A Metaethical Review In Defense of the Divine Command Theory

The metaethical review presented in this essay provides a deductive defense of the Divine Command Theory through the examination of ontological requirements for moral realism. Utilising Hume’s Law, it is argued that descriptive "is" statements which imply facts, cannot yield prescriptive "ought" statements of which the content is value-based. The text also contends that naturalist metaethical theories, which are predominant in atheistic frameworks, necessarily entail moral relativism because they lack a transcendent grounding for binding moral duties. At the core of the proposed argument lies the idea that if God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist and therefore atheistic moral frameworks are incompatible with morally realist perceptions. Through one additional claim, the argument also becomes a theistic argument: Since the existence of objective moral values are more evident than the argumentative methods that are utilised to object to them, a divine source as a prescriber must exist. A non-naturalist atheistic moral framework named Platonic atheism has also been criticized via various arguments. In addition to the defenses for the premises of the argument, a critical analysis on scientific approaches is also put forward. The review concludes that only a framework involving an ontologically superior being can resolve the "is-ought" gap and rationalize moral behavior at the individual level to eliminate the bindingness problem in all scenarios.