3 In the meantime, we should treat the objectivity of ethics as a kind of default assumption or working hypothesis. Many people believe that the only way to make sense of objective moral standards is in terms of divine commands. They assume that moral laws require a lawgiver, such as God, and that a world without God - a purely natural world - would contain no moral standards or distinctions. This assumption explains the frequent appeal to religious scholars and members of the clergy as authorities on issues of moral significance. It also explains why, despite the tradition of the separation of church and state, many people could suppose that constitutional rights depend on divine commandments in the Judeo-Christian tradition. 4 This view assumes that morality requires a religious foundation. As such, it denies the autonomy of morality. If an objective ethics presup-poses divine command, then an objective ethics stands or falls with reli-gious belief. On the one hand, ethics will be objective if God exists and issues divine commands, and we can acquire moral knowledge insofar as we can know what God has commanded. On the other hand, if theism is false, then the presupposition of an objective ethics fails, and we must embrace moral nihilism (the thesis that there are no facts or truths about ethics) or relativism (the thesis that moral facts and truths are relative to the moral attitudes or beliefs of appraisers). Either way, the assumption that morality requires a religious foundation requires us to