So if the divine command theory is true..?

Question:

So if the divine command theory is true..?

then how is God different from the devil? Is He simply more powerful or what??

(if you dont know what the divine command theory is.. the doctrine that morality depends on religion is called the divine command theory, since God's commands determine what is right and wrong..)

thankssss!

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: If divine command theory is true and there is more than one god present, then logically the only commands you really need to worry about are the ones that are enforced.

Since a more powerful entity often can overcome a less powerful one, those would normally be the ones you would worry about. Some pantheons do have less powerful gods actually meting out the judgements, though, so depending on which one you favour you would get different results. In your example, you would seem to be correct - because it is presumed that the Devil has no actual control over the ultimate state of the universe, its commands are of no value.

As Plato points out in "Euthyphro", multiple gods that reward and punish completely different things freely puts a rather significant wrench in divine command theory altogether, especially when the situation inevitably arises that pleasing one god is going to upset another one.

Even so, I think it ends up reducing to the above - hopefully the one you please can protect you from the one you don't. And arguably, if divine command theory is true and there are multiple gods, it hardly matters whether you like the situation or whether it's fair or not... those are human values that may never apply.