Turning the Euthyphro Dilemma around on atheists

[genkaus]

Most people are familiar with the Euthyphro dilemma against a deity. Theists, particularly intellectually sophisticated theists have some interesting responses to the Euthyphro dilemma (Richard Swinburne's response is one of the most unusual), but we can get into that later.

What if we flip it against atheism?

"Do you do good things because they are good, or are things good simply because you do them?"

If you pick the first option, then the good exists independent of human existence or knowledge. If you pick the second, then people can deem anything they do as good.

I'm not seeing a dilemma here. Maybe, that's because I haven't made a stupid claim like "without my existence, nobody can differentiate between good and bad". Option one is obviously correct - I do good things because they are good - which means that yes, good does exist independent of my knowledge and existence.

[Vincenzo Vinny G.]

Most people are familiar with the Euthyphro dilemma against a deity. Theists, particularly intellectually sophisticated theists have some interesting responses to the Euthyphro dilemma (Richard Swinburne's response is one of the most unusual), but we can get into that later.

What if we flip it against atheism?

"Do you do good things because they are good, or are things good simply because you do them?"

If you pick the first option, then the good exists independent of human existence or knowledge. If you pick the second, then people can deem anything they do as good.

I'm not seeing a dilemma here. Maybe, that's because I haven't made a stupid claim like "without my existence, nobody can differentiate between good and bad". Option one is obviously correct - I do good things because they are good - which means that yes, good does exist independent of my knowledge and existence.

Why stop there?

If the good exists independently of your existence, why can the good not exist independently of everyone's existence? If so, independently of all of existence, and thus good and evil exist independent of the material world, and thus metaphysical naturalism has some serious unanswered questions.

---

But who determines that causing harm to others is morally bad, and if the source of that moral view told you that animal torture was morally good, would you agree?

Who determines that harm is bad? The facts do: the standard human response to harm is negative, because harm to us- physically or otherwise- is by definition a negative act. There is no sense where harm can be positive (obviously we make caveats for things like self defense, though even there causing harm wouldn't be the preferred option) We as people require each other to survive, both psychologically and in terms of maintaining our standard of living, and so in order to provide ourselves with this necessary social structure, we agree to band together under the proviso that we don't harm one another. Being that morality is about the well-being of thinking beings, that's enough of a basis for deeming harm immoral right there.

As to your second question, no, I wouldn't agree that animal torture is morally good, regardless of what told me it was, because I can evaluate the action with regards to the world I live in, and determine the consequences of it. You've given me a fairly simple example to go off of; in what sense does the utility of animal torture outweigh the pain that it causes? We eat animals, but inflicting pain upon them serves no purpose that I can see, and simple sadistic enjoyment isn't a sufficient justification for doing so; that feeling can be gained through less harmful means.

That's why I find it so strange that you want to turn the Euthyphro dilemma on us; the very basis of it requires a thinking being dictating moral law to actually be a dilemma at all. What I see, when determining a moral continuum for actions, is an assessment of predicted consequences, context, cost and benefit, and any number of other factors that exist within the world that moral decision takes place in. There's no revealing external force to be appealed to, nor a relativistic framework to be hidden; it's all just here, on the planet, waiting to be considered.

Think about that further.

The standard human response to harm is negative, you say. But where does that standard human response come from? From evolution.

But like I've said before, evolution could have turned out differently such that we responded positively to unethical conduct.

Given a different path that evolution took, would you then consider animal torture a moral good, on par with feeding the homeless? Or even if your evolution made you respond positively to it, you would stop and think "Hey, there's something not right about this..."

It seems thus that the atheist can't escape the Euthyphro dilemma by appealing to human response, because all human reactions boil down to evolution.

And if our moral codes are predicated on the whims of evolution, then the rapist and the killer and the torturer are not truly evil, but have just evolved differently from us.

[Tea Earl Grey Hot]

Vinny, morality is made up. Good/bad is whatever you want it to be.

[MitchBenn]

I'm not seeing a dilemma here. Maybe, that's because I haven't made a stupid claim like "without my existence, nobody can differentiate between good and bad". Option one is obviously correct - I do good things because they are good - which means that yes, good does exist independent of my knowledge and existence.

Why stop there?

If the good exists independently of your existence, why can the good not exist independently of everyone's existence? If so, independently of all of existence, and thus good and evil exist independent of the material world, and thus metaphysical naturalism has some serious unanswered questions.

---

Who determines that harm is bad? The facts do: the standard human response to harm is negative, because harm to us- physically or otherwise- is by definition a negative act. There is no sense where harm can be positive (obviously we make caveats for things like self defense, though even there causing harm wouldn't be the preferred option) We as people require each other to survive, both psychologically and in terms of maintaining our standard of living, and so in order to provide ourselves with this necessary social structure, we agree to band together under the proviso that we don't harm one another. Being that morality is about the well-being of thinking beings, that's enough of a basis for deeming harm immoral right there.

As to your second question, no, I wouldn't agree that animal torture is morally good, regardless of what told me it was, because I can evaluate the action with regards to the world I live in, and determine the consequences of it. You've given me a fairly simple example to go off of; in what sense does the utility of animal torture outweigh the pain that it causes? We eat animals, but inflicting pain upon them serves no purpose that I can see, and simple sadistic enjoyment isn't a sufficient justification for doing so; that feeling can be gained through less harmful means.

That's why I find it so strange that you want to turn the Euthyphro dilemma on us; the very basis of it requires a thinking being dictating moral law to actually be a dilemma at all. What I see, when determining a moral continuum for actions, is an assessment of predicted consequences, context, cost and benefit, and any number of other factors that exist within the world that moral decision takes place in. There's no revealing external force to be appealed to, nor a relativistic framework to be hidden; it's all just here, on the planet, waiting to be considered.

Think about that further.

The standard human response to harm is negative, you say. But where does that standard human response come from? From evolution.

But like I've said before, evolution could have turned out differently such that we responded positively to unethical conduct.

Given a different path that evolution took, would you then consider animal torture a moral good, on par with feeding the homeless? Or even if your evolution made you respond positively to it, you would stop and think "Hey, there's something not right about this..."

It seems thus that the atheist can't escape the Euthyphro dilemma by appealing to human response, because all human reactions boil down to evolution.

And if our moral codes are predicated on the whims of evolution, then the rapist and the killer and the torturer are not truly evil, but have just evolved differently from us.

Vinny, evolution doesn't have "whims". It's not a conscious entity. It has no agenda. It "dictates" nothing.

I think you're making the common theist error of interpreting the atheist "view of the universe" as one broadly similar to the theist one with "God" taken out and "evolution" inserted in its place.

There are two problems with this: 1. There IS no "atheist world view" as such; there are world views which are atheistic in nature but "atheism" is not a world view in itself. It's a single answer to a single question. 2. Evolution is not only NOT a conscious entity like a God, it isn't even an unconscious force like gravity.

Evolution is a CONSEQUENCE. It's what happens when life forms reproduce under environmental pressure. It's the RESULT of forces, not a force in itself. It doesn't "want" anything.

As such your "what if evolution dictated that torturing animals was good?" question is nonsensical*. Evolution dictates nothing and has no concept of "good". It merely favours characteristics which aid reproduction. By definition sadism doesn't aid anything. It wastes time and energy and creates unnecessary hostility.

God, by contrast, ABSOLUTELY has whims, and his morality is subject to those whims. He cheerfully orders genocide and infanticide while also commanding people to love their neighbours. He drowns the whole world then regrets it and promises never to do it again. He's anti-shellfish but pro-slavery.

It's theistic "morality" which is whimsical. Can you imagine a secular philosophy which would have mandated cutting little girls' vaginas off? You need God for that sort of depravity.

*Don't assume that asking an unanswerable question constitutes "victory". It might just be that the question makes no sense. What colour is fear? What does seven smell like? How tall is time?

[Esquilax]

Think about that further.

The standard human response to harm is negative, you say. But where does that standard human response come from? From evolution.

But like I've said before, evolution could have turned out differently such that we responded positively to unethical conduct.

Given a different path that evolution took, would you then consider animal torture a moral good, on par with feeding the homeless? Or even if your evolution made you respond positively to it, you would stop and think "Hey, there's something not right about this..."

There's a couple of things wrong with this, though: one is that... so what? Saying things could be different doesn't invalidate that things are as they are now. We've got to deal with reality, and there's no devaluing of events because there are so many other potentials.

Also, harm, by definition, is that which is harmful. I'm not saying harm is immoral because of our response to it, but because of what it objectively does in the real world. It invalidates the well-being of another creature, and therefore, regardless of how it makes us feel, it's an immoral act. As I said in my initial post, sadism isn't a sufficient justification for a harmful action; those positive feelings can be invoked using means that do no harm, and therefore there's no excuse.

It seems thus that the atheist can't escape the Euthyphro dilemma by appealing to human response, because all human reactions boil down to evolution.

And if our moral codes are predicated on the whims of evolution, then the rapist and the killer and the torturer are not truly evil, but have just evolved differently from us.

This isn't a matter of "everything we think is necessarily true, and therefore our morals are determined solely by our own pleasure," it's a matter of the physical facts of the world that exist objectively, externally to us. This is why Euthyphro doesn't apply here: the "objective source" of morality is simply the fact that we exist in a consistent world.

The rapist, murderer and torturer are performing objectively evil acts. Why? Because those acts cause demonstrable harm to their victims, beyond the responses of the actors themselves. It's just a fact, and their responses aren't justification. It's the same reason we restrict certain harmful chemicals, despite the fact that they produce favorable responses in those that ingest them; response isn't the premise for morality.

[Zazzy]

Same question here- if morality is determined by families and societies, then if families and societies determined animal torture to be morally good, would you consider animal torture morally good?

If I was raised in a society that found animal torture good, say in torturing and sacrificing animals to a deity, and I had little to no exposure to other viewpoints as I was developing, then YES, I'd think it was morally good. I'd think my deity wanted it, and that I'd be offending him if I didn't do it. If I was raised in an old US Southern plantation family, I'd think slavery was morally right. If I was raised in fundamentalist Islam, I'd think it was moral to cut my clitoris off.

What's so fucking hard to understand about this?

[Bipolar Bob]

In the first place, the Euthyphro Dilemma is not an argument against the existence of deity. What it argues if god is good and all powerful then why does evil exist, if god is all powerful and does nothing about evil then god must condone evil and should be considered evil. If god is good and can do nothing about evil then god is either incompetent or not all powerful. The question is whether a evil or incompetent deity is worthy to be respected as a god.

[Darkstar]

In the first place, the Euthyphro Dilemma is not an argument against the existence of deity. What it argues if god is good and all powerful then why does evil exist, if god is all powerful and does nothing about evil then god must condone evil and should be considered evil. If god is good and can do nothing about evil then god is either incompetent or not all powerful. The question is whether a evil or incompetent deity is worthy to be respected as a god.

I think you're confusing this with the Epicurean argument.


The Euthyphro Dilemma is different. It basically asks this: "Does god command us to do things that are good , or are things deemed 'good' simply because god says so?"

If the first is true, we can figure out what is good without god telling us. If the second is true, morality is simply the subject of god's opinion, and said opinion cannot be objectively true, or we would revert to the first option.

[MindForgedManacle]

I think some of you have to remember the context the dilemma was made in. Plato put the dilemma in the mouth of Socrates. It boils down to whether or not morality is prescribed by the gods or merely recognized by them. Christian apologists essentially take Plato's answer to the dilemma: Plato said that what is good is the Form of the Good itself, and thus seemingly good things are but a pale reflection of that form, so it's a false dilemma for Plato. Apologists merely swap 'Form of the Good' with 'God'.

[genkaus]

Why stop there?

If the good exists independently of your existence, why can the good not exist independently of everyone's existence? If so, independently of all of existence, and thus good and evil exist independent of the material world, and thus metaphysical naturalism has some serious unanswered questions.

I stop there because that is all I can logically conclude from the given position. Taking a simplistic position and running with it to whatever conclusion may seem alright - like you have done - is not something a logical person would do.