Euthyphro dilemma

[Neo-Scholastic]

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….The question is not, "Is God good?" but rather, "Why is God considered to be good?"…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…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."

Stomping your feet doesn’t change a thing. There really is no problem with God being both the standard of goodness and its source. He is what He is. We don’t define that God is good; we recognize that He is. It’s just like accepting the value of pi as fixed independent of what anyone thinks it should be or even if no one around to know it’s value. Pi is what it is by necessity. The only thing that is arbitrary is your choice of whether or not to accept it, i.e. do you demand that God conform His nature to what you think is good or do you conform your nature to His goodness?

Now I know that a wooden and literal reading of the Bible presents God anthropomorphically – commanding this and commanding that, which is fine for a shallow exegesis. And I can understand how some atheists read it that way and are appalled. If that's the limit of their curiosity, who am I to say otherwise? However, once someone understands that God’s eternal will and nature is unchanging he or she comes to see that God only appears to be one way or another depending on how we approach Him. The bible tells us that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, but really that was how Pharaoh’s heart responded to God. The same sun that hardens clay will soften butter. The rains are the same, but the house of the foolish man who built is house on sand washes away while the house of the wise man who built on rock stands firm.

It’s an existential choice: your way or His way. The proof of the pudding is in the tasting.