The Euthyphro Dilemma - Matt Flannagan vs Jason Thibodeau

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_M19Rv52Og&feature=youtu.be

The Euthyphro dilemma ricochets

I. A favorite atheist objection to Christianity in general, and the moral argument for God in particular, is the Euthyphro dilemma. For a brief exposition:

i) Is an action right (merely) because God wills it? 

Or

ii) Does God will an action because it is right?

As formulated, if the Christian (or theist) opts for the first horn of the dilemma, then that seems to make morality an arbitrary divine fiat. 

Conversely, if the Christian (or theist) opts for the second horn of the dilemma, then that seems to make morality independent of God by grounding morality in a higher standard, apart from and above God. In that case, God's will is superfluous to ground morality.

II. Now, I've addressed the Euthyphro dilemma on many occasions, so I won't repeat myself here. Instead, I'd like to flip the objection. For it's easy to generate Euthyphro dilemmas for secular ethics. For instance:

1. Evolutionary ethics

Is an action right because we're hardwired to deem it right, or does the rightness of the action determine the rightness of our hardwiring? 

Same conundrum for Neo-Aristotelian naturalism. 

2. Contractarianism

Is an action right because the social contract makes it right, or does the rightness of the action determine the rightness of the social contract?

3. Consequentialism

Is an action right because the consequences make it right, or does the rightness of the action determine the rightness of the consequences? 

III. Finally, atheists object that grounding morality is God is an arbitrary stopping point. But isn't the objection reversible? Why isn't grounding morality in evolutionary psychology, consequences, or the social contract an arbitrary stopping-point? 

Confusion over Calvinism at McKnight's Blog

http://www.hollowayquarterly.com/2015/12/calvinism-and-confusion-at-mcknights.html

Upending the good?

On Facebook, Christian philosopher Jeremy Pierce commented on a post by (or hosted by) Arminian/Anabaptist NT scholar Scot McKnight:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2015/12/30/calvinism-and-pantheism-and-the-good-wesley-walker/

Pierce responded:

This is utterly weird. Scot McKnight issues a challenge to a view he keeps calling Calvinism, but it's a particular version of divine command theory that he turns out to be criticizing, not anything to do with Calvinism. 

The issues are not tied together in any way. They're about different things. One is about God's relationship with the events that take place in creation. The other is about God's relationship with moral truths. Calvinists hold that God is sovereign over every event that occurs, even our free choices. Divine command theorists hold that God's commands are what make moral truths true. You can be a divine command theorist without being a Calvinist (as John Locke was), and you can be a Calvinist without being a divine command theorist (as Gottfried Leibniz was). 

And not even every version of divine command theory would be subject to McKnight's objection. Robert Adams and Bill Alston's versions of divine command theory wouldn't be, since they ground God's commands ultimately in God's nature and not in arbitrary, groundless commands. So it's just a mistake to think that these are arguments that are even about Calvinism, never mind serious criticisms of it.

The devil's familiar

Traditionally, cats are regarded as the devil's familiars. As you can clearly see from this video, a cat lives up to its infernal reputation by sabotaging a critique of the Euthyphro dilemma:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYNHUFgdpk4&feature=player_embedded

Euthyphro’s Dilemma and the Goodness of God

http://augustinecollective.org/augustine/euthyphros-dilemma-and-the-goodness-of-god

Monstrous bedroom furniture

Taken to theology, then, one gets voluntarism in the doctrine of God. God does not have an eternal nature of character; he is pure power and will. God is whatever God decides to be. The result is that the “good” is whatever God commands and God does not command anything because it is good. It is good only because God commands it.

Voluntarism, in the form of the “deus absconditus” (hidden God), was a metaphysical compliment Luther paid to God. He thought this protected God’s deity. This idea was taken up by certain Reformed theologians and appears throughout post-Reformation history when some Calvinists (and others) claim that “Whatever God does is automatically good and right just because God does it.”

This makes God truly monstrous because God, then, has no virtuous character. “Good” becomes whatever God decides and does and, ultimately, becomes meaningless because it has no essential connection with anything we know as “the good.”

So far I’ve blamed Luther for injecting nominalism/voluntarism into Protestant theology (while acknowledging that Lutheran theology is not per se nominalist). But just as guilty is Zwingli who adamantly asserted that God can do whatever he wills and there is no reason for what he wills other than he wills it.

This is the underlying problem in the “young, restless, Reformed” movement. It isn’t just their Calvinism; it’s their nominalistic voluntarism in their doctrine of God. This God could simply change his mind and decide that salvation is by works and not by grace. His faithfulness becomes a thin thread of moment-by-moment decision to stand by his promises, but nothing internal to God governs him so that faithfulness is what he is.

The word “trust” in “trust God,” then takes on two very radically different meanings. To the nominalist/voluntarist it means “hope God decides to keep his promises.” Nothing makes that certain. God has no eternal character that keeps him from breaking his promises. If he decided to, then that would be good because “good” is whatever God decides and does. To the realist “trust” means “confidence that God cannot break his promises” because God is goodness itself and cannot lie or contradict himself or go against his word.

To be sure, not all Calvinists are nominalists, but my experience is that many of them suddenly become nominalists/voluntarists when pushed to explain in what sense God is good in light of his decree to NOT save many people he COULD save because salvation is totally his own decision and accomplishment apart from any cooperation by creatures. The answer is usually “Well, whatever God does is good just because God does it.” That’s sheer nominalism/voluntarism and it empties God of any stable, enduring, eternal character such that he could, if he chose to, change his mind and decide not to save anyone. And it empties the word “good” of any meaning. It is simply whatever God does, period.

Nominalism is, in my opinion, the ultimate theological error. I won’t call it heresy (although the Catholic Church does and for good reasons).

The only way to avoid sheer relativism in a nominalistic cultural atmosphere is with divine command ethics. “Evil is what God says no to.” But the question remains and lingers and inquiring minds want to know “Why?” Why does God say no to, say, lying? Is there something instrinsically wrong, bad, harmful about lying or does God just not like it for whatever reason or none at all?

Logos theology says that there is a link, an intrinsic connection between God’s character and right and wrong in the world. And between God’s truth and ours. “All truth is God’s truth.” Reason, healed by grace, reaches upwards to God by the light of revelation and faith, and is capable of grasping, to some extent, the truth, beauty and goodness of God embedded in creation. Sure, because of our finitude and fallenness, we will never, at least in this world, have a full or perfect grasp of them. And our grasp of them will never be autonomous. We need revelation and faith, the “light of the mind” that Augustine talked about, illumination and wisdom from God. But there’s no arbitrariness in truth, beauty and goodness, not even in God himself. They are embedded in him, his eternal nature, and shine forth into his creation. Christian philosophy seeks them out and, by God’s grace, can grasp them at least partially.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2012/12/the-almost-completely-unknown-difference-that-makes-all-the-difference/

i) Roger Olson’s animosity towards Calvinism has become so deranged that his latest description is simply unrecognizable. He’s like a little boy in whose vivid imagination the bedroom furniture assumes ominous, menacing shapes in the dark. The boy cries out to his parents. When they switch on the lights, the “monstrous” furniture instantly reverts to ordinary, inanimate objects.

ii) Is this really how Calvinism defined God?: “God does not have an eternal nature of character; he is pure power and will. God is whatever God decides to be”?

Just recently, Randal Rauser was attacking traditional Reformed theology because it’s too closely aligned with classic Christian theism, viz. divine simplicity, timelessness, impassibility. Well, that’s hardly equivalent to “God is whatever God decides to be.”

Likewise, Reformed theism traditionally ascribes immutability to God. Well, if God is immutable, then, by definition, God has an eternal character. If God is immutable, then, by definition, God can’t go back on his promises.

In addition, Reformed theology ascribes various moral attributes to God. So he’s not “pure power and will.”

iii) The Calvinist God is not the deus absconditus. Rather, Reformed theism is based on revealed theology.

iv) Even if his characterization of Zwingli was correct, the influence of Calvin and the Westminster Confession dwarfs the influence of Zwingli in the development of Reformed theology.

v) Olson is hung up on phrases like “Whatever God does is automatically good and right just because God does it,” “Well, whatever God does is good just because God does it.”

These are shorthand expressions. By definition, whatever God does is good given how God is defined. These shorthand expressions take God’s goodness for granted. Whatever God does is good because God is good. Whatever God does is good because it is done by a good God.

vi) “My experience is that many of them suddenly become nominalists/voluntarists when pushed to explain in what sense God is good in light of his decree to NOT save many people he COULD save because salvation is totally his own decision and accomplishment apart from any cooperation by creatures.”

a) But that begs the question. Olson is judging reprobation by his (selective) Arminian standards. But there’s no onus on a Calvinist to explain God’s goodness in light of reprobation unless you begin with the prior assumption that reprobation is contrary to God’s goodness. So Olson is reasoning in a vicious circle. 

b) Moreover, there are Arminians who admit that God could save more lost souls than he does, but God refrains from doing so because his goal is to strike an optimal balance between the saints and the damned.

vii) “The result is that the ‘good’ is whatever God commands and God does not command anything because it is good. It is good only because God commands it.”

a) Olson is paraphrasing the Euthyphro dilemma. Notice that he seems to accept the Euthyphro dilemma. He opts for the horn that says God commands something because it is good. But as many atheists point out, that makes God answerable to an ultimate source and standard of goodness over and above God. That makes goodness independent of God. That subjects God himself to a superior good.

b) But it’s a false dilemma. As a Christian blogger (Andrew Fulford) recently put it: God’s commands are “simply the will of God inscribed in our very nature. God tells us to act the way he made us to act, and when we act the way he designed us to, we flourish, not wither.”

viii) “This makes God truly monstrous because God, then, has no virtuous character. ‘Good’ becomes whatever God decides and does and, ultimately, becomes meaningless because it has no essential connection with anything we know as ‘the good.’”

Notice the illicit slide from what is good to what we perceive is good. But that’s clearly fallacious.

For instance, God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac didn’t seem to be good at the time the command was issued. It’s only in retrospect that we’re in a position to appreciate the wisdom of God’s command. What made God’s command to Abraham a test of faith is that it seemed to contradict God’s promise.

ix) “All truth is God’s truth.”

Like other tautologies, that platitude is both unobjectionable and useless. By definition, whatever is true is true, but that doesn’t tell you what’s true. You can’t use that tautology to distinguish truth from falsehood. It has no discriminatory force.

Ethics, atheism, and the Euthyphro dilemma

I’m going to discuss the Euthyphro dilemma by comparing and contrasting two different atheists on morality. Let’s begin by outlining the nature of the so-called dilemma.

If, on the one hand, God commands or forbids something because it’s right or wrong, then it’s right and wrong apart God. God is not the ultimate source of morality. Rather, God himself is subject to a more ultimate standard.

If, on the other hand, God’s bare command or prohibition is what makes something right or wrong, then good and evil are arbitrary and vacuous. Arbitrary because there’s no underlying rationale for the command or prohibition. And that, in turn, renders good and evil meaningless, for they are consistent with any command or opposing command.

Here is how a prominent atheist states the alleged dilemma, with special emphasis on one horn of the alleged dilemma:

Translated into contemporary terms, the question Socrates is asking is this: Are morally good actions morally good simply in virtue of God’s favoring them? Or does God favor them because they are–independently of his favoring them–morally good?

Divine command theory says that what is good is good only because God has commanded it; there is nothing more to an act’s being good than that God command it.

[According to] divine independence theory, the goodness of an action is a feature that is independent of, and antecedent to God’s willing it.

The two theories differ on what accounts for this congruence. DCT says that it is God’s command that explains why the good acts are good, while DIT says that it is the goodness of the acts that explains why God commanded them.

The way to bring out the difference is to consider a case of an act that we’d all antecedently agree is morally wrong–say, torturing an innocent child. If DCT is correct, then the following counterfactual is true: If God had commanded us to torture innocent children, then it would have been morally right to do so. DIT, however, entails the following: If God had commanded us to torture innocent children, then God would not have been perfectly good.

Only the theorist who believes that right and wrong are independent of God’s commands could have any basis for thinking she or he knows in advance what God would or would not command. If, as DCT says, an act’s being good just consists in its being chosen by God, then there’s nothing about the action in advance of its being chosen or rejected that would enable us to determine what attitude God would take toward it in some other possible world. “Good” for the divine command theorist is synonymous with “commanded by God.” …there is nothing that is inherently good or bad, and thus nothing that explains God’s choosing which acts to endorse and which acts to prohibit.

I doubt that there are many people who really believe DCT. If there were, then there would be fewer interpretive difficulties surrounding those stores in the Bible that depict God commanding actions that we would ordinarily take to be moral atrocities.

The Bible is full of accounts of God’s killing, displacing, or otherwise seriously smiting presumably innocent people who had the misfortune of belonging to a tribe whose leaders had threatened to impede his ambitions for the Israelites…Sometimes, there’s not even a pretext that the doomed people are morally at fault: The only “crime” committed by the Canaanites was living in a land God wanted for his people.

The question can be asked, then, Why ought one to obey God? The fact that this question can be asked, that it’s comprehensible, that it makes sense, is sufficient proof that the mere existence of an all-powerful Creator is not enough to generate a realm of moral fact.

Louise Antony, “Atheist as Perfect Piety,” R. Garcia & N. King, Is Goodness Without God Good Enough?: A Debate on Faith, Secularism, and Ethics (Rowman & Littlefield 2009), 71,72,73,79,80.

Before introducing the second atheist, I’m going to comment on these excerpts:

i) She says torturing an innocent child is something “we’d all antecedently agree is morally wrong.” But as an atheist, she’s in no position to posit that claim. For one thing, it seems to be empirically false. After all, there are people who torture innocent children. Do they think what they are doing is morally wrong?

ii) Furthermore, even if we think it’s morally wrong, that doesn’t make it morally wrong. From an atheistic standpoint, we might say natural selection brainwashed us into cherishing children because that sentiment promotes the survival of the species. But once you become aware of the fact that you were brainwashed, you no longer feel obliged to comply with your conditioning.

iii) In addition, there are secular utilitarians who could propose a scenario in which it’s morally permissible or even obligatory to torture a child. Take a variation on the ticking timebomb scenario. A terrorist won’t divulge the information needed to prevent nuking Chicago unless we torture, or threaten to torture, his child. The harm done to one child is offset by the harm done to thousands of children unless we torture his child. 

iv) She also cites biblical commands which she classifies as “moral atrocities.” But Bible writers didn’t think those were moral atrocities.

v) Furthermore, many cultures, both ancient and modern, commit similar “atrocities.” Do the perpetrators think they are committing “moral atrocities?

So it’s hard for her to come up with any cases “we’d all antecedently agree is morally wrong.”

I’m not being pedantic, here. She’s not entitled to systematically beg the question when illustrating her thesis. She needs to discharge her burden of proof.

vi) She says no pretext for executing the Canaanites is even given. But that’s willfully ignorant. The divine command is not a bare command. It supplies a rationale, implicating the Canaanites in idolatry and immorality.

vii) She also says “there’s nothing about the action in advance of its being chosen or rejected that would enable us to determine what attitude God would take toward it in some other possible world.”

But that confuses the epistemology of ethics with the ontology of ethics. Whether something is good or bad, and whether we know ahead of time whether it’s good or bad are separate issues.

viii) Finally, she makes the eccentric claim the mere ability to ask why we ought to obey God is sufficient proof that the mere existence of an all-powerful Creator is not enough to generate a realm of moral fact.

But that’s confused. At one level we can simply accept the morality of a divine command on the authority of a wise and benevolent God. That’s sufficient reason for us to accept it.

But that doesn’t make the command itself groundless. God can have good reason for what he commands. And knowing that God has a good reason is distinct from knowing what reason he has.

ix) There’s also a difference between moral imperatives and a moral obligation to obey a divine command. We can have a moral obligation to obey a divine command even if the command itself is not a moral imperative.

For instance, God commanding Abraham to leave Ur is not, itself a moral absolute. Rather, God commanded Abraham to leave Ur because Abraham leaving Ur is part of God’s long-range plan to redeem the world. His command is purposeful.

Abraham has a duty to obey God’s command, but not because leaving Ur is intrinsically obligatory. Rather, God has a good reason for command Abraham to leave Ur. And Abraham ought to trust God’s wisdom, even if God didn’t reveal his reason to Abraham.

x) Apropos (ix), that type of obligation sidesteps the Euthyphro dilemma. God’s command to Abraham isn’t arbitrary. Rather, God’s command is explicable in reference to God’s overarching plan (whether or not that explanation is available to Abraham). By the same token, it’s not independent of God.

Let’s now quote another atheist:

If value is tied to life, its content will depend on particular forms of life, and the most salient reasons it gives us will depend, even in a realist conception, on our own form of life. This is how a realist account can accommodate one of the things that make subjectivism seem most plausible, namely the fact that what we find self-evidently valuable is overwhelmingly contingent on the biological specifics of our form of life. Human good and bad depend in the first instance on our natural appetites, emotions, capacities, and interpersonal bonds, If we were more like bees or lions, what seems good to us would be very different, a point that Street emphasizes.

[Quoting Street]: “Imagine, for instance, that we had evolved more along the lines of lions, so that males in relatively frequent circumstances had a strong unreflective evaluative tendency to experience the killing of offspring that were not his own as “demanded” by the circumstances, and so that females, in turn, experienced no strong unreflective tendency to “hold it against” a male when he killed her offspring in such circumstances, on the contrary becoming receptive to his advances soon afterwards.”

T. Nagel, Mind and Cosmos (Oxford 2012), 119.

i) Now what’s striking about this argument is that it could easily be retrofitted to account for many Biblical commands and prohibitions. Instead of blind evolution, we have a Creator God who designed different types of creatures with corresponding appetites, emotions, capacities, and interpersonal bonds. Human obligations would be keyed to human nature–the nature with which God endowed us. Our duties would be engineered into us.

That sidesteps the Euthyphro dilemma, for commands and prohibitions of this kind aren’t good “only” because they are commanded. There is “more to it” than the bare command. Rather, you have an inherent obligation that’s inherent in the nature of the agent. Good for the creature because that’s how the creature was made.

Conversely, this isn’t good apart from God. Rather, it’s contingent on how God designed us.

ii) I’d add that this doesn’t exhaust all types of divine commands. For example, Scripture commands us to be holy because God is holy. What grounds that command is the nested relationship between the divine exemplar and its human exemplification. If God is good–indeed, the summum bonum–then it’s good to be an instance of God’s goodness.

That, too, sidesteps the Euthyphro dilemma. On the one hand this isn’t arbitrary or vacuous. It’s grounded in God’s own nature. But by the same token, it’s not something over and above God himself. 

iii) Likewise, we have a standing obligation to worship God–because God is intrinsically worthy of our worship. That also sidesteps the Euthyphro dilemma. It’s not a good command for the command’s sake. Rather, it’s imbedded in something ultimately greater. We should love the good because it’s good. And God’s goodness is exemplary goodness. There is no higher good, be it possible or actual.

A false Euthyphro dilemma

A Quick Euthyphro Dilemma Reply to Craig's Argument Against Atheistic Significance, Meaning, and Purpose

 

1. Either (a) the purposes God sets for our lives are significant because God wills them, or (b) God wills them because they're significant.

2. If (a), then what counts as a significant life is arbitrary.

3. If (b), then what counts as a significant life is independent of God

---------------

4. Therefore, what counts as a significant life is either arbitrary or independent of God.

http://exapologist.blogspot.com/2012/07/a-quick-euthypro-dilemma-against-craigs.html

That’s a false dilemma. For instance, what makes the life of a dolphin significant isn’t interchangeable with what makes the life of a man significant. That’s because a dolphin is a different kind of creature, with a different habitat.

The respective significance of their lives isn’t simply due to God’s sheer will, but to God’s design. On the one hand, that’s not arbitrary. Rather, that’s grounded in the nature of the creature, as well as the nature of world to which the creature is preadapted. On the other hand, that’s not independent of God.

Exbrainer hasn’t made any intellectual progress since I first debated him, years ago. He’s not smart enough to be an atheist. No one is.

Euthyphro Examined

In the comments on my Abortion and Reppert post, Jayman asked me a question regarding the grounding of morality which I would like to expand on here. I had originally stated in response to him:

I already alluded to this earlier when I said that human rights aren't arbitrary because they're rooted in Theism. That still applies. I'm a Divine Command Theorist, so what makes something moral or immoral is the command of God (which is formulated by His nature). But if you are a secularist, then I see no reason at all why you should believe in any morality whatsoever, let alone human rights.

Jayman responded:

I'm a Christian but do not subscribe to the notion that something is good SOLELY because God says it is good. Such a view of ethics seems to make good and evil nothing more than the arbitrary decision of God. But perhaps your cryptic remark about God's nature means you have something else in mind.

To clarify my “cryptic remark” as well as to show what kind of Divine Command Theorist I am, I would like to offer the following discussion on the Euthyphro dilemma. This was summed up on the Moral Philosophy site as follows (all italics in the original):

The most common argument against divine command theory is the Euthyphro dilemma. The argument gets its name from Plato’s Euthyphro dialogue, which contains the inspiration for it. The Euthyphro dilemma is introduced with the question Does God command the good because it is good, or is it good because it is commanded by God? Each of the two possibilities identified in this question are widely agreed to present intractable problems for divine command theory.

Suppose that the divine command theorist takes the first horn of the dilemma, asserting that God commands the good because it is good. If God commands the good because it is good, then he bases his decision what to command on what is already morally good. Moral goodness, then, must exist before God issues any commands, otherwise he wouldn’t command anything. If moral goodness exists before God issues any commands, though, then moral goodness is independent of God’s commands; God’s commands aren’t the source of morality, but merely a source of information about morality. Morality itself is not based in divine commands.

Suppose, then, that the divine commands theorist takes the second horn of the dilemma, asserting that the good is good because it is commanded by God. On this view, nothing is good until God commands it. This, though, raises a problem too: if nothing is good until God commands it, then what God commands is completely morally arbitrary; God has no moral reason for commanding as he does; morally speaking, he could just as well have commanded anything else. This problem is exacerbated when we consider that God, being omnipotent, could have commanded anything at all. He could, for example, have commanded polygamy, slavery, and the killing of the over-50s. If divine command theory is true, then had he done so then these things would be morally good. That doesn’t seem right, though; even if God had commanded these things they would still be morally bad. Divine command theory, then, must be false.

The flaw of this argument is telegraphed by the wishy-washy ending of the "second horn." While the first horn of the dilemma is matter-of-fact, the second horn must resort to “That doesn’t seem right” language. Obviously, the second horn of the problem is the weak point of the argument.

And we can see why when we consider any standard. If we say something must be the standard, then we must define what that standard is. For instance, we say that light at the wavelength of 620-750 nm and a frequency of 400-484 THz is “red.” The label “red” is not what is important, for it is called different things in different languages (e.g., rojo in Spanish); therefore, let us say that we have defined light that is at 620-750 nm and a frequency of 400-484 THz as X.

Suppose that we create a sensor that requires light to be X in order for a machine to work properly. Do the limits of how X is defined matter then? They very much do. If I build a machine expecting X to be a wavelength of 620-750 nm and someone sends a wavelength of 600 nm, my machine ought to do nothing. If it does do something, then clearly there is a malfunction of the sensor.

Is that arbitrary? It depends on how you look at it. Sure it’s possible to create the sensor to operate at different wavelengths than the one chosen; but once one is chosen, then the sensor must have that wavelength in order for the machine to properly work. One could argue that which wavelength is chosen is arbitrary, but it is a necessary function of the machine working that some wavelength be chosen.

However, further suppose that I am pleased with the color red and I want the machine to work when there is red light; so I design the sensor with that in mind. Is the fact that the machine runs on the color red arbitrary, or is it instead a reflection of my nature and my desires?

While we could in theory expect sensors to work at different colors, in actuality they never will because I like red that much. Is red therefore arbitrary? No, because I am who I am and that’s the way that I wanted it, and therefore red becomes necessary because of my nature.

In a similar way, we have morality. People ought to behave in a certain manner. But where did that standard come from? God’s commands, which are a reflection of His nature.

See, ultimately God is the standard of what is good. There is nothing higher than God that we could point to and say, “God, in order to be good, must be/do that.” He is, by definition, the highest possible good. Therefore, anything He does is by definition good.

Now one could argue, as the Moral Philosophy site did, that that means that God could command slavery, genocide, holocausts or any number of such things. However, God could not have done so, for then God would have a different nature then the one He has. A different God could have commanded those things and been morally good in doing so; this God (Who happens to be the real God) cannot do so.

And note that it is precisely because God is Who He is that it “doesn’t seem” like an alternate morality would be just.

For further takes on the dilemma, you can look at the following too:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/07/euthyphro-dilemma.html

http://www.frame-poythress.org/frame_articles/1993Euthyphro.htm

And a global search of T-blog for all references:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/search?q=euthyphro

Therefore, I must conclude: News of Divine Command Theory's demise has been vastly overstated.

The Euthyphro dilemma

John W. Loftus said:

“When it comes to the Euthyphro Dilemma, I've already answered both your objections and Frame's objections here, even though what I wrote was before I looked at anything you wrote. What do you say in response to what I wrote? Come on. Give it a try. Your whole apologetical strategy is at stake.”

Several false opening moves:

i) TAG is not my “whole apologetic strategy.”

ii) Even if it were, TAG is primarily concerned with epistemology, not ethics. What precondition must obtain for knowledge to obtain? That’s the core argument.

Even if a Van Tilian had no answer to the Euthyphro dilemma, that would hardly scuttle the appeal to TAG.

It’s possible to mount a transcendental argument for ethics. But TAG is not dependent on that extension.

“I'll read your response and see where it goes from there, okay? But your attempts are already doomed to failure.”

Sounds like something the Borg would say: “Resistance is futile!”

Unfortunately for Loftus, the prospect of being assimilated to Seven-of-Nine in a cat-suit has compensatory benefits for which John Loftus is a sorry substitute.

So if Loftus wants to tempt me over to the dark side, Mephistopheles will need to sweeten the deal.

“Would you be willing to give up presuppositional apologetics if I can show you wrong here?”

Since I’ve never been a chemically pure Van Tilian, I don’t know which component of my apologetic apparatus he thinks is vulnerable.

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/02/transcendental-theism.html

“And if it's a stalemate between us, you still lose, because you can only be sure of your faith to the same degree as you can defend your position on the Euthyphro.”

This goes awry on several grounds:

i) Even if I had no answer to the Euthyphro dilemma, I can have many reasons for believing in God irrespective of the Euthyphro dilemma.

The better part of wisdom lies in learning to distinguish between the answers we can live without and the answers we cannot live without.

ii) You act as if I enjoy direct control over my level of certitude. As if I had a knob or dial that I could manipulate to raise or lower my level of certitude at will.

But my faith is not adjustable. It simply is. It doesn’t come to me in degrees. I can know more quantify my faith in God than I can quantify my belief in the external world, or other minds.

iii) In doing apologetics we try to analyze the rational grounds for our faith. To tease tacit knowledge out into the open.

And this can be done up to a point. But I agree with Cardinal Newman about the illative sense. We know more than we can ever say or ever prove.

Apologetics can only scratch the surface. There’s a whole dimension of religious experience that remains in reserve because it’s essentially private rather than public. Something accessible to an insider rather than an outsider.

As to what he wrote, most of it consists in a false dilemma which I already exposed in my critique of Russell. So I’ll confine myself to a mopping up operation:

“It does no good to step back behind the commands of God to God’s purported nature at all. For we’d still want to know whether or not God’s nature is good. God cannot be known to be good here either, without a standard of goodness that shows he is good. For unless there is standard that shows God is good beyond the mere fact that God declares that his nature is good, we still don’t know whether God is good.”

i) Notice how Loftus is shifting ground. This is not the Euthyphro dilemma. The Euthyphro dilemma is concerned with the ontological question of what makes something right or wrong, not the epistemic question of how we can know something is right or wrong.

ii) Loftus is diverting attention away from the order of being to the order of knowing. That’s a bait-and-switch tactic.

And it doesn’t even work at that level. Suppose we judge the goodness of God by our moral intuitions. Okay, but what’s the source and standard of our moral intuitions? All Loftus has done is to push the original question back a step.

“Furthermore, we usually call someone good when they make good choices. So an additional question here is whether or not God has ever made any good choices. To choose means there were alternatives to choose from. Did God at any point in the past ever choose his supposedly good nature?”

A moral agent doesn’t choose his moral character for the obvious reason that he chooses according to his moral character. His character is a precondition of choice, not a consequence of choice. Otherwise, he would be amoral.

“Besides, there are several ethical systems of thought that do not require a prior belief in God, like Social Contract Theories, Utilitarianism, Virtue Ethics, Kantianism, and John Rawls’ theory of justice.”

That’s beside the point. The question at issue is not whether there are secular alternatives on the market, but whether these are successful alternatives to Christian ethics.

“Even Christian philosopher Thomas V. Morris admits that…”

We need to distinguish between opinion and argument. Even if Loftus could quote a Christian whose opinion agrees with his, that’s not the same thing an argument. The question at issue is what supporting argument underwrites the opinion.

Continuing with Morris:

“It has…been argued in various ways over the past century that the evolutionary process somehow provides a framework of moral reference. Basic human instincts could be cited as loci for the moral constraints needed in society. The physical, survival, functional needs of men in society or community could act as moral matrices for the guiding of moral motions…there are many possible bases or explanations for moral motions in an impersonal universe. They could easily have arisen from evolutionary or community survival needs, for example, and consequently, when identified as a human ‘aspiration,’ the practice of making moral distinctions could be said to be ‘fulfilled’ when it is successfully functional within those contexts.”

i) Notice that Morris is summarizing one version of secular ethics. That doesn’t mean he agrees with evolutionary ethics.

ii) The argument begs the question. If and only if the survival of the human species is good can you then mount a utilitarian argument for the common good.

But why would a secularist say the survival of our species is good? Appealing to instinct will hardly suffice, for that either begs the question or pushes the question back a step. Is this a good instinct or a bad instinct?

“Even if Christians did have objective moral standards, they cannot be objectively certain that they know them, or that they know how they apply to specific real life cases!”

i) Assuming that this is true, so what? This isn’t generated by the Euthyphro dilemma? This isn’t generating the Euthyphro dilemma.

ii) Why should this be a necessary condition of moral valuation? To quote something that Dr. Anderson said in another context: “Loftus seems to be assuming that S's knowing p entails that p is indubitable for S or incorrigible for S. But why think that? Why should Calvinists (or anyone else) be committed to such an implausible Cartesianism?

iii) Within Calvinism, God’s preceptive will doesn’t operate in a vacuum. Rather, his preceptive will works in conjunction with his general and special providence.

“Since Dr. Craig earlier mentioned Hitler, Auschwitz, and Dachau in his apologetics book, consider this response: Germany was a Christian nation—the heart of the Lutheran Protestant Reformation! How could a Christian people allow these evil deeds to happen and even be his willing executioners?”

Several things go wrong here:

i) This is irrelevant to the Euthyphro dilemma.

ii) It is also unresponsive to Craig’s reasoning: “If life ends at the grave, then it makes no difference whether one has lived as a Stalin or as a saint.…”

How does the failure of the church in Germany undermine the logic of Craig’s observation?

iii) Loftus fails to distinguish between Christian theology and Christian ethics. It’s perfectly consistent with Christian theology for Christians to be morally inconsistent. Christians are sinners. Christian theology consistently predicts that Christians will be inconsistent with their code of conduct.

iv) Luther was a notorious anti-Semite. That’s obviously unscriptural given the Jewish character of the Bible.

v) The Christian character of Germany was first eroded by the Enlightenment, and further eroded by Darwinism, higher criticism, and the like.

vi) In a country where you had mass infant baptism, whether Lutheran or Catholic, the room for nominal religious affiliation is enormous.

vii) Christians have prior social obligations and concentric social obligations. We should care for our neighbor, but a Christian father also has an obligation to care for his family, and, given a choice, his familial obligations take precedence over neighbor-love.

Finally, a couple of the Christian commenters over at DC scored direct hits:

At 12:53 AM, January 31, 2006, Genius said...

I think your approach the divine command theory involves a flawed approach to the world.

Lets say water is wet. Is it wet because it is water or is it water because it is wet? This is a nonsense question - furthermore it is a nonsense thought experiment to consider non-wet water (ok there might be wet stuff that is not water but that just points out the lack of perfection of the example).

From this perspective in a sense it is nonsense to propose, "if god was not benevolent would you support him" question has a practical implication because you believe it is fundamentally untrue.

I.e. the higher standard and God's standard are fundamentally the same neither is "created" by the other any more than water is created by wetness.

Or more clearly it is a bit like saying if 1+1=2 does the 2 create 1+1 or does 1+1 create 2?

At 9:57 AM, February 03, 2006, Jeremy Pierce said...

This last point is worth paying attention to. The problems raised in Euthyphro-like questions can be raised about any meta-ethical view. If morality is based, for instance, on whatever rational people would agree to follow if they were concerned only about self-interest (which many contemporary social contract theorists of morality believe), then we have to ask a Euthyphro-like question. Is it good merely because rationally self-interested people would prefer it, or would they prefer it because it's good? The same line of questioning could very easily be raised about any meta-ethical grounding for ethics.