The Euthyphro Dilemma

General Philosophy
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Socrates may be called the first “agnostic” in an anachronistic (big word I learnt 2 minutes ago) sense of the word. Euthyphro stands as one of his (or Plato’s) introductory yet profound dialogues. It can be seen as a mantra for atheists (the posse I say that I constitute), but I try, here, to propose an argument for the existence of a God to the best of my abilities. Just to clarify: we will be analysing a case for a monotheistic system, where God is omnibenevolent (like Christianity, but I am not sure about the other two omnis in my solution). The Dilemma is this;

“Is Good approved by God because it is Good OR is Good good because God approves of it?”

a) Let us take the 1st part as true:
The Good is approved by God because it is good.
The need for a God seems arbitrary in this conclusion, as our actions seem to have their basis only in an immutable, objective morality, which is “above God,” in the sense that it exists independently of the need for such a being.

Analogy: the 3 organs of the government work separately but complementarily.
Legislature: makes the law (morality as made by God)
Executive: implementation of laws (enforcement in the form of karma or whatever punishment doing bad gains you in the physical world)
Judiciary: interprets the laws (Inferno/Purgatorio/Paradiso)

Unlike this system, God functions as all 3 at once (cause he is God and shi).
An omnibenevolent God created a moral system of laws (morality) in which he was desirous of good (his desires seem to change when we look upon this defense in a theistic lens—Scripture—but for a God this is fine), but he also happened to grant the citizens free will (whose usage against his desires he will punish in hell?).

Therefore, God approves of good not because it is good in itself, but because he desires the good, and the framework used to distinguish good/bad (morality) isn’t above him but created by him, in such a way akin to how the lawmakers, desirous of lawfulness, follow the law—but God, unlike them, isn’t chained to it.

“Certain constraints are freeing.” The word “constraint” is used the way we choose to follow what makes us happy in life, not because life forces that path upon us, but because we are desirous of that path.

b) The Good is good because God approves of it.
The major argument against this is the malevolent nature of God, which resonates with a theist in his “Holy Scriptures”: God commanding Abe to kill his son in Genesis 22, and the eternal punishment inflicted on non-believers in Surah An-Nisa 56.

All these instances vilify a God who is morally “bad,” but our God, who is a desirer of good (in his twisted ways), is safe…

Resolution:
We now have reasons to conclude that instead of being an unanswerable question, with one presupposition (his benevolence), the 2 options go hand in hand.
:- At least this is my idea; please share yours and refute me as much as possible, as that will only help me in learning.
THANK YOU

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I think I prefer the answer offered by classical theism, which goes something like this: God instantiates, or more precisely, is the Good itself, rather than determining it by fiat. On this view, morality is grounded in His nature rather than being arbitrary or independent of Him. It is also worth keeping in mind that Socrates was speaking about gods, not God, and that classical theism understands God as Being itself, not a being among others, rather than the somewhat cartoonish picture of God as a kind of magic sky wizard personage often found in popular Protestant depictions.

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The dilemma implies God’s unnecessary or undesirable. I remember an apologist respond to the dilemma with God = Good [I am the law: Judge Dredd]. Divine simplicity requires nondistinction between God and his attributes, one of which is goodness. This is a simple way to counter the Euthyphro dilemma. Your 3 arms of the government in re the dilemma is novel (for me).

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This is a perfect example of how European reason has been downgraded to the cognitive state of fentanyl-addled San Francisco street zombies, all thanks to the imported virus of Judeo-Christian monotheism.

It is just insane reasoning based entirely on non-existent, supernatural absurdities like “God.” You can easily construct any logical sophistry you want when your foundational premise is a non-existent entity. It is the exact equivalent of debating: “Is Donald Trump a reptilian? If yes, then logically X must follow… If no, then logically Y must follow… etc.”

Calling this “pathetic” is a severe understatement. A completely new word must be invented to describe this level of both ethnic and epistemological disaster.

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But wouldn’t God being Goodness itself, mean that some part of reality (badness) exists independently of humself

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:sweat_smile: Is this Satire…,

I don’t belive in God myself, but what’s wrong in some arguing fun, and we must always be open to changes if they seem rational.

Not to be dismissing, i understand your feeling. But what would you think of a theist who ignored atheism in such a way

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Thank you,

So maybe if God = Good(my understanding is that God is good like how grass is green, as an intrinsic quality), and if God was also omni-potent, then wouldn’t Bad actions contradict the existence of God,

Analogy: Let’s take a Field of Just Grass, which is intrinsically Green (& no way for grass to be anything but green) wouldn’t the existence of Brown colored grass contradict this fact. (As we take grass as God, green as goodness and the field as the universe in this analogy, there are some resolving factors:- Grass not having enough power to counteract another substance [God and Satan], or Grass not being intrinsically Green[God =/ Good])

Please take the care to point out the wrongs…

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I don’t touch insanity even with a 14 redshift pole. Just accepting the use word “God” is entering insanity. Did you try to have a discussion with believers? They are really mad people. OK it’s social accepted madness but it’s madness. I advise Catholics, they somewhat love to be death-beaten because they will find back consolation in the Christ’s arms. Don’t do it with Jews, the anti-Semitic persecution windows is in the 30s-3min range…

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I love the forum, but one of the things that’s always bothered me is the level of religious bigotry that is accepted here. You should be happy to know you’ll fit right in.

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Yes, now you’ve extended yourself into the Epicurean trilemma. The PoS is a well-known, extremely potent counterevidence to God as conceived by most theists. It’s the top-most reason for deconversion; although there have been cases of “paradoxical undressing/laughter.” If you’re rational then you know where this train of thought ends.

You could however rejoice in your freedom and plug that hole. You won’t be alone in doing this.

Some have opted for agnosticism though. You could try that too, if you wish.

The bottom line: God’s unnecessary v undesirable (Euthyphro dilemma) v nonexistent (PoS/Epicurean trilemma).

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I’m not a classical theist but my understanding is that badness is not a “force’ in the world just the failure of particular beings. Aquinas sees evil as not a thing in itself, more a privation. In classical theism God is the necessary ground of reality. If we do good we are partaking in God’s nature. Classical theism isn’t a simple dualism and doesn’t accept there are two opposing forces.

For atheists the easiest gods to undermine are the simple cartoon or literalist accounts of fundamentalists.

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Thank you

Would that be God, or i presume that be the misuse of our ‘Free-Will’?.

thus doing Bad(lack of good) would be us swaying away from god, rather than towards a ‘satan’-like character?,

but if god is the ground of reality and his nature is of the good then why do we turn away from that nature due to our will, my thought is that “Is Free-Will real? if it is real and granted by god, then is it more important TO HIM than us just indulging in eternal bliss?”

A thing i feel about religions is that;

Most (if not all) people can’t live ‘by the book’ (unless if you were to twist and turn the words of scripture so much as to lose their original written meaning). Thus they refrain from fundementalism and adopt a more modern, ‘reformed’ form of belief, but again it may get to a point where you have just created for yourself a new religion.

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As I said I’m not a classical theist and this is a vast subject. Beings are flawed and make choices that do not align with the good. Classical theism in some forms also holds that all people go to “heaven” even if there is a short time reintegrating towards God’s nature. It helps me to remember that Christianity is like a series of religions, with a myriad of schisms.

I don’t think “living by the book” is a consistent view shared across Christian churches. The Baptist tradition I grew up in understood the Bible largely as a series of allegories rather than literal historical accounts, with perspectival understandings of God forming part of that tradition. This approach is fairly common. Original meanings are often uncertain. Some scholars (such as the religious historian Karen Armstrong) argue that religious texts were historically understood primarily as allegorical narratives, and that strict literalism is a relatively modern phenomenon, emerging in reaction to modernity.

Many scholars see all religious texts, from whatever religious source, as attempts to grapple with the one truth, hence syncretism and perennialism.

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Thank you,

Isn’t the prob of evil(suffering) a part of argument?

I will like to share an idea i heard from Alex O’Connor(https://youtu.be/iaH9qn9CFwc?si=dv4Ceejx-qjGTy7x; in minute 9:40); while on a walk you happend to see a man beating his wife, your first response may be to stop him beating her, rather than deducing a rational answer to account for his act, but you could explain this away by saying that god is god and he knows something greater than our comprehension.

The thing i think about Agnosticism is that(very personal opinion btw), not to be disdaining, i think some agnostics are just using god as a tool for explaining things that they don’t know(like a mix of science and theism), the egs that comes to my mind is how Newton said that god sents angels to come and fix the precession of Mercury, and pre-evolution creationism, and a more modern example would be the ‘unresolvable‘ question of what caused the Big Bang. I now Agnostics who are what they are only because modern science finds it a bit hard to explain big bang.

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Thank You.

But you know, we cant really say if the writers thought about meaphors and allegories (even if they really do look like that) or wrote just to spread some dogma of theirs, most people, at least in my community(Catholic) take the Bible to be fact(the INERRANT word of God is a term i hear all around) and most don’t even try to see if there are allegories, just accept and move on, and that is also -i think- a major reason for people falling out of belief; because people are indoctrinated from birth and not taught the applicable nature of the teaching or even allowed to interpret the bible.

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Yes the PoS is part of the problem. I never stated it wasn’t.

I find your description of agnosticism quite irregular. A-gnostic means not-known (re: que sais-je?). That is to say, on the matter of God they’re neither theists nor atheists.

As for the BB, its cause is unknown. Hence agnosticism. I don’t see why agnostics would treat the BB as anything special.

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Yes, modernity has seen a growth in literalism, and it could easily be argued that many of the problems associated with religion stem from fundamentalist mindsets rather than from religion itself. The religious scholar and philosopher David Bentley Hart sometimes quips that American Protestant Christianity is a heresy, a view a friend of mine, a Catholic priest, would agree.

The problem, of course, is that we do not seem to have direct access to a God who might clarify these confusions for us all. All we have instead are clergy, academics, philosophers, and a vast array of cartoon, populist accounts. But I don’t think an argumentum ad populum is a way to resolve what the true message of a given religion might be.

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@DSJ did I say something unfactual?

I haven’t been following science news so I could be wrong about the BBT. The Kalam cosmological argument is old, Al-Ghazali old, but seems to jibe with the Christian genesis story and is championed by some theologians to push the case for the deity. In fact a Pope wanted to declare that science proves God when the BBT first came out; Lematrie, the Belgian priest who was a central figure in the BBT, thought this was a bad move for Catholicism. I still haven’t figured out Lematrie’s logic.

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As far as I am aware, i don’t think so.

Maybe he thought so because, maybe the question of the cause of God arises or maybe because if the theologians were to defend by saying God is beyond causality and the universe, then the scientists could attribute that to the big bang, at least that’s what I think

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Interesting. Hypothesis non fingo.