Proponents insist that God is the source of all morality, so if he commands something, it must be good. Interestingly, while this defence has significant sway among theologians, it has nearly none at all among philosophers. The reason for this is that it essentially boils down to might makes right – the idea that power alone determines morality, which carries extremely troubling implications. The most prominent of these is that it renders morality arbitrary. If God could command anything, and, by virtue of him commanding it, that act is definitionally good, then morality has no objective basis beyond God's whim. If, for instance, he commands a rape victim to marry her violator, as he does in Deuteronomy 22, 28, and 29, then this order is morally good. In fact, the distraught victim has an objective moral duty to marry the monster who so egregiously abused her. This might makes right position not only contradicts the laws God provides in other passages, it grossly violates our moral intuition that apparently God has given us – an intuition that, in other contexts, proponents steadfastly rely upon with the mantra, right and wrong is written on our heart. So let's take a closer look at the verses in question. The command, do not leave alive anything that breathes, evokes utter disgust, and yet, somehow, we're to believe that this carnage is maximally loving.
推進派は、神はすべての道徳の源であり、神が何かを命じれば、それは善に違いないと主張する。興味深いことに、この擁護は神学者の間では大きな影響力を持つが、哲学者の間ではほとんど全くと言っていいほど通用しない。その理由は、この主張が本質的に「力が正義をつくる」、つまり力のみが道徳を決定するという考えに帰結するからである。その最たるものは、道徳を恣意的なものにしてしまうことだ。神が何にでも命令でき、神が命令することによって、その行為が定義上善であるとするならば、道徳は神の気まぐれを超えた客観的根拠を持たないことに