My views on objective morality

[Redbeard The Pink]

The Euthypro Dilemma is what I've already been describing (though I didn't know it was called that until I looked it up)...

Many scholars believe that Plato’s Euthyphro is one of his first. Its early chronological position may explain why the Socratic dialog ends without resolution to the problem it raises, whether deeds are good because the gods approve or whether the gods approve of some deeds because they are good. This may also explain why so many atheists mistakenly believe the dilemma conclusively shows that divinity cannot be objectively grounded. What it really shows is that such atheists fail to consider the dilemma within the context of subsequent dialogs.

Plato presented the so-called Euthyphro dilemma in order to clear the way for his concept of The Good as the solution to the dilemma. The Good is a clearly monotheistic concept that was later developed and defined by pagan philosophers, like Plotinus, and Christian theologians like Augustine. The concept of The Good informs both the ontological proof of Anslem and Thomas of Aquinas’s Fourth Way. It also serves as the foundation for virtue ethics.

A cursory reading of a Wikipedia entry will give anyone the necessary history to understand the paradoxes’ place in moral theory. While it undermines simplistic notions of morality common in antiquity, it has no place in ethical theories since Plato. Only a very ill-informed atheist would rely on it to satisfy his immediate psychological need to reject in monotheistic moral claims.

So yeah, Mr. Redbeard, you did a fine job of rewriting the Wiki entry in your own words. To bad you lack the ability to understand why it's irrelevant and reveals your own ignorance.

The same goes for all of you that gave Kudos to his self-humiliation.

Wow. You're admonishing people for giving kudos to a post, now? Are you a child?


By the way, I came up with that argument on my own. I didn't know Euthypro's Dilemma existed as such until reading this thread.


What we're talking about is objective morality and whether God can be the source of it. You got really messy throwing words like "divinity" around, which may or may not have anything to do with the subject.


Your rejection, if I understand it correctly, is that God uses himself as the standard for goodness because he is the very essence of goodness (or something like that).


Aside from being completely circular, that still doesn't solve the problem you're having. If God decided to use his own qualities as the standard for good, then it's still arbitrary and based on nothing more than divine command.


If his qualities exist as the Objective standard for good whether he wants them to or not, then that means there's something that is capable of requiring God to adhere to such a standard. Even though God's qualities would be the basis for the rules, the actual source of moral authority wouldn't be God himself, it would be whatever authority he answers to.