In light of last week’s spaghetti-dinner discussion of religion, I’d like to present the Euthyphro dilemma. It was titled such due to its origin in Plato’s “Euthyphro”, in which Socrates poses the following question: “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 such: “Is what is moral commanded by God because it is moral, or is it moral because it is commanded by God?" This might not appear at first to be such a dilemma, so let’s rephrase it.
There are two options presented:
[1] What is moral is commanded by God because it is moral.
Another way of phrasing [1] is this: God does not determine morality; what he instructs humanity to do is based on an objective morality. If this is the case, however, then God has nothing to do with morality; to look at God as the teacher of morality is to look at the middleman, not the source.
[2] What is moral is considered moral because it is commanded by God.
Another way of phrasing [2] is this: God determines morality. The problem then: that means that morality is arbitrary, as God just as easily could have determined that it is a moral act to, say, be a Somali pirate, or to rape and pillage villages, et cetera.
I’m going to anticipate the counterpoint to the above paragraph: “But God is all-good, and would not, therefore, condone something so blatantly evil as rape and piracy.” To you who say that, all that you are doing is agreeing with me, when I argue that morality is objective, that it is not determined by God; for if it were determined by God, he could go ahead and condone whatever he wanted, and it would, by definition, be good.
So, in conclusion, either:
[1] God has nothing to do with morality; morality exists separate from God
[2] Rape and piracy are not objectively wrong, but only wrong because such is God’s will
[3] God does not exist, and the conclusion for [1] holds.
I invite and welcome any counterpoints.
7 comments:
As Andrew has eloquently stated before, this is attempting to apply logic to something that is by definition, illogical. The idea of God supersedes logic and explanation, hence, 'faith'.
I just do not understand why it is necessary for you to try and prove to me that I am wrong. Since you cannot prove that God exists or or does not exist, no one will every know that they are right. You also make assumptions about what people who believe in God believe in, and your conclusions do not apply to everyone. I will not stop believing because of human logic, because I still believe that there is something greater that we will never be able to understand.
I suppose the first question I'd ask is why this matters. Why does it matter who determines morality? The fact of the matter is that exists. This sort of logical conundrum is attempting to provide a bound of reality on a being that supersedes it. The determination of morality and God's role in it is ultimately irrelevant, simply because morality is.
And I pretty much just want to reiterate what Tori said. Ultimately, my belief is my own, and logic isn't going to be its ultimate determinant. There is far more to the human experience than what logically progresses from one day to the next. Life has emotions that in the end I consider the ultimate determination of the human experience and the way it is interpreted through the eyes of the individual.
The question is understandable, but probably meaningless in practice. As I see it, it once again boils down to whether or not God exists; to question the inherent hypocrisy in religion is irrelevant if God does in fact exist. If God's existence is proven, then I would think option two would be the correct one, since an all-powerful being would be able to shift the impulses of man and the outcome of any event. However, it is useless to question whether or not it's "right" that God gets to decide such things, because he is the Creator of reality, and ultimately our own perceptions. If he created all that exists, then it is fully his right to arbitrarily decide what is moral and what is not. I certainly won't question it.
However, if God does not exist, then neither does some inherent sense of "morality"; human actions are governed solely by their two base instincts, and that which is commonly thought of as "wrong" is simply another action, with its owen set of societal implications. There are no natural laws of morality, only what we have come to think of as "wrong" based on our natural urges and experiences.
Bubb Rubb, Tori, BoVice, and everyone else are free to hold whatever beliefs they choose. I consider happiness the fundamental purpose of existence; In some circumstances, a faith-based, deterministic epistemology may be more useful in realizing happiness than an empirical epistemology. However, faiths are arbitrary and particular, and cannot be always be reconciled. When conflicting logics influence the public realm, it is absolutely necessary for me to disprove the more particular and less universal of these logics. I see no reason to respect or even tolerate arbitrary epistemologies that are not strictly limited to the private spiritual realm.
In terms of considering the Euthyphro question, I think we need to consider that morality derives from the fundamental nature of God. Human beings are not solely constituted by their free will, if free will even exists; they possess a certain physical structure that serves as a framework in which decision making occurs and makes certain actions inevitable or impossible. Likewise, morality can be viewed as determined by God, but based on the natural tendencies rather than the arbitrary whims of God. I think the question also presupposes that, if God exists, God must serve as an arbiter of morality. I don't see this as necessarily true: what is to say that God is even concerned with directing the actions of humans?
Tori, we've already discussed privately the fact that the type of God you believe in God is:
a.) a relatively rare belief to hold
b.) a relatively unassailable belief to hold.
Bubb Rubb and Bovice,
If you see some way in which the Euthyphro dilemma is a logical gotcha-game, I'd like you to point it out. Furthermore, if you think that by posting the Euthyphro Dilemma I was attempting to "convert" anybody, you clearly didn't read my entire post. My intention was not to say "hay guyz can god make a rock larger than he can lift", etc., which are largely arguments that rely on semantics rather than logic.
Rather, I was simply presenting the dilemma in hopes that one of you believers would post an actual answer rather than saying that the question is null and void.
For instance, I forget who said this, but someone in the UC answered something along the lines of "God encompasses morality in it's entirety; it makes no sense to refer to morality without God or vice versa", which is an answer - one I disagree with, obviously, but an answer nonetheless.
Basically, what I'm saying is: if your faith is truly strong, then questions like mine will provoke satisfying answers rather than provoking ire at the question's existence.
Basically, yeah, I'm very surprised at the critical answers I received -- and somewhat disappointed, as I expected you bright bunch to respond to the Euthyphro dilemma with sharp, piercing criticisms of the dilemma rather than with criticisms of me personally.
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