This article is the first of many articles written for my “Ethics in Business” course at Brigham Young University. I share them here with the hope that they may be useful to a wider audience.

Does morality depend on religion? People have avoided this question for centuries. If you say that morality DOES depend on religion, then do nonreligious people lack morals? But if you say the opposite — that morality doesn’t depend on religion — then what’s the point of having a religion anyway? Isn’t a religion something that gives you ‘morals’ to stand for?

The Divine Command Theory

The Divine Command Theory says that morality is essentially a religious decision. In his book Do the Right Thing, James Rachels explains that Divine Command Theory states that ‘morally right’ means ‘commanded by God’ and ‘morally wrong’ means ‘forbidden by God.’

This theory sounds good at face value. Yet in Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro, Socrates asks a compelling question: is conduct right because the gods command it, or do the gods command it because it is right?

Searching through Christian scripture makes the issue more complicated. Not only does God give a lot of commandments — there are countless situations when God commands different things to different people (for an example of this in LDS scripture, compare 1 Ne 4:10-18 and Mosiah 13:21). Can some things be right at one time, yet wrong at another? How are we supposed to know?

Universal Principles

I believe the universe is governed by universal principles. If something is right, it’s right. If something is wrong, it’s wrong. God follows these rules when commanding us to do things. In fact, he helps us know what’s right when it’s impossible for us to know ourselves.

Saying that God obeys certain universal principles doesn’t diminish his authority or status. Rather, it explains that God has a rhyme and a reason for everything he asks of us. We’re not slaves to the fickle will of an overbearing monarch. We’re willful servants of a loving Heavenly Father that helps us follow universal principles.

Not Deontological Principles

Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher with a rather large forehead, talked a lot about universal principles called “categorical imperatives.” These imperatives are principles that are “intrinsically valid; they are good in and of themselves; they must be obeyed in all, and by all, situations and circumstances if our behavior is to observe the moral law.” Kant was all about universal principles to the very end of his life. His theories make up an ethical framework called deontology.

I don’t believe in universal principles the way that Kant does. As already shown earlier, God commands different things at different times, and sometimes those commandments can be contradictory. While a principle may be correct for us at a particular time, it might not be valid for everyone else at different times. Kant didn’t believe that — for him, the categorical imperatives were very black and white, no grays allowed.

The Original Dilemma

Yet these gray areas are what bring us back to the original dilemma. Does morality depend on religion? Only to the extent that a religion follows true, universal principles. Is it possible that a single religion could contain all of these principles, in one place? Of course.