In Christian theism, it is believed that objective moral ethics and duties are based upon what God's commands are for us. In other words, we know that something is wrong if it contradicts what God has told us to do or is something that God has specifically told us not to do. As Christians, we believe God has revealed His moral standards to us in the Bible.
I want to say right now that this post is not going to be about the actual standards themselves that God has laid out in the Bible (we'll talk about that some other time). Finally, I am not claiming that an Atheist cannot have a sense of objective moral ethics or duties. My purpose for this series is to defend the logical tenability of morality within the Christian worldview, not to go over specifics about biblical principles or attack the morals of Atheists.
Christians believe something is good because God has declared it to be so. Atheists, however oftentimes bring up the Euthyphro Dilemma as an objection to this position.
The Euthyphro Dilemma comes from a conversation that took place between Socrates and Euthyphro in Plato's dialogue Euthyphro, where Socrates asks Euthyphro, "Is [a good deed] loved by the gods because it is [a good deed], or is it [a good deed] because it is loved by the gods?" In a mono-theistic sense, does God say something is good because it is good, or is something good because God says it is?
If you say that God says something is good because it is good, good would exist independently of God and therefore would mean that objective moral ethics and duties weren't given to us by God. Under this scenario, God would not be the moral law giver, but simply the moral law enforcer. Such a scenario would beg the question: who then is the moral law giver?
If you were to propose then that something is good because God says it is, this would be begging the question since we're saying now that God says something is true because He says it is. What makes God right and somebody who disagrees with Him wrong? One could say that God is right because He runs the show, but this would make morals arbitrary in the fact that God could have said anything was right or wrong, whether it be giving to the poor, caring for the sick, lying, pedophilia or anything else and it would have been right or wrong solely based upon God's whim! Running the show doesn't automatically make the policies of the one running the show right. Just look at all the corrupt governments out there today with their wicked and corrupt laws. How then, can we know if God is right or wrong in His moral policies for us? Simply put, we can't.
You see? No matter which option you choose in the Euthyphro Dilemma, you're going to run into some tough philosophical problems.
RESPONSE:
The most common response from Christians (as well as Muslims) to the Euthyphro Dilemma is the one made famous by St. Augustine of Hippo and later used by medieval Christian apologist Thomas Aquinas. There are a number of other responses, but I feel that this one is the most logically sound and easiest to understand.
Saint Augustine proposed that neither option of the Euthyphro Dilemma is the correct one and that the Euthyphro Dilemma commits the logical fallacy known as a false dilemma. A false dilemma is a proposition in which only a limited number of options are given when there are other options available. For instance, if I were to say that Ellen DeGeneres were either heterosexual or bi-sexual, this would be a false dilemma because I'm only giving you two options when there is another available, in this case that Ellen DeGeneres is a homosexual. With the Euthyphro Dilemma, you're given two options: a) God says something is good because it is good, or b) God says something is good because he just does. The problem here is that there's a third option that the Euthyphro Dilemma leaves out, and that's the possibility that God's commands are a reflection of His character and nature and are neither arbitrary or obtained from elsewhere. What Augustine proposed was that God says something is good because it is consistent with His nature, and that something is evil because it is contrary to His nature. For instance, Titus 1:2 tells us that God cannot lie, and so therefore it is wrong for us to do so since we are to follow after God. Goodness is anything that is consistent with God's nature, so therefore, evil is anything that contradicts God's nature.
Most philosophers agree that this response to the Euthyphro Dilemma would be successful if God's nature itself weren't something that should be questioned. However, this is not the case according to many Atheists, which is why in Part 2, we're going to go over the most common objections raised by Atheists to this response. Until then, have a blessed day and I'll talk to ya later!
Blessings,
Autumn6
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