3 - The Divine Guarantee of Perfect Justice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
“[O]ne is never just willingly but only when compelled to be. No one believes justice to be a good when it is kept private, since, wherever either person thinks he can do injustice with impunity, he does it. Indeed, every man believes that injustice is far more profitable to himself than justice.”
–GlauconWHY BE MORAL?
Suppose that, as I have argued, human beings have various moral obligations even if God does not exist. Some theists might grant this but allege that if God does not exist, then we have no reason to care about such obligations. In a Godless universe certain actions may be morally obligatory and others may be morally wrong, but there is no reason for human beings to be particularly interested in which are which. We may turn once again to William Craig for a suggestion along these lines:
Even if there were objective moral values and duties under naturalism, they are irrelevant because there is no moral accountability. If life ends at the grave, it makes no difference whether one lives as a Stalin or as a saint…. Why should you sacrifice your self-interest and especially your life for the sake of someone else? There can be no good reason for adopting such a self-negating course of action on the naturalistic world view…. Life is too short to jeopardize it by acting out of anything but pure self–interest. Sacrifice for another person is just stupid.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe , pp. 68 - 97Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005