A few thoughts on the Euthyphro dilemma

[simplexity]

Oh, the one I made up. Sorry, I wasn't sure if this was a serious conversation or not. Which one were you thinking of?

[DeistPaladin]

Before I get into your musings on ultimate standards of morality and Euthyphro's Dilemma, I feel the need to comment on why so many atheists aren't taking it very seriously. Part of it is we've been all over this ground in other posts. You aren't the first to discuss the moral argument here.

Another part has to do with what I call the pre-failure of apologetics. What is telling about Christian apologists is not what they offer but what they never offer.

Apologists have no store of magical artifacts that can heal the sick (like Paul's handkerchief) nor can they perform the kind of feats that Jesus promised they would (Mark 16). If Christians could heal the sick or cast out demons in front of scientists in a peer-reviewed setting with repeatable tests being possible, this would be compelling evidence.



Christians can't do this, it would seem.

All apologists can offer boil down to attempts at logical arguments, most of them over very abstract topics like "how can we justify the use of logic?" or "what is morality?" You'll hear many abstract ideas, mental constructs, hypothetical models, etc. This means Christianity fails to meet the burden of proof before we even examine these "arguments".

The more extraordinary the claim is, the more extraordinary the proof that is required. There is a proportional relationship at work here. If you doubt that, consider if I made a mundane claim like "I had lunch with my wife today" and contrast that with the extraordinary claim like "I had lunch with my deceased father today". The first is a mundane claim accepted on the basis of my own testimony and the absence of contrary evidence. The latter requires massive hard evidence (video footage, newspaper reports, etc) and even then skepticism would be rational.

Christianity makes claims most extraordinary and yet can offer only words and mental constructs as its "proof". It offers no hard evidence that can be repeatedly tested and peer-reviewed by the scientific community. Therefore, even if the logical arguments were sound, you have, at best, an untested and untestable hypothesis.

Hope this explains why when yet another theist comes by and says "You know, without God, how could we have logical laws in an ever changing universe..." or some other variation on that tune, we all groan and say, "Oh look, another one. Here we go again."

I'll get to your post later. But just wanted to offer a little background for your own understanding.

[DeistPaladin]

One objection to the first possibility is that this opens up the possibility of abhorrent commands. In one possible world, God would command that we should love our neighbor,

Mark 12:31 ...Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself...

but what is to prevent him from commanding that we should torture innocent babies for our pleasure?

Psalms 137:9 Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.

The typical apologetic response to this is that neither of these options are accurate. Instead, something is moral because it is in God's nature.

This logic is fallacious on many levels. First, it is begging the question. You know that God is good because God is good and that's how you know that God's commands are good because God is good and since God's commands are good that means God is good.

Second, making a bare assertion without evidence and presenting that unfounded assumption as "evidence" for something else is called the bare assertion fallacy. In this case, you've defined God's nature as "good" but have nothing aside from your bare assertion that this is the case.

Third, you're using this contrived definition to work toward a preconceived conclusion, which is also faulty logic. Before this contrived definition was created, you desired to reach the conclusion that goodness comes from God and to that end you created the definition that God is good.

Fourth, WTF does this even mean? Are there goodness molecules grafted into God's skin? Are they flowing through his blood like Mitichlorians? It's a vapid statement.

Fifth, since you believe that Yahweh (the god of the Bible) is God, how do you reconcile the very avatar of goodness in the universe being incapable of successfully resolving moral no-brainer issues like slavery? Or has your musings taken you to examine the morality of the god you proclaim to be the essence of goodness in the universe?

Any objective moral standard must be arbitrary, actually.

Actually, the opposite is true by definition. The word "objective" means that which exists free of any bias or judgment.

Any moral standards that must be decided by any being, however wise, powerful or inherently benevolent, is inherently subjective by definition.

Without objective morality, the standard is whatever the person decides it to be (least amount of suffering, for example).

This is a false dilemma. Morality is a function of how we treat our fellow sentient beings and how our actions impact their rights or well-being. Such things can lead to complex questions (moral dilemmas) that require our judgment (hence the term, "moral judgment") but that is not to say we throw our hands in the air and say, "well, anything goes I guess".

[libalchris]

clearly, if a god exists, morality exists apart from him. Anyone with half a brain realizes this. It isn't even incompatible with Christianity in any way, Christians just refuse to admit it because it would mean giving up their morality argument. It's easy to see: If God raped and tortured a baby, there would be no justifiable way to say that God is in any sense, morally good.

[Reforged]

Oh, the one I made up. Sorry, I wasn't sure if this was a serious conversation or not. Which one were you thinking of?

... I wasn't?