Problem of Evil (part 4)

Transcript Philosophy (Part 4)

Kevin Harris: Dr. Craig, when we consider the problem of evil – and there are such good answers to that that bring comfort to people and also help people with their doubts about God and his existence when it comes to the problem of evil – but there is a common objection and it is known as Euthyphro’s Argument. I want everyone to hang with us today because you are going to find this fascinating, and you are probably going to run into this argument. We are going to learn how to answer it today. Give us just a little bit of definition of what this is.

Dr. Craig: All right. This argument or objection was posed originally in Plato’s dialogue by the name Euthyphro. And it basically goes like this: is something good because the gods will it or do the gods will it because it is good? If you say that something is good because the gods will it then that means that what is good or evil is just arbitrary. The gods could have willed that torture be good and that we should hate and seek to do each other harm and that love would be evil and kindness would be wicked. So it seems crazy to think that the good is simply what the gods will. On the other hand if we say that the gods will what is good then what is good or evil is independent of what the gods say and the gods themselves are subject to the good and therefore bound by certain moral duties and therefore have no control over this. This gets translated into Christian theism by asking a similar sort of question. What is the relationship between the God of the Bible and good? Is the good whatever God wills? Well then it is arbitrary. Does God will what is good? Well then the good is independent of God and he is subject to it himself.

Kevin Harris: There is something higher than him.

Dr. Craig: Right. So either horn of the dilemma seems unacceptable and therefore one cannot base the good upon God and indeed in one sense you could say God doesn’t even exist because he wouldn’t be sovereign over this higher power.

Kevin Harris: So when we come to the horns of the dilemma – there are two horns here – if one doesn’t stick you the other will.

Dr. Craig: Right. If you say that the good is whatever God wills, you are stuck with arbitrariness. If you say no it is not arbitrary, God wills whatever is good, then the good is independent of God. So take your pick, pick your poison; either one is unacceptable for Christian theism.

Kevin Harris: I want to explore this arbitrariness for just a moment. Because if God just determines what is good then he could presumably, or allegedly, just say that rape is good.

Dr. Craig: That is right.

Kevin Harris: But that’s crazy.

Dr. Craig: The idea is that you would be morally obligated to do such things – to harm others, to hate others, and so forth. And that would make you a virtuous person. That seems mad to think that such a possible world exists.

Kevin Harris: The only way out of this is to split the horns of this dilemma. That would be: let’s see if there is a third option.

Dr. Craig: That is what one would have to do when confronted with a dilemma. If either horn of the dilemma is unsuccessful then you have to say that there is a third way out and that would be, I think, the route that most Christian philosophers would take with regard to the Euthyphro Dilemma.

Kevin Harris: Gotcha. Now did Plato himself come up with a third option?

Dr. Craig: Well, in a sense he did in that Plato regarded The Good as a sort of supreme being but he didn’t identify The Good with God in the Christian sense. So I think that it took Christian thinkers to apply Plato’s thought to the God of the Bible in which they believed.

Kevin Harris: And the second horn of the dilemma, we can bypass God and just try to figure out what The Good is since God would be subject to The Good as well.

Dr. Craig: Exactly. That would be more Platonic. If there is a God then he would be subjected to The Good itself which would be really the supreme reality.

Kevin Harris: Well, everyone is waiting with bated breathe right now. What is the third option? How do we get out of this?  [1]

Dr. Craig: I think the third option is to say that moral values are grounded in the nature and character of God himself. God’s nature is The Good – that which Plato called The Good is the moral nature and character of God himself. Therefore God could not have willed otherwise than he has willed. His divine commandments flow necessarily from his own moral nature. Therefore, they are not arbitrary, but they are necessary expressions of his own essence. Therefore, though moral values depend on and are rooted in God, they are not arbitrary because they are necessary expressions of the character of God himself. I think that splits the horns of the dilemma.

Kevin Harris: So there is nothing more ultimate than God when it comes to good and so forth.

Dr. Craig: Three is nothing more ultimate than God because it is God’s own moral nature which is the good and which determines the difference between good and evil. It is his own nature that is the yardstick between good and evil. His divine commands will constitute for us our moral duties. When God issues divine commandments like “you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” “you shall love the Lord your God with all your strength and might and soul,” and so forth, these become our moral duties. Our moral duties are constituted by the commands that God gives. But, and here we go over to the other horn of the dilemma, these commands are not arbitrary because they are necessary expressions of the moral character of God himself.

Kevin Harris: I’m just trying to think out loud, Bill. Would we say that there is nothing more ultimate than God, nothing that God would be subject to beyond him because there is not anything to which he would be subject, but perhaps we can say in a sense that he is subject to his own nature, to his own self-consistency?

Dr. Craig: Well, I suppose you could say that if it helps you but I think that is really misleading language because I think you can only be subject to something that is other than yourself. You can’t be subject to yourself. You are lord of yourself as well, so you are both lord and subject at the same time which is a contradiction. So I think we just want to say that God isn’t subject to anything. He is the ultimate and he determines by his own nature exactly what is good and evil. Let me give an analogy. When we talk about music being high-fidelity sound – we say some speakers have high-fidelity sound – what we mean is it approximates to the sound of a live orchestra. But does a live orchestra have high-fidelity sound? Well, no, because it just is the standard. Therefore it doesn’t approximate to itself, it is the standard for high-fidelity. And in exactly the same way, God’s moral nature isn’t subject to anything, he is not subject to himself, he just is the standard for rightness and wrongness, good and evil, and everything else is determined by its approximation to him.

Kevin Harris: That makes a lot more sense. That really does. You mentioned something also that God expresses his moral nature, the good, to us through various commands and so forth on the Christian view.

Dr. Craig: Exactly. And these commandments reflect his own nature. That is why we are commanded, for example, to love one another. Jesus said even to love our enemies, not to speak of our neighbors. So these commandments show the type of God that we worship. We can adore God for his moral perfection and his goodness.

Kevin Harris: Well, this has been an argument, a dilemma, presented to Christians for a long time and it has kind of resurrected on the Internet and probably on the college campuses as well.

Dr. Craig: You hear it all the time, this dilemma. Yet I have never seen a really good response to the theory of ethics that I’ve just laid out. It is usually called “divine command morality.” That is to say that our moral values and duties are determined by God’s commands but that these commands are not arbitrary because they are expressions of the very nature of God himself which is immutable, necessary, non-contingent, and is the good. I think that this fully solves the Euthyphro Dilemma and I’ve never really seen a good atheistic refutation of this theory of ethics.

Kevin Harris: Divine command theory. What are some do’s and dont’s of that?

Dr. Craig: Well, I’ve already mentioned some such as loving your neighbor as yourself. But also the golden rule, for example – doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. And certain prohibitions as well such as do not steal, do not bear false witness against your neighbor, do not murder. Then also positive commandments, too. We have a moral obligation to love God, to adore him as the source of our existence and as the supreme good. On this view God is the supreme good and therefore our lives and our wills should be oriented toward God as the supreme good. Therefore I think we have a moral obligation to love God and to adore him. That is why, by the way, unbelief is sin. Unbelief is the most serious sin of all because it means that the will of the creature is not oriented toward the supreme good but it is oriented toward lesser goods rather than toward God himself.  [2]