John Arthur: Religion, Morality, and Conscience

John Arthur’s discussion of Religion, Morality and Conscience are divided into four parts. The first part is about morality and religion itself. Here, Arthur has defined morality as an instance where we evaluate our behaviours and sometimes feel guilty about some of our actions. Morality also involves one’s attitudes towards a different person’s behaviour. On the other hand, religion is described as a person’s belief in something of the supernatural level. This involves God, worshipping Him and praying to Him. Religion is our belief in a supernatural being that we worship, pray to and praise. This is a very clear description of morality and religion which shows the distinction of the two from each other. Contrary to this, on the first part of his discussion, Arthur has named the similarity of morality and religion which is that religion serves as a motivation for someone to do the right thing. This means that religion serves as a motivation for morality although morality does not entirely depend on religion alone.

The second part of Arthur’s topic is the religious motivation and guidance. Here, he is telling us why religion is not necessary for moral motivation and why religion is not a source of moral knowledge. According to Arthur, religion is not necessary for moral motivation for the reason that most of the time, before a person does something, he thinks of the possible outcomes if he did that certain something. This means that he thinks of the consequences of his actions and how other people would react towards his action and what other people would think of his action. This alone, is a proof that religion is not necessary for moral motivation because if it was necessary, then people would no longer think of what the consequences of their actions would be and what other people would think of them. Religion, according to Arthur is not a source of moral education because not all of the time that we can use the revelations as a solution to what we should do. Most of the time, we look at the pros and cons of the actions if we were to do it or not.

The third part is all about the divine command theory. The divine command theory states: “God made us and all the world. Because of that He has an absolute claim on our obedience… From [this] it follows that a thing is not right simply because we think it is. It is right because God commands it.” Arthur has questioned the idea of the divine command theory because he thinks that morality does not rely only on religion, let alone anything else. This means that for Arthur, morality does not revolve entirely around religion it cannot even be said that it has a specific or actual basis.

The final part of his discussion is his stand on John Dewey’s idea that morality is social. Arthur defined this as a person disregarding his own perspective in favour of the perspective of another person and for the sake of that other person and giving consideration as to how it would affect them.