Is Morality Above God?

I came across an essay by one Ohta Yuuki here, that makes the following curious claim:

It is impossible that morality is above God.

In defence of that claim, it presents the following points by way of argument:

1. Because it is not reasonable to conceive a lawgiver who is restricted by the rules that he himself has made.


2. If God did not create morality, then there has to be some other, greater being who has imposed the moral law to God,


3. in which case the God who obeys the law is no longer the true God, because he is not omnipotent.


4. If morality itself anyhow just existed before God, without being created, then we should call the morality God, not some other being who must obey it.

I have to say, I find both the claim and the arguments given in defence of it strikingly odd. First of all, there's the implicit definition of morality as being whatever conduct the most powerful being happens to demand. That's a construal of morality that I'm sure Joseph Stalin would have assented to most vigorously, but is it right?

Most secular systems of ethics do not base their ideas of what is moral on who makes the orders. Generally, a certain behaviour is counted good or bad regardless of whether someone in authority demanded it. Usually, some sort of calculus of the consequences of the action plays an important role. Under consequentialism, of which many variations exist, the sum of the value of the consequences of the action for all parties affected is the determining factor of whether a behaviour is morally good or not, and under classic utilitarianism, the value of those consequences is measured hedonic terms, i.e., in terms of pleasures and pains.

It may be worth pointing out here that one doesn't have to be an atheist to follow a secular system of ethics. Most religions do not have equivalents of the lists of commandments attributed to the Supreme Being (or indeed to any deity) that we find in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

If secular systems of ethics exist (and we have found that they do), then can God be judged by them? We might wonder if there can be any point in doing so, since we have scant prospect of punishing or rewarding a powerful deity for anything it does. However, it is not obvious that we cannot, for, contrary to Ohta Yuuki's point (1), above, it is usual to suppose that in a just world, no-one, even a lawgiver, is above the law. It may be that God is beyond reward and punishment, but that doesn't mean he is beyond good and evil, because ethical rules, under secular systems may be objective rules, in which case, any agent, whether human or supernatural, can be judged good or bad, according to their behaviour — at the judge's own risk, of course.

Point (2) is negated if morality is an objective or quasi-objective principle that arises from nature, which is what secular ethics is. In that event, if it is not created by God, it no more needs to be created by a "greater being" than does anything else that arises out of nature.

Point (3) does not stand up to scrutiny. Obedience to a moral code does not in principle make one less powerful than disobedience to it. A code is scarcely a moral code if obedience to it is not a matter of choice. Therefore, it would be perfectly possible for an almighty being to follow a moral code by choice, and still be immortal.

Point (4) implicitly defines God as "the oldest thing that exists", which is a seriously inadequate definition of God. God doesn't have to be the oldest thing that exists. The defining characteristics of God do not include age, but do include being almighty, all-knowing and (in some sense) benevolent. A moral code, even if older than God, fails to possess those defining characteristics.

So the argument given above to support the assertion that "it is impossible that morality is above God" is a catalogue of wrongness. Interesting wrongness, but wrongness all the same.