According to Christian doctrine, the “original sin”was disobedience, which was what led to the first humans being separated from God and ejected from paradise. The Bible tells us that at first God planted a tree of knowledge in the middle of the garden of Eden and then forbade the humans from eating its fruits. Here we have the very first test of obedience, the kind where children are given access to an attractive goody but are expressly forbidden from partaking, in order to see whether they have the self-discipline to obey authority. Apparently, Adam and Eve failed the first test, hence the idea of “original sin”.
Note that later in the Bible, one of the “ten commandments” is “Honour your father and mother”. Put this way, deference to a parent’s authority appears to be a human universal. But then we grow up and moral authority becomes a lot less simple. Which authority to recognize? Is it your priest or rabbi, is it the reigning monarch, the President or the Emperor? Or is it an abstraction like “the Law”?
Deference to authority is a central moral requirement in many cultures, but it has its limits. What if the authorities are immoral? Should we always obey the law, even in the case of immoral laws? This illustrates the fact that morality itself appears to be authoritative even over legal systems and human authorities. But, if so, where does morality itself derive its authority? Indeed, how do we know when authorities or laws are immoral? Some would say that morality derives its authority from God - a very satisfying answer for those who feel certain about these things, but ultimately a problematic answer because there are multiple claimants to knowing God’s commands, with multiple interpretations of what they are. So we are back to square one. And it doesn’t help that some of the most vociferous claimants to know God’s real intentions can turn out to be immoral cads such as Jimmy Swaggart, Jim and Tammy Fay Bakker, and Jim Jones.
There has to be more to morality than obedience. After all, in the vast majority of human encounters we are dealing with our peers, and when we come into conflict, we need to be able to follow moral rules that we’ve already internalized and agreed on. Immanuel Kant, who understood this situation better than most philosophers, argued that morality is the opposite of obedience to authority. In fact, he saw it as an exercise of autonomy in the form of “moral self-legislation”. Kant sums up human autonomy in the form of the “categorical imperative”: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." I bet many of us have heard their grandma admonish, when they were caught throwing litter on the street, saying, “What if everyone did that?” I bet you didn’t know your grandmother was a follower of Kant’s. Now you know better. I have to say that, as a philosopher, I am very impressed by grandmothers!
We agree that the moral rules should be impartial, and shouldn’t favour certain people or groups, simply because of their power or status. In other words, no one is above the law. These are all ways that morality transcends mere deference to authority. This is just as true of religious authorities as it is of secular authorities.
