by Michael Hall
Socrates states that he would obey God’s laws over the law of man. Is he justified? Well, let’s just say that he is justified and everyone should take this stand. So now the law of man is not required because, as we know, God’s laws are supreme. But not everyone has the same god because not everyone has the same view. There are numerous organized religions. There are also many people who do not belong to any organized religion but still believe in some sort of higher power. So now, all of these organized deities and individual deities have absolute authority. But because we have given god’s laws authority over man, all these deities would be correct.
It is conceivable that there could be a god for each individual because who is going to say that the deity does not exist. There is no way to prove it. And there is no doubt that the gods opinions will correlate with the opinions of the individuals. You would end up with a countless amount of gods all with differing opinions. And since we all know that God is the ultimate authority, how would you be able to prove anybody wrong. How could you tell someone that their God did not say to rob that man, or kill that man? You could not because, once again, there is no way to prove it. They were just following their god’s command, and as we said before: God’s law is supreme. So you will end up having a situation where some gods agree and some god’s disagree. Some god’s will command their followers to group together and form alliances against other gods. And there will be wars between gods. The end result is complete Anarchy. So I see three options at this point.
One, if we agree to follow our own gods, we have to accept anarchy. Well what is anarchy? Well, looking in a thesaurus you will find the synonyms: disorder, chaos, lawlessness, revolution, mayhem, and rebellion. It is the opposite of order. I personally don’t think this sounds too appealing. But if you would like to live in a world where anyone could do as they wish, this option is for you. You will be able to do anything you desired, but so would everyone else. And sooner or later, you will interfere with someone else’s desires. I think you can see where this leads, so we will move on.
Two, we could limit the amount of gods to only one. We wouldn’t have to worry anymore about conflicting views because there is only one God. And people would be held liable for actions because everyone is following the same god. But who is going to decide which God is the one god. It might be decided by a majority. But what about all the people who don’t believe in that god? Should they follow the laws of a god that they don’t believe in? Does anybody have the right to force a religion on another? No. Besides that point, does any mortal, majority or not, have the authority to decide which deity is the one god. No. And how does all of this differ from following man’s laws. The only difference is that a religion is being forced on the public. So that option is no good.
We have already decided that we would not want to live in anarchy. We’ve also decided that we do not want a religion forced upon us. So the final option is follow the laws of man. Laws need to be based on the majority view, totally independent from any religious concepts. Since there is no way to determine which god is the only god: all gods must be subsequent to the laws of man. That is the only way to preserve order. And order, the opposite of chaos, is the only way people can live in peace and harmony.
So, Socrates was unjustified in following the laws of god over the laws of man. And we would not be better off if everyone took this stand.
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