Grounding Morality

[snowden719]

For all of those who tihnk that morality can only be objecctively true if it is grounded in God, what is your opinion on the Euthyphro dilemma.

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Euthyphro dilemma.

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What's that?

[PairTheBoard]

Euthyphro dilemma

Let's see. A philisophical conundrum that has puzzled people for 2500 years with no final word on it yet. I've thought about it for about 2 minutes...... Ok, I think I've solved it. It's FOS. It boils down to saying that God can't be all powerful and be Good because by being good he can't choose to be Evil so he is therefore not all powerful.

People think this kind of nonsense really has anything to do with anything that really matters?

PairTheBoard

[snowden719]

did you even read the dialogue, that's the most uncharitable interpretatoin I've ever seen of Euthyphro.

[PairTheBoard]

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did you even read the dialogue, that's the most uncharitable interpretatoin I've ever seen of Euthyphro.

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Of course I read it and unlike you I was thoughtful enough to provide a link. If you don't see how the arguments boil down to what I said maybe you should think about them some more.

PairTheBoard

[snowden719]

I've thought about euthyphro a decent amount, and to say that the euthyphro dilemma is akin to thequestion of whether God can make a rock so big even he can;t move it is to miss the boat completely. The argument in euthyphro has to do with what it means for something to be good. I think most peopel who think that morality is gorunded in religion would agree that god stands in some particular relationship to goodness. This creates a dilemma, why is a moral act moral, it seems that if an act is moral because god says it is that the command seems empty, as there is nothing about the content of the act that amkes it wrong, merely that God forbids it, also opening the possibility that some seemingly awful acts would be moral ones if god allowed them. Also, it creates a problem of epistemic access, because none of us can be sure of what god does or does not forbid, or even the lesat ambitious form of the claim, that the detials might be fuzzy.


However, if we say that acts are good not because god allows them, but because god finds good acts praise worthy then we have to admit that god isn;t the ultimate backing of our moral code, and that moral laws stand behind god, and that it would be possible (althouhg not likely most religious people would probably contend) that god could commit an immoral act. At this point it seems as both prongs lead us into a lot of trouble, yet I know there are many people on this forum who think that morality is grounded in God, so my question is,what is your answer to the dilemma.


(For clarification any time I use the term good it is interchangeable with moral/right/outght to be done and any use of wrong can be changed with immoral/ought not be done)

[snowden719]

what's funny about your post pair the board, is that you didn;t actually proivde a link to the dialogue.

http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/euthyfro.html

[PairTheBoard]

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snowden719 --

and to say that the euthyphro dilemma is akin to thequestion of whether God can make a rock so big even he can;t move it is to miss the boat completely. The argument in euthyphro has to do with what it means for something to be good.

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Did I say anything about moving a rock? I spoke to the question of God and good.


In the first horn, good is good because it's good. Therefore a good God is under good's power, he can't choose to be Evil because his goodness does not allow it. Therefore he is not all powerful thus the BOILDOWN.

In the second horn, good is good because God says it's good. So you worry that it might not be good because God could just as easily say that bad is good. But why would a good God say that bad is good? You say, he could if he wanted to because he's all powerful so how do we know that's not what he's doing? And if that is what he's doing then God really isn't good, thus the BOILDOWN.

Give me another couple of minutes and maybe I'll come up with something better. Hey, that's a thought. Can God be better? If he can't be better then he's not all powerful is he?

ok, I'll leave this discussion to you guys who like this kind of thing.


PairTheBoard

[NotReady]

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what is your opinion on the Euthyphro dilemma.


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It's a false dilemma. God is good in His nature, not because He is so defined by an abstract moral code. What He says is therefore good. He is just and not arbitrary or capricious so His commands, being based on His nature, define the good for us.

The dilemma is an attempt to say that God can't exist. But even an abstract moral code can be subjected to the dilemma. Pick a code, any code. How do you know what it says is good? Because it's absolute? That would make morality arbitrary. Is what it says good? That could only be so by a higher standard. So the dilemma is in a sense self defeating because it makes the definition of good impossible which is the same as saying there is no such thing as good.

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there is no such thing as good

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This is what I reckon

Pretty simple really