The moral obligations of reasonable non-believers A special problem for divine command metaethics Wes Morriston © Springer 2008 Abstract People who do not believe that there is a God constitute an obvious problem for divine command metaethics. They have moral obligations, and are often enough aware of having them. Yet it is not easy to think of such persons as "hearing" divine commands. This makes it hard to see how a divine command theory can offer a completely general account of the nature of moral obligation. The present paper takes a close look at this issue as it emerges in the context of the most recent version of Robert Adams' modified divine command theory. I argue that, despite a valiant attempt to do so, Adams does not succeed in giving an adequate account of the moral obligations of non-believers. More generally, I claim that if divine commands are construed as genuine speech acts, theists are well advised not to adopt a divine command theory. A divine command metaethics must hold that the moral obligations of all persons are fixed by the commands of God. On some version of the theory (notably, that of Robert Adams), divine commands are successful speech acts. It is a problem for this account that some people don't believe that there is a God who might issue any commands. It is implausible to think of such persons as "hearing" divine commands, but this does not prevent them from having genuine moral obligations. A non- believer who does something terrible cannot escape culpability simply by pointing out that he does not believe in God! How, then, can a divine command metaethics— especially one that takes the idea of a "command" quite seriously—account for the moral obligations of non-believers?