The Euthyphro Dilemma

[ToddNotTodd]

The Euthyphro Dilemma, first described by Plato in his dialogue Euthyphro asks "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" This can be restated as:

Does God define an action as good or evil because it is inherently good or evil, or are actions good and evil simply because God says they are?

If you believe the former (actions are objectively good and evil), then an evil action is evil regardless of anyone's opinion (including Gods). This is because objective reality isn't dependent on individuals for its validation. It's validation comes from outside evidence.

For example, if I see a bird out my window I can say "The bird outside my window is a blackbird". This is an objective statement in as much as we have clear tests to see if it is correct or not. Even if the majority of the people on the planet say "No, the bird is a parrot.", that statement would be false if evidence shows that the bird is indeed a blackbird. Objective truth is discovered, not created

The upshot of this would be that morality isn't dependent on the existence of God, since objective good and evil exists whether or not God does.

If you believe the latter part of the Euthyphro dilemma (Actions are good or evil only because God classifies them as such) you have another problem. Statements that aren't objective are subjective. Subjective statements have no external validation and are prescriptive (dealing with "ought") rather than descriptive (dealing with "is"). The statement "chocolate is good" is subjective because there's no external test that can be made to prove the statement. The statements "chocolate is good" and "chocolate is bad" can both be true for separate speakers since all subjective statements have an implicit "to me" after them, i.e. "chocolate is good to me".

If morality is not objective (the first half of the dilemma), then it's subjective (the second half of the dilemma). Therefore the statements "Broccoli is bad" is equivalent to the statement "Rape is bad" in that they both have the implicit "to me" after them, and the opposite statements can both exist for different speakers. They're statments of personal preference rather than objective reality.

Now, if rape is evil because God subjectively decides that rape is evil, then whatever reasons God has in deciding this cannot come from morality itself, since morality doesn't exist before God defines it. So God's decision making process in deciding what's evil is, at least from a moral standpoint, arbitrary. God could have came to the conclustion that rape is good (since rape isn't objectively evil in this case and God's resoning does not include morality), and commanded humanity to practice it.

Another problem lies in statments like "God's commandments are good". If God defines good, the sentence can be rewritten as "God's commandments are what God commands". This is a tautology (a statment that says the same thing twice and carries no useful information)

I mention all of this because I'm interested in finding out if Christians have thought about this and what their take on it is. The most interesting Christian response to me is the one that states that some of God's moral commands are Objective (like murder), while some are subjective (like keeping the Sabbath holy).

Thoughts?

 

[Mling]

When I was Christian, I believed that morality was objective and distinct from God, and God orders humanity to do what is already good, because it is good.

That raised the question of whether God was capable of committing evil (which is a non-issue if good is defined by whatever God does and likes), to which I answered 'technically, yes, but in the same sense in which I'm *capable* of raping and murdering my mother in her sleep. It's a physical possibility, but the idea is appalling that I might as well be incapable of it.'

edit: re-read the end, about keeping the Sabbath holy. Things like that, I never considered moral at all. More like personal signs of devotion. Loyalty is something different than morality.

 

[Nooj]

The upshot of this would be that morality isn't dependent on the existence of God, since objective good and evil exists whether or not God does.

Feel free to correct me on this, but even if we postulate that an objective good and evil exists that is not influenced by God, that doesn't mean an objective morality exists without the existence of God. I can think of a theist who believes in an objective morality independent from God, but which is still reliant on God for its existence, like everything else (God being the sole necessary being in theology, to which everything created or non-created owes its existence).

Although I guess it might depend on how you define 'objective'. If there was literally nothing, would murder still be wrong?

 

[cantata]

Feel free to correct me on this, but even if we postulate that an objective good and evil exists that is not influenced by God, that doesn't mean an objective morality exists without the existence of God. I can think of a theist who believes in an objective morality independent from God, but which is still reliant on God for its existence, like everything else (God being the sole necessary being in theology, to which everything created or non-created owes its existence).

You’re implying here that morality is part of God’s creation, in which case, as the Euthyphro dilemma has it, it must be arbitrary.

Perhaps we could escape the dilemma by suggesting that what is good and what is evil is not a matter of what God commands, or of any source of morality that exists independently of God, but is a matter of God’s inherent nature. The division is between the God-like and the un-God-like, and as God is the source of all creation, the un-God-like is necessarily problematic, unbalancing, inharmonious, &c.

 

[Nooj]

You’re implying here that morality is part of God’s creation, in which case, as the Euthyphro dilemma has it, it must be arbitrary.

Well, not exactly. Objective morality could exist without being created by God (not everything that exists must have been created, God himself is supposed to be a being that exists but was never created).

I had Aquinas' Cosmological Argument from Contingency in mind:

In other words, even if the Universe has always existed, it still owes its existence to an Uncaused Cause

So just substitute 'the Universe' with objective morality in Aquinas' Third Way, and like I was saying, a theist could affirm an objective morality, but it would still need a God to exist.

Thereby disproving this claim:

The upshot of this would be that morality isn't dependent on the existence of God, since objective good and evil exists whether or not God does.

And I can think of a few more objections that theists might think of. Even if objective good and evil exists without God's decree, that doesn't necessarily mean that morality is accessible to humans. Theists could very well argue that God is the ultimate transmitter/interpreter of morals and we should still listen to God to do what is right.

 

[Steezie]

This was addressed (rather ambiguously) in the bible with the story of Lot.

Personally I think it depends on the person. Some people are very devout out of fear and it generally shows, "methinks he doth protest too much."

It also depends on you gods. Im not sure if my gods consider how I live my life "pious" or not but I'm not dead so I must be doing SOMETHING right.

 

[lawtonfogle]

What makes any act evil?

It is not inherent in the act, that much is for sure. We would definitely call torturing a human to death evil, most of us would agree the same on cats or dogs. Spiders, most of us are 'meh' about. We get to worms, and that is exactly what you are doing with you fish with them. And bacteria? People think there is some wrong with you if you stand against torturing bacteria to death.

"Torturing X to death" is thus subjective based on what X is.

Now the question is how specific does X have to become for the statement to not be subjective.

X = living organism; subjective (bacteria)
X = multi-cellular life; subjective (worms)
X = animal; subjective (cats/dogs)
X = human; ???? There will be some people who can theorize some potential case (no matter how extreme/impossible) where torturing a human to death is not immoral.
X = innocent child; we are now to the point where we would only think psychos would disagree, but are you 100% sure there is no situation where the moral act is to torture the child to death? We say yes, but I wonder how strong our conviction is.

My idea is that every exact situation is either moral or immoral. There may or may not be (accurate) rules describing all such situations.

How does God factor in? Can He change these situations? No, because even if He could, the very fact of Him changing it would make it a new situation (even if only God would know it is changed). Instead, God is the only being capable of knowing every single detail, of knowing every single instance and of being able to separate out the grey into the black and white that compose it.


Think of a computer monitor. Number all the pixels 1, 2, 3... Now, color all the even ones white and all the odd ones black. Once you do that (in your head unless you are a programmer, then you can really do that), step back from the screen. Is the color you see black and white, or grey?

 

[Cabal]

The Euthyphro Dilemma, first described by Plato in his dialogue Euthyphro asks "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" This can be restated as:

Does God define an action as good or evil because it is inherently good or evil, or are actions good and evil simply because God says they are?

If you believe the former (actions are objectively good and evil), then an evil action is evil regardless of anyone's opinion (including Gods). This is because objective reality isn't dependent on individuals for its validation. It's validation comes from outside evidence.

For example, if I see a bird out my window I can say "The bird outside my window is a blackbird". This is an objective statement in as much as we have clear tests to see if it is correct or not. Even if the majority of the people on the planet say "No, the bird is a parrot.", that statement would be false if evidence shows that the bird is indeed a blackbird. Objective truth is discovered, not created

The upshot of this would be that morality isn't dependent on the existence of God, since objective good and evil exists whether or not God does.

If you believe the latter part of the Euthyphro dilemma (Actions are good or evil only because God classifies them as such) you have another problem. Statements that aren't objective are subjective. Subjective statements have no external validation and are prescriptive (dealing with "ought") rather than descriptive (dealing with "is"). The statement "chocolate is good" is subjective because there's no external test that can be made to prove the statement. The statements "chocolate is good" and "chocolate is bad" can both be true for separate speakers since all subjective statements have an implicit "to me" after them, i.e. "chocolate is good to me".

If morality is not objective (the first half of the dilemma), then it's subjective (the second half of the dilemma). Therefore the statements "Broccoli is bad" is equivalent to the statement "Rape is bad" in that they both have the implicit "to me" after them, and the opposite statements can both exist for different speakers. They're statments of personal preference rather than objective reality.

Now, if rape is evil because God subjectively decides that rape is evil, then whatever reasons God has in deciding this cannot come from morality itself, since morality doesn't exist before God defines it. So God's decision making process in deciding what's evil is, at least from a moral standpoint, arbitrary. God could have came to the conclustion that rape is good (since rape isn't objectively evil in this case and God's resoning does not include morality), and commanded humanity to practice it.

Another problem lies in statments like "God's commandments are good". If God defines good, the sentence can be rewritten as "God's commandments are what God commands". This is a tautology (a statment that says the same thing twice and carries no useful information)

I mention all of this because I'm interested in finding out if Christians have thought about this and what their take on it is. The most interesting Christian response to me is the one that states that some of God's moral commands are Objective (like murder), while some are subjective (like keeping the Sabbath holy).

Thoughts?

I'm very glad you made this topic, the Euthyphro Dilemma is something I've been thinking about a lot recently - however I don't think you've hit on the only way of looking at it.

From a Christian perspective, I think of it as saying - God isn't going to ask you to do something simply for the sake of doing it, or "because I said so", as it were. If God asks something, then there must be a logical and coherent reason for it that results in it benefitting us, the target of his commands.

However, the tricky bit comes when you try and work out what that benefit actually is. E.g: the whole "homosexuality is a sin" thing. I've seen some TERRIBLE arguments over the years as to why being gay is bad for you, the most recent one being that every homosexual ends up contracting some venereal disease of some sort - a statement so wrong I didn't even know where to start. Whereas for me, I haven't yet found out why homosexuality is apparently so harmful - something which sets it apart from the usual list of sins anti-homosexuals tend to lump it in with - so that's why, for the time being, I am not of the belief that homosexuality is harmful in the way that people make out.

 

[cantata]

I'm very glad you made this topic, the Euthyphro Dilemma is something I've been thinking about a lot recently - however I don't think you've hit on the only way of looking at it.

From a Christian perspective, I think of it as saying - God isn't going to ask you to do something simply for the sake of doing it, or "because I said so", as it were. If God asks something, then there must be a logical and coherent reason for it that results in it benefitting us, the target of his commands.

Why is the benefit of human beings classed by God as “good”?

 

[Cabal]

Why is the benefit of human beings classed by God as “good”?

Why should an omnipotent God require anything as a result of following a law?* Who are the laws directed towards?

* I realise there are a few things which would make you wonder about that one, though....

 

[Nooj]

From a Christian perspective, I think of it as saying - God isn't going to ask you to do something simply for the sake of doing it, or "because I said so", as it were. If God asks something, then there must be a logical and coherent reason for it that results in it benefitting us, the target of his commands.

Meaning that the reasons are more important than the person giving the commands. So if Satan commanded us not to murder for the same reasons as God commanded us not to murder, it'd be moral to follow Satan.

 

[Cabal]

Meaning that the reasons are more important than the person giving the commands. So if Satan commanded us not to murder for the same reasons as God commanded us not to murder, it'd be moral to follow Satan.

Sure, why not.

Except he doesn't.

 

[quatona]

From a Christian perspective, I think of it as saying - God isn't going to ask you to do something simply for the sake of doing it, or "because I said so", as it were. If God asks something, then there must be a logical and coherent reason for it that results in it benefitting us, the target of his commands.

I don´t think that this solves the dilemma - it merely shifts it somewhere else.
Is what benefits or harms us the result of the way god created things, or did god have accept given rules when he created things?

 

[Cabal]

I don´t think that this solves the dilemma - it merely shifts it somewhere else.
Is what benefits or harms us the result of the way god created things, or did god have accept given rules when he created things?

I completely agree. However, I would say most Christians aren't even aware of the implications of the dilemma, and I think that's a more immediate problem - having Christians going around saying being gay is wrong because YOU WILL contract an STD, for example.

 

[Infernalfist]

i think good and evil are concepts that are completely man made. no action can be inherently good or evil, just right and wrong for the situation that the action is being applied to. Applying an action to a situation on the simple grounds that "God" says so, has a higher chance of producing the wrong results than if someone were to weigh out the possibilities for each action. Being that noone has a clear or credible way to converse with "God" anything done in his name would essentially be a gamble. I personally feel that morality is to important of an idea to leave to chance.

 

[Nooj]

Sure, why not.

Except he doesn't.

It was a hypothetical. I could change Satan to me or the Bananas in Pyjamas. The point is that the reasons matter more than the entity giving the orders.

In which case, why the need for God? If it was possible for us to know those reasons for ourselves, why is God necessary for morality?

 

[ToddNotTodd]

You’re implying here that morality is part of God’s creation, in which case, as the Euthyphro dilemma has it, it must be arbitrary.

You could say that for any possible world that God could create, rape would be evil in that world. In that case, rape would be objectively evil, regardless of whether or not that world exists.

Perhaps we could escape the dilemma by suggesting that what is good and what is evil is not a matter of what God commands, or of any source of morality that exists independently of God, but is a matter of God’s inherent nature. The division is between the God-like and the un-God-like, and as God is the source of all creation, the un-God-like is necessarily problematic, unbalancing, inharmonious, &c.

The "God's nature is good" counter to the dilemma doesn't really work, and in one respect could be an argument against such a God existing at all, i.e. an inherently good God not able to create a universe in which evil is even possible. in respect to the dilemma, you can either say "God is good" and mean that God only does good things (which doesn't address whether those things are inherently good or not), or you can say that "God is good" is equivalent to "God = goodness". That would be a flawed argument because you're including a premise (that God is actually good) in the conclusion (God = good).

 

[ToddNotTodd]

What makes any act evil?

It is not inherent in the act, that much is for sure. We would definitely call torturing a human to death evil, most of us would agree the same on cats or dogs. Spiders, most of us are 'meh' about. We get to worms, and that is exactly what you are doing with you fish with them. And bacteria? People think there is some wrong with you if you stand against torturing bacteria to death.

"Torturing X to death" is thus subjective based on what X is.

Now the question is how specific does X have to become for the statement to not be subjective.

X = living organism; subjective (bacteria)
X = multi-cellular life; subjective (worms)
X = animal; subjective (cats/dogs)
X = human; ???? There will be some people who can theorize some potential case (no matter how extreme/impossible) where torturing a human to death is not immoral.
X = innocent child; we are now to the point where we would only think psychos would disagree, but are you 100% sure there is no situation where the moral act is to torture the child to death? We say yes, but I wonder how strong our conviction is.

My idea is that every exact situation is either moral or immoral. There may or may not be (accurate) rules describing all such situations.

How does God factor in? Can He change these situations? No, because even if He could, the very fact of Him changing it would make it a new situation (even if only God would know it is changed). Instead, God is the only being capable of knowing every single detail, of knowing every single instance and of being able to separate out the grey into the black and white that compose it.


Think of a computer monitor. Number all the pixels 1, 2, 3... Now, color all the even ones white and all the odd ones black. Once you do that (in your head unless you are a programmer, then you can really do that), step back from the screen. Is the color you see black and white, or grey?

What you're describing is situational ethics, which is interesting since most Christians I know bristle against the idea. I'm inclined to agree with you. But this doesn't address the dilemma. You can just ask "For any highly specific act X (with as much detail as possible), is that exact act inherently evil, or does God calling it evil make it evil?" So it's the same dilemma.

The question of whether or not we can recognize it as evil isn't necessary to the dilemma. It's not what it's about. But I can say that if someone postulates that God is necessary to recognize and instruct us on what is objectively good and evil because we're unable to recognize it, I'd ask for some proof that is true. I can point to an atheist that lives in the exact same fashion as a believer (using the same moral compass) and ask how does the atheist come to his morals? Luck?

 

[Blackmarch]

The Euthyphro Dilemma, first described by Plato in his dialogue Euthyphro asks "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" This can be restated as:

Does God define an action as good or evil because it is inherently good or evil, or are actions good and evil simply because God says they are?

If you believe the former (actions are objectively good and evil), then an evil action is evil regardless of anyone's opinion (including Gods). This is because objective reality isn't dependent on individuals for its validation. It's validation comes from outside evidence.

For example, if I see a bird out my window I can say "The bird outside my window is a blackbird". This is an objective statement in as much as we have clear tests to see if it is correct or not. Even if the majority of the people on the planet say "No, the bird is a parrot.", that statement would be false if evidence shows that the bird is indeed a blackbird. Objective truth is discovered, not created

The upshot of this would be that morality isn't dependent on the existence of God, since objective good and evil exists whether or not God does.

If you believe the latter part of the Euthyphro dilemma (Actions are good or evil only because God classifies them as such) you have another problem. Statements that aren't objective are subjective. Subjective statements have no external validation and are prescriptive (dealing with "ought") rather than descriptive (dealing with "is"). The statement "chocolate is good" is subjective because there's no external test that can be made to prove the statement. The statements "chocolate is good" and "chocolate is bad" can both be true for separate speakers since all subjective statements have an implicit "to me" after them, i.e. "chocolate is good to me".

If morality is not objective (the first half of the dilemma), then it's subjective (the second half of the dilemma). Therefore the statements "Broccoli is bad" is equivalent to the statement "Rape is bad" in that they both have the implicit "to me" after them, and the opposite statements can both exist for different speakers. They're statments of personal preference rather than objective reality.

Now, if rape is evil because God subjectively decides that rape is evil, then whatever reasons God has in deciding this cannot come from morality itself, since morality doesn't exist before God defines it. So God's decision making process in deciding what's evil is, at least from a moral standpoint, arbitrary. God could have came to the conclustion that rape is good (since rape isn't objectively evil in this case and God's resoning does not include morality), and commanded humanity to practice it.

Another problem lies in statments like "God's commandments are good". If God defines good, the sentence can be rewritten as "God's commandments are what God commands". This is a tautology (a statment that says the same thing twice and carries no useful information)

I mention all of this because I'm interested in finding out if Christians have thought about this and what their take on it is. The most interesting Christian response to me is the one that states that some of God's moral commands are Objective (like murder), while some are subjective (like keeping the Sabbath holy).

Thoughts?

the problem wth the first is the same with the second; you have to find them out- IE you either have to find out if there is some absolute force in regards to morality, whether it is God, or whether it is morality itself (or some other thing). I'd suggest both are equally difficult.
It doesn't really matter to me which case it turns out to be, if forced to choose i'd probably vote for the first instance (Does God define an action as good or evil because it is inherently good or evil). I'd still be fine tho if I had to vote for the subjective... because then if morality is subjective, you still have to consider who can influence their morality upon you in whatever way.

Reality would probably end up between the two ends tho.