“Man is condemned to be free” declares to French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. He clarifies that man is “Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does.” Sartre thinks that not only are we free to act as we will, but that the true scope of human autonomy is terrifying. There is nothing physically stopping anyone from walking up to someone and just punching them in the face. Most people probably don’t really consider this to be a viable option most of the time. Sartre thinks that this is mostly because we don’t truly comprehend the true scope of just how far reaching our freedom is. Studying the scope of possible choices and trying to figure out which are right and which are wrong is called ethics. It’s pretty natural to consider religion and ethics to be closely related. Some people might consider ethics to simply be a part of religion, so that to know what the right action is, we just need to know what the right religion is. Given the natural inclination to pair religion and ethics, it shouldn’t be surprising that we know of arguments dating back thousands of years trying to figure out exactly how religion and ethics are related. The ancient Greeks take up the question and discover that ethics and religion are wholly distinct. In fact, Plato is able prove that religion cannot be the source of ethics. We must find ethics outside of our religion.

In the Socratic dialogue Euthyphro, Socrates finds a man, Euthyphro, outside a courthouse awaiting the verdict of his father’s trial. They start talking and eventually Socrates asks Euthyphro for a definition of piety. They continue talking about the nature of being good and eventually ask, “Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious? Or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?” This question is what came to be known as the Euthyphro dilemma. Nowadays the dilemma is usually framed as “does God command something because it is good, or is that thing good because God commands it?” Let’s take a simple example. God commands “Thou shalt not kill.” Is killing bad because God said it’s bad? Or is it bad on its own, and God is just reminding us? Let’s start with the first option. Let’s say that killing is only bad because God says it is bad. Then, theoretically, God could decide tomorrow that killing is good. And then not only would people be allowed to kill, they would be required to. Now, if you’re saying that God would never do that, because God is good and doesn’t want His children to be murdered, then killing must be wrong on its own, and the 6th commandment is just a reminder, so we’re on the second option. If we are going to agree that killing is bad regardless of what God says, then there must be some ethical standard outside of God.

There are a lot of implications of this, in Christianity generally and Mormonism specifically, but first, lets convince ourselves that it is the right answer to say that the ethical exists independently of God. If good acts are only good because God told us to do them, then goodness is ultimately arbitrary. The dictates of good and evil are just subject to the whims of God. Now, if you read that and think “but it isn’t arbitrary, God wants us to be happy and so commands things which will make us happy” then you are already agreeing that goodness is determined outside of what God says. Specifically, you think that goodness is determined by happiness, not by God. There is a very fine line to walk if you are going to hold that goodness is only subject to the dictates of God. There can be no other way to judge an action. Whether it helps people, or makes people happy, or saves the world, none of those can be considered when deciding if an action is a good action. Because of this, and because most people don’t think truth is arbitrary, many people initially reject the explanation that goodness comes from God.

So if goodness doesn’t come from God, it must come from somewhere else. If this is true, there are a lot of things to unpack. The first is pretty obvious, but maybe one of the most impactful. If God doesn’t determine morals, then we don’t need God to tell us how to act. If there is a source of ethics outside of God, then why consult God? Why not just consult the source? God becomes a redundant intermediary. At least when it comes to telling us how to act. God could theoretically still judge our actions at the end of days, could still grant miracles, and have created the world, but God can no longer act as a source of morality.

Before we can continue, we need a few simple definitions on the table. Ethical theories can be relative or absolute. Relative theories hold that given the same set of facts, the right action can be different depending on who is performing the act, when and where they find themselves, and any number of other factors. A moral relativist will hold that an action can be right in some contexts and wrong in others. A moral absolutist holds the opposite. For the absolutist, concerns like who, when, and where, are not available to the actor. Given a certain set of circumstances, there will only be one right answer. Irrespective of who is performing the act. (For those curious, the ethics of care and Aristotle’s virtue ethics are relativist theories. Deontology and utilitarianism are absolute theories.)

This is where Mormonism gets into trouble. In Mormon theology, God speaks in absolutes. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not practice polygamy. Thou shalt not allow black members to hold the priesthood or enter the temple. But some of these change from time to time. “And it came to pass that the Spirit said unto me again: Slay him, for the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands; Behold the Lord slayeth the wicked to bring forth his righteous purposes. It is better that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief” (1 Nephi 4:12-13), God commanded many old testament prophets to practice polygamy and then many of the members in the 19th and 20th centuries. And in 1978 God commanded that black members be allowed the full rights of members.

There are a few ways to understand these conflicting commands. The first is to approach it with some form of utilitarianism. That is to say that God commands whatever it is that will make the most number of people the happiest. So if killing people, not allowing them in the temple or any number of terrible actions taken in the name of God cause more pleasure than pain, then they are allowed. You might phrase this as “the world wasn’t ready yet, the church would have lost members” or “yeah, one person died, but it meant that Nephi’s children wouldn’t go astray, and them going astray would be worse than killing someone.” There are a few problems with this though. First, the commandments of God are typically absolute. The commandment is “Thou shalt not commit adultery” not “Thou shalt not commit adultery, unless you have a really good reason.” And, it is unclear that there is any real utilitarian basis for the “time sensitive” commandments. Some easy examples are circumcision, the word of wisdom, and animal sacrifices. The health benefits claimed for the first two should probably exist over all of human history, and the animal sacrifice I think paints the clear picture that utilitarianism isn’t the driving force behind God’s commands. There is no clear human benefit to animal sacrifice. And if there was, utilitarianism would demand that they continue.

So if utilitarianism can’t be our source of morality, we need something else. We need a moral code that exists independently of God, that issues absolute commands, but also allows commands to change from time to time, and in certain, specific circumstances, but not on a utilitarian basis. If utilitarianism can’t explain Laban’s murder (we can’t use the benefit Nephi’s descendants would get from it), then it is unclear what could possibly motivate Nephi’s action other than that God commanded it. Same with the other commands we have discussed. In fact, the justification I have heard more than once for following some commandments (especially the provisions against tea and coffee) is “God will bless us for obeying, so we should obey.” And with this we have come full circle. Coffee is forbidden, circumcision isn’t required, and polygamy is forbidden because God commanded it. As far as I can tell, “because God said so” is the only justification that can be given that includes all of the commandments of Mormonism in a logically consistent way. So, from where I stand, Mormons are committed to the second horn of the dilemma: something is good because God commands it.

If this is the case, there is no eternal truth of “good” and “evil.” God just gets to decide. God doesn’t give us commands to help us. God gives us commands because He feels like it. Or He’s testing us (but that test isn’t something that was required by anything, God just made it up because He felt like it). Or some other reason. This means that God could command tomorrow that coffee was allowed. Or that everyone must wear traffic cones on their heads on Sundays. And if God did this, those things would become the absolute good. Now, maybe God wouldn’t do that. But He could. And there are no ethics to stop Him. This means that the requirements to enter Heaven are arbitrary. They don’t matter. God just made them up. Instead of don’t drink coffee and be married, it could have been have exactly 7 tattoos and have shot 3 black bears. There is no rhyme or reason to God’s commands except that God wills it. If there were some reason, then we wouldn’t need God to tell us anything. We could figure it out on our own. But as far as I can tell, there is no consistent reason behind God’s commands.

There is one more answer that is potentially possible that could save all of this. Maybe there is a reason but we humans are unequipped to understand it. Maybe there is some ethics which exists outside of God. God simply distills this cosmic complexity into something we can comprehend. If this is the answer, I want nothing to do with it. The commands which have come through God from this cosmic ethics have caused so much pain and suffering that I want nothing to do with it. In Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan Karamazov sees the suffering in the world and declares that he will “most respectfully return him the ticket” to heaven. Ivan doesn’t want to go to any heaven attended to by a god who would create such suffering in the world. The Mormon church causes pain to real people in the real world. They have excluded people on the basis of race, condemning them to be excluded from the highest glory of heaven. They currently exclude people on the basis of sexual orientation. They ask gay people to never enter a physically intimate relationship while simultaneously declaring that such a relationship is among the highest joys in the world. The Mormon church asks members to give money to the church even if that means they go without food or power for their children. These actions, and more, are abhorrent to me. If there is some cosmic order that demands all of this, and God created us, then God did not create me in a way to be able to comprehend the necessity of this suffering.

After all of this, I can see three options. The first is there is a cosmic order that we simply cannot comprehend (even though God made us and presumably could have made us in a way that would allow us to understand) that requires actions which seem abhorrent to us, so we are compelled to take actions which are repulsive to the very nature God gave us. The second option is that there is no meaning to the words “good” and “bad” and God just arbitrarily decides things without concern for any benefit to humanity (I think Mormonism is committed to this option). Or, the last option, there is some ethical system which humans can comprehend, and we don’t need God as an intermediary. I pick the third option. I will not act in opposition to my conscience, and I will not bow to the whims of a dictator. So, I will continue to search for the truth of human ethics and live accordingly.