Euthyphro's Dilemma

[steven84]

Am I missing something here? Why would any atheist ever thing that Euthyphro's Dilemma is a real argument to be reckoned with? Is this an improper representation or something?

[Adamoriens]

First option:
If an act (loving your neighbor, honoring your parents, etc.) is good because God says it is good then in a way goodness is arbitrary – but it is only arbitrary in the way that everything is arbitrary. It is arbitrary that grass is green, space is curved, bits of matter attract other bits of matter, diamonds are sparkly and pretty, and a beautiful face is symmetrical without being too symmetrical.

To make an analogy, is it arbitrary that in chess a king can only move one space per turn? It is sort of arbitrary, but it makes sense within the rules of the game. That is how the game of chess was designed to work.

In a similar way God has designed a world in which love and kindness and self-control are morally good. That is how this reality works. Because God has designed the world to work this way kindness could not be evil any more than I could move a king five spaces in a game of chess.

I suppose that I could move a king five spaces, but I would no longer playing chess – I would have to be playing some other game. Similarly, to change the nature of ethics we would have to change the fundamental nature of our reality. We have as much ability to change the nature of our reality as a pawn on a chess board has the ability to change the rules of chess.

If, as you say, goodness is a function of God's commands, then we have a very odd implication. All things being equal, the ethics of killing a person vary with the expressed attitude of a certain agent (God). To change the nature of ethics would not take a fundamental change to reality (in the physical or moral sense, since the former is irrelevant and the latter is entirely contingent on God), simply a change in God's expressed attitude.

The deeper implication is that we could very well live in a world where rape, murder etc. are morally obligatory, since there seems to be no reason that an evil God (by our lights) could not similarly institute his own objective ethics. The only grounds we have to say that God has a particular nature, that he prefers love and forgiveness, is through some revelation.

So, it appears that I can accept this divine-command theory in its entirety, and, without self-contradiction, hold that malicious acts are morally obligatory. Is this troublesome?

Second Options:
God calls something good because it is good. This is the option I favor, though as I said it is impossible to prove.

If this is the case then we are saying that good is not a thing in a similar way to the fact that logic is not a thing. Is logic eternal or spate from God? Well, God is logical, but essentially “logic� is a human term for describing what is.

Similarly, “good� is a human description. God is good and must be good. “Good� is not something that exists separate from God, but it is an abstract term (similar to the term “logic.�) If this is true then we are saying that there is no possible reality in which “good� and “evil� can be exchanged. Just as it is impossible for a circle to be square, it is equally impossible for hatred to be good.

I would have to disagree. If good is simply a descriptive term rather than a prescriptive one, then it carries no moral obligation. So it would be possible for hatred to be morally obligatory. To say that God is necessarily good or hostile to hatred etc. is unsupported; there's no reason there could not be an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being who prefers suffering and hatred. Given that some Christian hereabouts deny that God is omnibenevolence, this objection seems all the more potent.

[Doogles]

Is what is morally good commanded by God because it is morally good, or is it morally good because it is commanded by God?

So, in terms of a specific act, murder, gay sex or eating shellfish, we can ask a theist why those acts are considered bad. Or why prayer, idleness on a certain day or long hair for women are considered good.

If the answer is merely "because God says so" then morals are arbitrary. God decides what is good and what is not. There is no intrinsic goodness or evil. God is merely a despotic dictator. God would no longer be considered to be a wise and rational being, one who always acts on good reasons only. He acts however he wants and what he wants is, by fiat, good. Anything conceivably could be good or evil. Ethics becomes merely an exercise in hermeneutics. God's goodness becomes tautologically meaningless.

If the answer is that these things are good or evil, and God is informing us, for our own good then the goodness or evil of the acts are independent of God's will. God is bound by the laws of morality instead of being their establisher. It may seem that this is setting up something distinct from God, which is independent of him, and equally eternal and necessary.

Some theists try to escape the difficulties of the dilemma by defining God's nature as being good. Is then God's nature something that God decided (subject to his will) or is it something that was determined independent of God. The dilemma remains.

I take the position that God has an unchanging nature. Since according to the Bible he is eternal, I don't think he created his own nature or can change it. God's eternality is a mystery but does not render morality capricious and changeable. It's the same with logic: even God can't make a square circle or two contradictory statements true at the same time. I agreed with the statement "ethics becomes merely an exercise in hermeneutics" but I'm not sure how that makes morality any less binding. Presumably it would need to be grounded or justified in some way. I concede the truth of the "dilemma" but don't see what the big deal is.

[bjs]

First option:
If an act (loving your neighbor, honoring your parents, etc.) is good because God says it is good then in a way goodness is arbitrary – but it is only arbitrary in the way that everything is arbitrary. It is arbitrary that grass is green, space is curved, bits of matter attract other bits of matter, diamonds are sparkly and pretty, and a beautiful face is symmetrical without being too symmetrical.

To make an analogy, is it arbitrary that in chess a king can only move one space per turn? It is sort of arbitrary, but it makes sense within the rules of the game. That is how the game of chess was designed to work.

In a similar way God has designed a world in which love and kindness and self-control are morally good. That is how this reality works. Because God has designed the world to work this way kindness could not be evil any more than I could move a king five spaces in a game of chess.

I suppose that I could move a king five spaces, but I would no longer playing chess – I would have to be playing some other game. Similarly, to change the nature of ethics we would have to change the fundamental nature of our reality. We have as much ability to change the nature of our reality as a pawn on a chess board has the ability to change the rules of chess.

If, as you say, goodness is a function of God's commands, then we have a very odd implication. All things being equal, the ethics of killing a person vary with the expressed attitude of a certain agent (God). To change the nature of ethics would not take a fundamental change to reality (in the physical or moral sense, since the former is irrelevant and the latter is entirely contingent on God), simply a change in God's expressed attitude.

The deeper implication is that we could very well live in a world where rape, murder etc. are morally obligatory, since there seems to be no reason that an evil God (by our lights) could not similarly institute his own objective ethics. The only grounds we have to say that God has a particular nature, that he prefers love and forgiveness, is through some revelation.

So, it appears that I can accept this divine-command theory in its entirety, and, without self-contradiction, hold that malicious acts are morally obligatory. Is this troublesome?

In our reality it is impossible for malicious acts to be morally obligatory, or even morally acceptable. If something is good or evil because God says that it is, and God says that malicious acts are evil, then malicious acts are evil.

What we are saying is that God could create a reality in which malicious acts are good, pi equals 18.9, and a bachelor can be married. That is not the reality that we have, and we cannot change our reality. But the theory is that God could create a reality that is fundamentally different than the one we know.

Second Options:
God calls something good because it is good. This is the option I favor, though as I said it is impossible to prove.

If this is the case then we are saying that good is not a thing in a similar way to the fact that logic is not a thing. Is logic eternal or spate from God? Well, God is logical, but essentially “logic� is a human term for describing what is.

Similarly, “good� is a human description. God is good and must be good. “Good� is not something that exists separate from God, but it is an abstract term (similar to the term “logic.�) If this is true then we are saying that there is no possible reality in which “good� and “evil� can be exchanged. Just as it is impossible for a circle to be square, it is equally impossible for hatred to be good.

I would have to disagree. If good is simply a descriptive term rather than a prescriptive one, then it carries no moral obligation. So it would be possible for hatred to be morally obligatory. To say that God is necessarily good or hostile to hatred etc. is unsupported; there's no reason there could not be an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being who prefers suffering and hatred. Given that some Christian hereabouts deny that God is omnibenevolence, this objection seems all the more potent.

If good is a descriptive term then the moral obligation remains for us to do what is good.

The idea has nothing to do with saying that God must be morally good. We can claim that God is morally good, but it is not a requirement when say that God says something is good because it is good.

If we accept this side of the Dilemma then we are saying that in every possible world selfless love is good and hatred is bad. It is along the same lines of saying that in every possible world a bachelor must be single and circle cannot be square.

[Adamoriens]

If, as you say, goodness is a function of God's commands, then we have a very odd implication. All things being equal, the ethics of killing a person vary with the expressed attitude of a certain agent (God). To change the nature of ethics would not take a fundamental change to reality (in the physical or moral sense, since the former is irrelevant and the latter is entirely contingent on God), simply a change in God's expressed attitude.

The deeper implication is that we could very well live in a world where rape, murder etc. are morally obligatory, since there seems to be no reason that an evil God (by our lights) could not similarly institute his own objective ethics. The only grounds we have to say that God has a particular nature, that he prefers love and forgiveness, is through some revelation.

So, it appears that I can accept this divine-command theory in its entirety, and, without self-contradiction, hold that malicious acts are morally obligatory. Is this troublesome?

In our reality it is impossible for malicious acts to be morally obligatory, or even morally acceptable. If something is good or evil because God says that it is, and God says that malicious acts are evil, then malicious acts are evil.

These statements appear to contradict. If something is good or evil (morally obligatory/reprehensible) because God says it is, then it does seem entirely possible that God could make malicious acts obligatory by simply issuing a command to that effect. To say that he wouldn't do such a thing is controversial at best, since there is no consensus on precisely what God's nature really is, and because many scriptures claim otherwise.

What we are saying is that God could create a reality in which malicious acts are good, pi equals 18.9, and a bachelor can be married. That is not the reality that we have, and we cannot change our reality. But the theory is that God could create a reality that is fundamentally different than the one we know.

I suppose I should ask about your conception of God. I'm talking about a supreme being of power, knowledge and will, that implied in the Euthyphro Dilemma as presented. I've left out benevolence since it doesn't seem relevant to this horn of the Dilemma. Pi= 18.9 and the married bachelor are not equivalent to God issuing malicious commands. In the first two cases we have a contradiction in terms (A does not equal not A); in the case of God we merely have a deity exercising his autonomy.

There are two possible Gods. Both are omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent, but one is benevolent (kind, generous etc.) and the other is malevolent. On the Dilemma's first horn, the commands of both deities are morally obligatory.* My question is: how do we know whether we have the indifferent one? DCT works just as well for both; so I still see arbitrariness.

*They don't both exist at the same time, of course. I'm merely talking about the god we do possibly have.

[McCulloch]

Is what is morally good commanded by God because it is morally good, or is it morally good because it is commanded by God?

So, in terms of a specific act, murder, gay sex or eating shellfish, we can ask a theist why those acts are considered bad. Or why prayer, idleness on a certain day or long hair for women are considered good.

If the answer is merely "because God says so" then morals are arbitrary. God decides what is good and what is not. There is no intrinsic goodness or evil. God is merely a despotic dictator. God would no longer be considered to be a wise and rational being, one who always acts on good reasons only. He acts however he wants and what he wants is, by fiat, good. Anything conceivably could be good or evil. Ethics becomes merely an exercise in hermeneutics. God's goodness becomes tautologically meaningless.

If the answer is that these things are good or evil, and God is informing us, for our own good then the goodness or evil of the acts are independent of God's will. God is bound by the laws of morality instead of being their establisher. It may seem that this is setting up something distinct from God, which is independent of him, and equally eternal and necessary.

Some theists try to escape the difficulties of the dilemma by defining God's nature as being good. Is then God's nature something that God decided (subject to his will) or is it something that was determined independent of God. The dilemma remains.

I take the position that God has an unchanging nature. Since according to the Bible he is eternal, I don't think he created his own nature or can change it. God's eternality is a mystery but does not render morality capricious and changeable. It's the same with logic: even God can't make a square circle or two contradictory statements true at the same time. I agreed with the statement "ethics becomes merely an exercise in hermeneutics" but I'm not sure how that makes morality any less binding. Presumably it would need to be grounded or justified in some way. I concede the truth of the "dilemma" but don't see what the big deal is.

I take this as an admission that morality is arbitrary according to Christian theology. Short hair is bad for a woman because God says so. There need be no other reasoning. And without a specific relevant teaching from the God, nothing can be shown to be immoral or moral.

[bluethread]

I take this as an admission that morality is arbitrary according to Christian theology. Short hair is bad for a woman because God says so. There need be no other reasoning. And without a specific relevant teaching from the God, nothing can be shown to be immoral or moral.

However, we do have specific relevant teaching. Adonai has established a social structure through which ambiguities can be clarified. This teaching is not necessarily universal, but that does not keep it from being specific and/or relevant. Unlike the greco/roman model, where the gods are deified humans who play out human comedy and tragedy for our edification, the judeo/christian model is based on One who simply is and shows Himself to be good by rewarding those who diligently seek Him. He even goes so far as to set aside His right to simply be as to take on human form to show by word and deed how that is to be done.

Adonai is not "good" as men are "good". In fact, when Yeshua is refered to as good His response is, "Why do you call me good, no one is good but Adonai?" Just because Adonai is good by definition does not mean that it is good for man to be like Adonai. A good potter may throw a good pot that bears his image, but if that pot is too much like the potter, it then ceases to be a good pot.

[Jax Agnesson]

There is a debate running currently, in the Christianity and Apologetics sub-forum, about the matter of genocide in the OT. I'm wondering if that discussion and the Euthyphro discussion can shed some light on each other?
If God commanded the Canaan genocide, does that mean the Canaan genocide is not evil because it is commanded by God, (the good being the good because God wills it) or does it mean that God commanded the Canaan genocide because such a genocide is justified? (God wills the good because it is good) ?

[Jayhawker Soule]

Am I missing something here?

Almost certainly.

[Jester]

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