As clearly and carefully as you can

Voluntarists and non-voluntarists have had intense debate on the issue of religion and morality. The underlying central argument of the debate is whether the morality requires a religious foundation or not. While the voluntarists claim that morality does require a religious foundation, non-voluntarists assert that it doesn’t. David Brink and George Mavrodes argues with this theme of voluntarist and non-voluntarist. My essay will largely focus on the strengths and weakness of both voluntarists and non-voluntarists associating with Mavrodes and Brink’s idea on this issue.

Voluntarists are the people who insist that it is the will or the attitude of god that determines morality and its qualities, while the non-voluntarists argue that moral properties depend on their nature and that these exist without god’s existence. With the argument of god’s will and thus the morality, voluntarists centralize their position on the notion that morality depends on religion. That is, moral values consist in God’s attitude. On the contrary, non-voluntarists don’t presuppose a god. Although non-voluntarists deny theism and a metaphysical role of the god in morality, which the voluntarists agree on, they don’t reject that god play an epistemic role, which god telling us reliably what is morally good and bad, or motivational role in morality, which god providing divine incentives for moral behavior. The logic behind voluntarism and naturalism can be explained using Socrates’ label. Voluntarism argues that something is pious, because the god loves it, while non-voluntarists argue that something is loved by the gods, because it is pious. Voluntarists put strong focus on god’s will that determines what is piety or not while non voluntarists think it is the very nature that determines piety of something. What Brink argues in his essay “The Autonomy of Ethics” is that non-voluntarists seek the autonomy of morality, a notion that implies that the objectivity of ethics demand the autonomy of