The Euthyphro Dilemma (Part 2)

In my last post, I went over the basics of the Euthyphro Dilemma and what I felt was the best refutation to it. As good as this refutation is, though, Atheists have come up with some objections to it. Before I begin, let's review what the Euthyphro Dilemma is and what I feel is the best response to it.

The Euthyphro Dilemma goes like this: If objective moral ethics and duties are grounded in God, that would mean that God says something is good because it is good, which would mean that objective moral ethics and duties didn't come from Him but are just enforced by Him, or that something is good because God says it is. However, this would make morals arbitrary and based on nothing. 

The response I offered in my last post was that neither option in the Euthyphro Dilemma is correct, but rather, God's moral standard for us is based upon his own moral nature. I will list the most common objections to this response and offer my comments.

1) How do you know God's nature is good? How do you know God is good and Satan is evil?

This is like asking how I know a bride is a woman and a groom isn't. A bride can't be anything but a woman and a groom cannot be a woman, just like God cannot be anything but a morally perfect being as God, by philosophical definition, is the greatest conceivable being, and that if we could conceive of any greater being, it would be God. If God were evil, he would not be worthy of worship and therefore, not the greatest conceivable being, therefore, by definition, not God. In other words, claiming that God could be evil would be just like me saying that a married man could be a bachelor. There is no possible world in which a married bachelor or an "evil god" could exist because such a thing is self-contradictory. If the creator of the universe were evil, he wouldn't be God, but rather, an evil creator of the universe. If the one we called God were really nothing more than just an evil creator of the universe, human morals would reflect upon this. Human morals would contradict this being's morals on all levels (i.e., unworthy of worship) and human morals would coincide with the one we call Satan's on all levels. In other words, Satan would be God and God would be Satan. However, notice that we're still calling the good one "God", because God, by definition, is the greatest conceivable being, and that if we could conceive of any being greater than that, it would be God. I highly doubt that anyone is going to say that Satan is a greater being than God on any level. Therefore, God is the good one and Satan is the evil one.

2) Come on, Autumn6! Don't give me that "Greatest Conceivable Being" crap! We all know greatness-making properties are subjective! What you may call "great" I may not!

Responding to this could take up an entire blog post on its own, so I'm going to be lazy and link to this article. 

3) I don't believe the God of the Bible is great at all!

The person saying this, if he were going to use this as an argument against our response to the Euthyphro Dilemma, must give us a knockdown argument against the greatness of the God of the Bible. Not only that, but he then must either give us an even greater conceivable being than the God of the Bible that doesn't contain logical contradictions, or demonstrate to us why it would be impossible for a greatest conceivable being (God) to even exist in the first place. If a god in question is not the greatest conceivable being, then this being is not God.

4) What caused God to have His nature?

God is uncaused, therefore His nature is uncaused. God's omnipotence, for instance, is not something God created for himself but exists along with his nature. We can say, therefore, the same thing about his moral nature.

5) God does things that are evil and contrary to His nature, such as commanding genocide, rape, killing of innocents, etc. In other words, God's morals contradict themselves, therefore, His nature is self-contradictory and His "greatness" destroyed...

God allowing and permitting evil is not the same thing as Him endorsing it. If God has morally sufficient reasons for allowing and permitting evil things then this ultimately means that His nature is still morally good, even if the means by which He carries out His tasks must consist of suffering and death. God doesn't have control over everything, as He's given us free will, therefore, there are certain things God doesn't like that He has to allow in order for His plan to be carried out on our behalf.

Genocide is mass murder. Murder is taking the life of an individual without God's permission. Therefore, when God permits the killing of an individual, this, by definition, isn't murder no more than President Obama killing Osama Bin Laden wasn't "murder", but rather, a justified killing.

Finally, God never permits anyone to forcibly copulate with anyone in the Bible. God never condones sex outside of marriage. See Deut. 22:25-27. It tells us that rapists are to be put to death. 

6) If God is omnipotent, why are you over hear saying he "cannot lie"?

Actually, the ability to lie would be a weakness, not a strength, as it would be the ability to fail. If I were to boast, saying "I can't lose!", this would be a greatness-making property I am attributing to myself, saying that I do not have the ability to lose. If it were possible for me to lose, this would diminish my greatness in a given aspect. Telling a woman that she "couldn't look bad even if she tried" would be a greatness-making property that I am attributing to her and she would see this as a great compliment to her beauty. When we say that God is omnipotent, we are not saying that God can do "anything" but rather, he is "all powerful". All-powerful beings CANNOT lose, CANNOT stop being all-powerful and CAN'T lose. All-good beings CANNOT do evil. God's omnipotence means maximal power, not possible weakness. God's moral perfection means maximal goodness, not possible evil, as if evil were even possible, God could not be all-good.

7) If God's Nature is uncaused, then God is not the author of what is right and wrong.

I agree! God isn't the author of what is right or wrong because if He were, moral laws would have been created by Him. Moral truths are dependent on God's existence but that doesn't mean that God created them, but rather, they are a property of God.....which leads us to and finally....

8) How do you know that these properties are good?

If God's properties weren't good, he wouldn't be the greatest conceivable being. Again, this is like asking me how I know brides do not have Y chromosomes.