Euthyphro dilemma

[Angrboda]

The first horn "is something good because the gods will it" or
The second horn "do the gods will it because it is good?” but now
The third option (that has no unwanted conclusion): it is not God's will that defines the good but his unchanging nature that governs his will and his commands to us.

With a third option, there is no dilemma. The defeater of the dilemma is to point out that God's goodness is a necessary property (which is a third option). Goodness is not a property that God could have lacked. As the greatest conceivable being, there is no possible world where God is not good.

[4] Some theists suppose that the Euthyphro dilemma can be avoided by basing morality on the necessary attributes of God's character rather than directly on His condemnation. It may seem that to say that God condemns rape as wrong because His character is necessarily good avoids the dilemma, but this is an illusion. For example, Greg Bahnsen argued that in the Euthyphro Plato set up a "false antithesis": "The truth of the matter is that good is not independent of God. Certain behavior is good because God approves of it, and God approves of it because it is the creaturely expression of His holiness -- in other words, it is good. To be good is to be like God, and we can only know what behavior is good if God reveals and approves of it. The important point is that good is what God approves and cannot be ascertained independent of Him. . . "(Theonomy in Christian Ethics, p. 284)

. . . . . .

In any case, appealing to God's character only postpones the problem since the dilemma can be reformulated in terms of His character. Is God's character the way it is because it is good or is God's character good simply because it is God's character? Is there an independent standard of good or does God's character set the standard? If God's character is the way it is because it is good, then there is an independent standard of goodness by which to evaluate God's character. For example, suppose God condemns rape because of His just and merciful character. His character is just and merciful because mercy and justice are good. Since God is necessarily good, God is just and merciful. According to this independent standard of goodness, being merciful and just is precisely what a good character involves. In this case, even if God did not exist, one could say that a merciful and just character is good. Human beings could use this standard to evaluate people's character and actions based on this character. They could do this whether or not God exists.

Suppose God's character is good simply because it is God's character. Then if God's character was cruel and unjust, these attributes would be good. In such a case God might well condone rape since this would be in keeping with His character. But could not one reply that God could not be cruel and unjust since by necessity God must be good? It is true that by necessity God must be good. But unless we have some independent standard of goodness then whatever attributes God has would by definition be good: God's character would define what good is. It would seem that if God could not be cruel and unjust, then God's character must necessarily exemplify some independent standard of goodness. Using this standard one could say that cruelty and injustice are not good whether God exists or not.

This attempt to avoid the dilemma by basing objective morality on God's necessary character has another problem. It assumes that there would not be an objective morality without God. However, this seems to beg the question against an objective atheistic ethics. After all, why would the nonexistence of God adversely affect the goodness of mercy, compassion, and justice? Yet, this is precisely what would happen if being part of God's character created the goodness of mercy, compassion and justice. This point can perhaps be made in another way. One could affirm the objective immorality of rape and deny the existence of God with perfect consistency. There is no contradiction in claiming "Rape is objectively evil and God does not exist."

https://infidels.org/library/modern/mich...rtin3.html

"Goodness is not a property that God could have lacked."
Whether or not God could have lacked the property says nothing about whether the standard of goodness resides with God, or outside of him. Those are the only two options, and dressing it up with fancy terms like "necessary property" do nothing to evade the dilemma.

"As the greatest conceivable being, there is no possible world where God is not good."
Again, this doesn't resolve the dilemma. The question is not, "Is God good?" but rather, "Why is God considered to be good?" Your objections about necessary properties and such do nothing to resolve that question. You're still stuck on the horns of the dilemma, you've simply introduced a red herring. Either the standard of goodness comes from God, in which case it's arbitrary, or it comes from outside him, and he is not the source of morals. There is no third place it can come from. Moreover, the ontological argument is fatally flawed, so bringing things like "the greatest conceivable being" into the equation only undermines your argument. Essentially, all you're saying is that God is good because you define him to be so; that isn't any kind of "third option."