For one reason or another people have convoluted morality with religion. This tendency is illustrated by the contemporary gay marriage debate. Fag haters argue that gay marriage is immoral, and threatens “good” institutions (family, church, society). While the more sophisticated gay bashers avoid directly quoting the Bible if you look carefully at the arguments that they make they are always based on the assumption that a god has forbidden homos from getting hitched. I am bringing up gay marriage not because I want to debate it but rather because it exemplifies the problem that I have on my mind. What I want to explore is this....Are the commandments of God good because he commanded them or are they commanded by God because they are good? OR ,to put in more concretely, using the example of gay marriage.... Is gay marriage wrong because god has forbidden it OR has god forbidden it because it is wrong?

If you answer that God commands only what is good (that the goodness comes first) then it appears that god gets a whole lot smaller than traditional theological descriptions of his attributes allow. In the major monotheistic religions god is always described as sovereign, infinite and prior to EVERYTHING yet if the almighty is subject the laws of morality then it seems that he is not so great after all. This also means that the Lord is not really a law giver at all but just a transmitter who plays no important role in the foundations of morality and for the purposes of moral reasoning is completely unnecessary. I imagine that the vast majority of god fearing mortals would reject such a description of The Almighty.

However the second option, that gay marriage is wrong because god has forbidden it, doesn’t work out so well either. Taking the position that there are NO moral standards other than the commands of god makes the Ancient of Days look arbitrary and unreasonable. It means that no argument for or against a moral position has any meaning unless the argument is “da Bible/Koran/Torah/my pastor sez so...” which is hardly an argument. This position also seems to suggest that there really is no objective morality... ANYTHING could be moral and good if God chooses to command it. God could decree that slavery is right and genocide is good and by virtue of his commandments it would be so. Also, what are we to make of the goodness of god then? If goodness is just a matter of gods commands does that not imply that God is good just because he obeys his own commandments? The idea that goodness is dependent on god seems to destroy the very concept of goodness.

A few people have tried to get around this problem by hypothesizing that it is not God's will that make an action good or bad but it is God's nature. However this is easily refuted by re framing the original question. Is God's nature good because of it properties or are his properties good because of it is His nature?.. and you are right back where you started.

I propose an answer to this question that does away with the dilemma altogether. Supernatural gods have absolutely nothing to do with morality. This does not tell you what is good or bad or even how to find out... but it does allow you to proceed without tip toeing though a logical midfield. Religion has NOTHING AT ALL to do with morality in fact, if one takes religion seriously then that person can have no morality and if one takes morality seriously then they can have no religion.