Morality%20Depend%20on%20Religion.htm
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