so i'm in the middle of the best chem lab this year. partners and i went to go play pool in lower beamer in the middle of lab. excellent. now we're just sitting around waiting for things to happen to our Cu(NH3)4SO4 x H2O. however, despite this awesomeness right now, i am constantly reminded of the looming event to come in a less than 10 hours. it bites me and i don't know what to do about it. dreaming kills. so does reality. so i guess we're just destined as humans to die in some fashion. i guess i have some time to decide what to do, if anything.
andrew baur mentioned something that i didn't notice myself. i've been hiding away in my room more often. our door, which i had proclaimed to be forever open, is often closed. that surprises me and also makes me wonder. i also haven't been eating with the usual large group of people, and am often out running or doing something outside, spending less and less time in the dorm. my excuse is that the weather is nice. it's a good excuse.
today's philosophical question is euthyphro's dilemma. does god determine what is good, or is "good" something under which god falls. this is a dilemma because there are viable arguments for and against either side. for the former, that would make good arbitrary, that is there is no greater reason for good other than because god said so. an interesting example is god's commandment to abraham to sacrifice isaac. on the other side of the dilemma, however, the conclusion would be that god falls under some standard that is above his power, meaning he is not the ultimate but a subjugate of the concept of good. there are three ways of getting out of the dilemma: by choosing either side or by proposing another solution that avoids either. when considering this dilemma, a possible solution that explains both sides is that god is simply not entirely good. it justifies his commandment to abraham as well as supports that he still is the standard of good and evil.
something interesting to read, something that i read in response to "Can God do evil?":
"To a theist, there are only two possible answers to this questions, and each one leads to interesting conclusions.
The theist answer: No, He cannot do evil.
For a theist to say that God cannot do evil is actually quite a strong claim. First of all, it says that God is limited in His options and is helpless to choose to do anything but “the good”. Essentially, if God never has to make a moral choice, He ceases to be a moral agent. Theists are very seldom comfortable with the idea of their omnipotent God being powerless in any meaningful way. A dropped rock falls to the ground without choice; how much praise is due the rock for falling correctly? Theists are even less comfortable with there being no basis for praising God’s moral character — if He could not have done otherwise.
One way that a theist may try to dig out of this conundrum is to argue that whatever God does is the definition of Good. So He is unlimited in whatever He does, He’s just limited in what the things He does are called.
If the theist wants to go this route, then he has to admit that for God there is no difference between a moral and immoral action. This means that God created an absolutely arbitrary set of rules for people to follow. If this situation described reality, a theist would obey God because He is a capricious tyrant setting down arbitrary rules — not because God is praiseworthy or the rules uncover some basic moral truth.
The theist answer: Yes, He can do evil.
When the response hits upon this one, the answer you get is usually, “All right, whatever, God can do evil, He just never does. He perfectly chooses to never sin.”
As soon as the theist mentions that God has the capability to do evil, he’s in a lot of trouble. The question now becomes one of epistemology: how does this theist gain the knowledge that God never does anything wrong?"
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ReplyDeleteIt seems that you've already grasped why the first option, the “Divine Command View of Morality,” fails – having an arbitrary God runs into several problems. Firstly, it breaks the Law of Non-Contradiction, which states that two contradictory statements cannot both be true at the same time. For example, statement A – Phil has lungs, and statement B – Phil has gills, cannot both be true at the same time. Either one of the statements must be wrong, or both of them must be wrong. The same phenomenon occurs with morality, in which something cannot moral and immoral at the same time; goodness is objective (as you so conceded in one of our talks; and should you change your mind about that, a man named Clive Staples Lewis can help you with that dilemma and sway you over to your original position) and to permit any truth or morality to be founded on arbitrariness fails. In a practical standpoint, Christians may defend any wickedness they commit, so long as they perceive it to be divinely commanded by God, ultimately rendering their morality meaningless.
ReplyDeleteMoving on to the second option, the way you've phrased the issue is problematic because you've essentially created a false dilemma – you give the second option as a choice, when it should come as a conclusion to the preliminary question: is something good because God recognizes that it is good? If one affirms this option, the common Atheist response is that since God is recognizing something to be good, one must ask the question, “What standard of goodness does God use to determine whether something is good or not?” One may answer that God uses an external standard of morality to differentiate between goodness and evilness, thereby recognizing something as being good and giving it inherent goodness in the ultimate. But this eventually leads to your second choice: if there is a standard of goodness and evilness external from God, then God appeals to some authority other than himself, thereby displacing himself as the ultimate omniscient authority. But Christians will attest that there is no authority greater than God external from God, as is defended by the Scriptures - “"For thus says the LORD, who created the heavens, who is God, who formed the earth… who formed it to be inhabited: 'I am the LORD, and there is no other.'" (Isaiah 45:18)
Naturally, the next question is: But if God didn't use an external standard to recognize goodness, what standard did he use? The Christian may attest that God Himself is the standard that He uses to recognize goodness, but then he/she will run into yet another problem – if God is the standard Himself, how can he know whether his standard is the right one? These problems abound if one recognizes that God is a unitarian God, existing within one person, one mind, and one standard, as is often purported by Theists. I honestly don't know how Theists will deal with such an issue, but the Christian can aggressively combat the question by asserting that, as is deemed veritable by way of Scripture, God is not unitarian, but a Trinity – three persons, one God. If the standard is God himself, how can God know? Because there exists an eternal, concurrent witnessing of the three persons of God.
If Christian theology had invented the plurality of God in order to refute Socrates, the temptation would be strong to dismiss the claim as a convenient secondary assumption. But conveniently, the plurality of persons in the one Christian God is not an afterthought or a secondary presupposition, but revealed by way of Scripture and nature itself. Genesis 1:1 states, “In the beginning God (Elohim) created the heavens and the earth.” The Hebrew word for God, “Elohim,” indicates plurality in itself – the suffix “-im” indicates plurality, just as “seraph” indicates one angel while “seraphim” indicates multiple angels. John 1:1 states, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Genesis 1:2 states, “...and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” A tri-unity is alluded to everywhere in Scripture, and the veracity of such a claim has become so undeniably grounded in Scripture that it has made its way into the traditional theology of the church. Consider also how our perception of the universe indicates the Trinity – space exists in three natural dimensions (height, width, and length), as does time (past, present, future), as does matter (solid, liquid, gas), as do electro-magnetic forces (positive, neutral, negative), as do colors in the pigment (red, yellow, blue) and light waves (red, blue, green), mathematical values (negative, zero, positive), etc. Even in construction, the triangle is considered the strongest, most sturdy structure.
ReplyDeleteThe Euthyphro dilemma is not the Christian dilemma, but rather a testament to the strength of the Trinity. The triune Christian God, the mystery of the Trinity, Three Persons in One God, is the one God whose testimony we can trust because He recognizes something as good when it is consistent with His own nature. And He can affirmatively know that His divine nature is and always has been good by the three eternal concurring witnesses within the Godhead.
This also happens to debunk your second question entirely, because the question itself assumes a unitarian God, when the Christian God is a Trinity. One cannot attribute arbitrariness or submit the burden of proof on the Christian God, because it exists as a Trinity, thereby drawing from three persons, not one, and ultimately debunking the notion that God is arbitrary (because it does not draw decisions solely from itself) and God has no claim to veracity (the three persons refer to each other).
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
Joe Lim
"If I bear witness of Myself, My witness is not true. There is another who bears witness of Me, and I know that the witness which He witnesses of Me is true [and] the works which the Father has given Me to finish—the very works that I do—bear witness of Me, that the Father has sent Me. And the Father Himself, who sent Me, has testified of Me." - John 5:31-32, 36-37