Divine will/divine command moral theories and the problem of arbitrariness

A well-known objection to divine will/divine command moral theories is that they commit us to the view that God’s will is arbitrary. I argue that several versions of divine will/divine command moral theories, including two of Robert Adams’s versions of the DCT and my own divine preference theory, can be successfully defended against this objection. I argue that, even if God’s preferences are somewhat arbitrary, we have reasons to conform our wills to them. It is not a fatal objection to divine will/divine command moral theories if they imply that God’s will/God’s commands is/are arbitrary, to some extent. Putting God in charge of morality is one way to solve the problem [the problem of whether ‘the distinction between right and wrong’ is ‘real’], of course, but Plato made short work of it  years ago. Does God have a good reason for designating certain acts as moral and others as immoral? If not – his dictates are divine whims –why should we take them seriously? Suppose that God commanded us to torture a child. Would that make it all right, or would some other standard give us reasons to resist? And if, on the other hand, God was forced by moral reasons to issue some dictates and not others – if a command to torture a child was never an option – then why not appeal to those reasons directly.