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Euthyphro Argument Revisited

October 21, 2008     Time: 00:22:43
Euthyphro Argument Revisited

Summary

Conversation with William Lane Craig

Transcript Euthyphro Argument Revisited

 

Kevin Harris: Dr. Craig, I thought we had settled this whole thing concerning something called the Euthyphro Dilemma – the Euthyphro Argument – but it just keeps on coming up on Reasonable Faith, on the website. Lots of questions in the forum, lots of back and forth on this argument, an ancient argument. So I thought we would revisit it. In fact, I have got a clip here from a debate between an atheist and a Christian and lo-and-behold Euthyphro’s Argument comes up.

Dr. Craig: No surprise.

Kevin Harris: We will interact with that clip in just a little bit because he claims that what we usually say in response to this argument is not sufficient. So we will look at that. By the way, do you find it coming up yourself from time to time?

Dr. Craig: The argument continues to be discussed all the time. I think it is the favorite atheist response to the moral argument for God’s existence. I think we can only be grateful for the continued discussion because the more this is discussed the more it raises the question of the foundation for moral values and duties. And I think it extolls the greatness and majesty of God – to understand who he is as the paradigm and source of all moral values. So we can be thankful that this discussion continues.

Kevin Harris: A dilemma is only a dilemma if there is no third alternative. You are caught on the horns of two dilemmas?

Dr. Craig: Two horns of the dilemma, that is exactly right. I think that is what so many of our atheist friends who press this dilemma don’t seem to understand. To be a true dilemma, there has to be only two alternatives. But if there are more than two alternatives then it is what we call a false dilemma because there may be a third option or a fourth option or another option in addition to that. So for the theist to defeat this dilemma, all he has to do is offer a third alternative. He doesn’t have to prove that it is the truth, he just has to lay it out and as long as that third alternative is available it shows that the choice is a false one. You are not forced to choose A or B as the atheist claims; you can choose C or D instead.

Kevin Harris: Let’s go to this audio clip. If any of our listeners are wondering what the Euthyphro Dilemma is, let me tell you that we’ve got several podcasts on it that you can reference [1] and you can find it in Dr. Craig’s work as well. Study the moral argument. Also, we are going to let this atheist debater kind of spell out what it is. This is Dr. Zachary Moore and it was in a debate on basically the moral argument. I believe the name of the debate was “Is God Good?” He here describes what the Euthyphro Dilemma is and he interacts with it. Let’s go to that clip now from Dr. Zachary Moore:

[Start clip]

Is God good because he creates the good or because he recognizes the good? Think about that. If he creates the good – if he decides what is good – then he can make anything good. He can make murder good if it was up to him. But if he just recognizes good then why do we need God? If there is this other standard of good that God is recognizing, then why aren’t we appealing to that as our objective standard and not God? Now, this dilemma has been challenged many times. Christian apologists have interacted with it, I’m sure you know them. The typical claim is that it is not that God creates the good or he recognizes the good, it is that he has this nature and this nature is necessarily good. [2] But you see, this doesn’t solve the problem. This just pushes the dilemma back one step. Because we can easily rephrase the dilemma like this – is God’s nature good because it creates the good or because it recognizes the good? And we are back in the same dilemma.

[End clip]

Kevin Harris: OK, now he claims that what you write about the third alternative that splits the horns of this dilemma is insufficient because it only pushes it back one step. Interact a little bit with that clip.

Dr. Craig: He does try to attack the third alternative that I lay out although he doesn’t state it quite accurately. The way he states it is “God has this nature which is necessarily good.” That is not exactly right. Rather, what the alternative is is “God is good because his nature is The Good.” His nature defines or determines what is The Good. So that doesn’t lead to this then further dilemma which he wants to erect that “Is God’s nature good because it creates The Good or because it recognizes The Good?” That question in a sense doesn’t even make sense. Natures don’t create anything or recognize anything. When you are talking about the nature of God you are talking about his essential properties. And the nature of God neither creates nor recognizes things at all so the whole question is just malformed.

Rather what we want to say is that God’s nature is The Good and that this simply determines what goodness is. Therefore, to say “why is God’s nature good?” or “does it create the good or recognize the good?” is to fail to understand the alternative. It is sort of like asking, “Is The Good, good because it creates The Good or because it recognizes The Good?” Well, neither one – The Good is good because it is The Good. It defines what is The Good. It is the standard. It simply makes no sense to ask this further question.

Kevin Harris: What it brings up then is “What is a nature?” and “What is God’s nature?”

Dr. Craig: Right. It tends to think of God’s nature as some sort of a personal thing itself that can create or recognize things. By God’s nature, what we mean are his essential attributes or properties. The whole concept here of the third alternative is that God’s nature is definitive of what is good.

So the atheist, I think, would face exactly the same dilemma. I would ask him, how does he halt the infinite regress? What is his ultimate standard of goodness and then you can ask the same question of that – is it good because it creates The Good or because it recognizes The Good? Well, I’m sure he would say neither one – it just is the good, it is the ultimate standard. That is exactly what theists say about the nature of God.

Kevin Harris: You are looking for a proper stopping point. It is possible to have a stopping point rather than an infinite regress.

Dr. Craig: Sure. Unless you are some sort of a moral nihilist, which I don’t think he is; he believes that there are objective values – right and wrong. So he as an atheist will face exactly the same question – what is your stopping point that is definitive of what is good and evil? It makes no sense to ask of that ultimate stopping point whether it creates The Good or recognizes The Good. Rather, it just is The Good.

The question then will be: is your ultimate stopping point a plausible stopping point? I think that for the theist we have a plausible stopping point in God because God is the metaphysical ultimate. There is nothing beyond God; nothing higher than God by definition. Moreover, God by definition is a being that is worthy of worship. And any being that is worthy of worship, I think, will be the paradigm of goodness. So by the very concept of God, this is a plausible stopping point. But any other stopping point based in some finite creature, like humanity or rational consciousness or something like that, there the stopping point seems arbitrary and we wonder why is that the stopping point? That question does seem to force itself upon us. Where with God I think you have a plausible stopping point for this regress that he wants to construct.

Kevin Harris: God’s ultimate status provides that, it seems. He is ontologically, I think you said “metaphysically,” ultimate. [3]

Dr. Craig: Right. Yes, and the atheist agrees with that. By definition God is the metaphysically ultimate. If he exists, there is nothing beyond him. If something existed that were beyond God – were greater than God – then that would be God. So I think as St. Anselm rightly saw, God is the greatest conceivable being by definition. So God is a plausible stopping point for serving as the ultimate standard of moral goodness whereas any finite thing is not a plausible stopping point for that sort of question.

Kevin Harris: If God were somehow held to a standard of good beyond himself, what would that even look like? I think in some ways, you said, it would just kind of float.

Dr. Craig: I think it would be a sort of Platonism. You would have to have some sort of an abstract object which is called “The Good” with a capital “G” that would somehow exist apart from God and God would conform his life to this abstract object. That raises, I think, all sorts of difficult questions. As the one you just mentioned, I don’t even understand what it means to say that The Good exists independently of some concrete object that is good. I understand what it means to say, for example, that a person is good or that some action is good but I don’t even understand what it means to say that The Good just exists as an abstract object. Think about this, Kevin. If The Good is an abstract object, then The Good itself is not good because abstract objects aren’t bearers of moral value. An abstract object is not just or merciful or loving or kind. So paradoxically, The Good would not be good which is seemingly incoherent. So I don’t even understand, frankly, this kind of Platonist view of moral values. It seems to me far more plausible to think that moral values are embodied in persons and that God is an ultimate person and that persons are valuable because God is a person and God is the metaphysical ultimate. He defines what is goodness by his very nature.

Kevin Harris: That is weird, isn’t it? To think that The Good is somehow suspended or there and it is not personal.

Dr. Craig: No, not as an abstract object.

Kevin Harris: But goodness and morality seem to be of persons.

Dr. Craig: Yeah.

Kevin Harris: So it would have to be like chemical reaction – water on Alka-Seltzer or something. Somehow it is there and then when a person encounters it, it causes this reaction.

Dr. Craig: And you know, abstract objects don’t stand in causal relations. So they can’t cause anything.

Kevin Harris: That’s right. You don’t bump into the number 7.

Dr. Craig: Exactly. Think about different moral virtues. Think about loyalty, for example. Loyalty is a good. So does Loyalty exist as an abstract object? If it does, how is that good? Because loyalty itself isn’t loyal – it’s not loyal to anybody. It is just this abstraction. So I really am quite honestly at a loss to understand how the Platonist can try to ground moral values as objective realities apart from their embodiment in God. I don’t even understand what this means.

Kevin Harris: Let’s look briefly at the first horn of this false dilemma. I would like to maybe look at that a little bit in that it says if God creates The Good or if God determines what is good . . .

Dr. Craig: That would be the more accurate way to state it.

Kevin Harris: Determined rather than create?

Dr. Craig: Yeah, the way Plato originally stated it was “Do the gods will or desire that which is good, or is that which is good good because the gods will or desire it?” So it is not so much as creating it as what is it that they will or as you say determine?

Kevin Harris: I can hear people respond, “Well, yeah, but he wouldn’t will murder or rape to be good.” But is it a dilemma, that horn, because it makes God logically vulnerable to the extent that he can determine that murder or rape were good?

Dr. Craig: No, that would be the alternative that says that what is good is good simply because God arbitrarily wills it. As I say, that isn’t the classical theistic position. There have been theists that have defended that view. William of Ockham, for example, would be what we call a voluntarist. Voluntarists say that The Good is simply determined by God’s fiat – that he just wills whatever is good or evil and that is all there is to it. [4]

Kevin Harris: What is wrong with that?

Dr. Craig: That’s a good question. The objection is that that makes morality arbitrary in the sense that God could have willed that we should rape and murder and hate one another and then we would have been morally obligated to do that. That seems counterintuitive.

Kevin Harris: I am sorry to interrupt, Bill, but even if he had the ability to do that because whatever he determines by fiat is the good, that doesn’t mean that he will.

Dr. Craig: No.

Kevin Harris: But since he logically could, since it is arbitrary, that is problematic. It is almost like might makes right.

Dr. Craig: That’s the idea, yes. That’s right. And that seems problematic to us that God could have willed that these things be good. These values seem to be necessary; that they hold in all possible worlds. So there is no possible world in which God willed that we would be morally obligated to hate and murder and rape one another. Now Ockham would respond to that by saying that you have that moral intuition only because God has declared and willed that these things are evil and that if he had willed otherwise you would have different intuitions. So Ockham does have an answer to that in defending his voluntarist view, but as I say, this represents a minority stream in the classical theistic tradition. Most theists have disagreed with Ockham about that and would say that God’s will is not arbitrary but rather is a necessary expression of his nature, of his essential attributes. And God’s essential nature is such that it is impossible that God would will that murder and rape and theft and cruelty be goods.

Kevin Harris: When you say moral Platonism, what is Platonism again?

Dr. Craig: Plato tried to solve the Euthyphro Dilemma by saying that there is a thing called The Good which just exists as a sort of idea or abstract object. It would be similar to mathematical objects like, say, the perfect circle or the perfect triangle or the number 7. These things don’t exist as concrete objects. They exist as abstract objects. Plato thought that there had to be a sort of abstract object called The Good which determines what is good and what is evil by reference to it.

Kevin Harris: Do you think he recognized the third alternative?

Dr. Craig: No. He doesn’t seem to have recognized it at all. We’ve got to remember that this is before the influence of Judeo-Christian monotheism. This was in an age of polytheism where the gods of which Plato spoke were finite humanoid deities that were cavorting with one another, copulating with human beings, involved in war and hatred and rapine, and so forth. I mean, these gods would not have been plausible stopping points for determining your moral good. So it is no wonder that Plato sought some sort of transcendent grounding for good beyond these finite humanoid deities that were part of the Greco-Roman pantheon of gods and goddesses. What Plato said was not that there was a third alternative, but that if the gods do desire The Good, The Good must be something that is independent of and beyond the gods. Some sort of transcendent good. Jews, when they came along and confronted Plato’s thoughts, said yes that is right and The Good is God. Not these humanoid finite deities of the Greco-Roman myths, but the God of Judeo-Christian theism. He is The Good that Plato sought. So early Christian thinkers were very sympathetic to Plato because they identified God with The Good. I think they were quite right in doing so because as I said if you just take Plato’s view that The Good is not embodied in some concrete person or object then as an abstraction it is hard to understand how it can even exist or have any sort of moral properties itself.

Here is another problem for this Platonic moral realism, thinking of The Good as some sort of abstract object. Namely, I don’t see how that provides any source for moral duty or moral obligation. [5] Our goal in crafting an ethical system is not just to have a standard for objective moral values but also a basis for moral duty or moral obligation. Why am I obligated to do this? Why am I forbidden from doing that? What is the source of moral obligation or duty? Having some abstract object which is The Good doesn’t lay any kind of moral duty or obligation upon me. Why am I obligated to align my life with this abstract object out there? Suppose that Loyalty and Mercy and Kindness and Generosity exist as abstract objects. How does that lay any sort of moral duty upon me to align my life with these abstract objects? After all, on Platonism, presumably there are moral vices that also exist as abstract objects. Greed. Rapacity. Hatred. Cruelty. These also exist as abstract objects. Why am I morally obligated to align my life with one set of these abstract objects rather than the other? There just isn’t any source in Platonism for moral duty or obligation. What theism provides is a source of moral prohibition and moral obligation in the commands of a holy and loving God. God is not only the standard of moral goodness but that standard issues in commandments for us that express God’s nature that are constitutive of our moral duties or obligations. So what theism gives you is not only a sound foundation for moral value, but it gives you a basis for moral obligation and duty as well. [6]