Kierkegaard was right in this respect: obedience is, indeed, the highest ideal based on devout theism. But it is simultaneously the lowest ideal based on human experience and interaction. Such blindly obedient resignation, even to a deity, is a vile denigration of our ethical responsibilities. As American philosopher Edwin Curley writes, concerning the story of God’s commandment that Abraham kill his son:
If there is a God who is liable to command anything, and if our highest loyalty must be to this God, there is no act—save disobedience to God—that we can safely say is out of bounds, no act of a kind that simply must not be done . . . if we believed God had commanded it. If this God exists and we must obey him unconditionally, then anything whatever might turn out to be permissible. This view is destructive of morality.19
Put yourself in Abraham’s shoes: Would you obediently kill your child if you were sure God wanted you to? Would you kill someone else’s child? What if God commanded you to smash one hundred babies’ heads with a mallet—would you do it? Sorry to broach such a gruesome image, but that’s what the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac forces us to confront: the contours and limits of our own personal ability to commit wanton violence—if simply ordered to do so from on high. As Elizabeth Anderson has accurately pointed out, “if we take the evidence for theism with utmost seriousness, we will find ourselves committed to the proposition that the most heinous acts are permitted.”20
“But God would never command us to do any wantonly violent, heinous acts!”
Such is the constant, desperate refrain from every well-meaning theist that I have ever debated these issues with. They always say the same thing: God would never ask us to commit murder.
Really? Are you sure about that?
Only someone who has never actually read the Bible could be so ignorant of the types of immoral, unethical things God has commanded of his followers.21 In Deuteronomy 20, God commands the people of Israel to lay siege to various cities and commit genocide: “Do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you.” In Numbers 31, God commands his followers to “kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath not known man by lying with him.” In 1 Samuel 15, the Lord Almighty commands to his people to “attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.”
Captain Medina of Charlie Company would feel right at home engaging in such military maneuvers, no doubt.
There’s even more on the murderous front: in Leviticus 20, God commands us to murder anyone who has sex with someone who isn’t their spouse, or any man who has sex with another man, or anyone who fashions him or herself to be a medium or a spiritualist. In Exodus 22, God commands that female sorceresses be murdered. In Deuteronomy 21, God commands that stubborn or rebellious sons shall be put to death. In Deuteronomy 22, God commands that any woman who is not a virgin upon marriage shall be executed. In Leviticus 24, God commands us to murder blasphemers. In Exodus 35, God commands us to murder anyone who works on the Sabbath. In Numbers 15, the Lord makes it clear that such people should be stoned to death.
There are many more instances in the Bible wherein God commands that humans engage in wanton, savage violence—but others have charted these bloody waters,22 and a detailed account is beyond our discussion here. And the takeaway point should be obvious: when we decide to simply obey an authority, especially a magical, cosmic, all-powerful authority like the God of the Israelites, we immediately snuff out our capacity for moral reflection. We betray our obligation to act ethically.
It is always immoral to needlessly kill innocent people—be it children in a Vietnamese village, or your own child, or every single man, woman, and child of the Jebusite or Hittite nations, and it is always unethical to murder anyone for having sex with someone who isn’t their spouse, or for working on the Sabbath, or for being homosexual, and it doesn’t matter if anyone or anything here on Earth or up in the heavens orders you to commit such violent, savage acts. It should go without saying that to commit such atrocities is to cause unwanted pain and suffering, and therefore must never, ever be done. Abraham and Kierkegaard got it wrong. The authors of the Nuremberg Principles got it right.
Might Does Not Make Right
But if God is not the source of morality—or more accurately, if God doesn’t exist—then doesn’t that mean that “anything goes” down here on Earth, morally speaking? If there is no all-powerful deity overhead, then who can ultimately say what is wrong and what is right? It’ll just be every man for himself, acting on his own desires, determining his own subjective morality, and this will result in people just being selfish and doing what is in their own immediate interests, and life will thus be nothing more than people doing whatever they want and whatever they can get away with—unless someone more powerful can stop them. And in such a world, might would make right, and human ethics would all be for naught—which is a terrible prospect for human flourishing.
Well, to begin with: might does not make right. Ever. In a world where strong thugs and merciless brutes can run amok, taking whatever they want and doing whatever they want to people, simply because they have the power to do so certainly does indicate that they have “might.” But it most definitely does not mean that they have “right.” The men of Charlie Company had the might to murder innocent men, women, and children—but no one, save perhaps the most heartless or savage among us, would ever suggest that they had the right to. Might never means right.
But here’s the deal: it is not the secular, atheist approach to ethics that inevitably results in a “might makes right” situation. Rather, it is the explicitly religious-theistic approach to ethics that does; it is the religious worldview predicated on faith in and obedience to God that immediately turns ethics into nothing more than a “might makes right” reality. For if all morality hinges on God, and we are thus in a situation wherein we must obey God, then whatever God commands is the right thing to do. And that immediately raises the question: Why? The only possible answer: because he’s God. But that’s not a compelling reason to obey his commands, especially when it comes to questions of wrong and right, harm and help, justice and injustice.
After all, what exactly is it about him being God that means we ought to obey his commands? Because he makes rainbows? Because he’s so smart? Because he makes solar systems? Because he commands all of heaven and hell? Because he magically created life? Because he is all-powerful? In short—because of how mighty he is? That’s correct. And voilà: might suddenly makes right.
Except—to repeat—that it doesn’t.
Shocking Immorality
Think about one of the most famous—or infamous—studies in the history of social science: Stanley Milgram’s Obedience to Authority.23 Dr. Milgram was a professor of psychology at Yale University who, in the 1960s, wanted to see just how easily—and to what degree—people would follow the commands of someone in a position of authority, even if such commands meant directly causing an innocent