He actually doesn't get out of the dilemma at all. He only complicates it. Is an action good because it is in accordance with God's nature, or is God's nature in accordance with an action because it is good?
Only a perfect skeptic sage has no beliefs or opinions. The rest of us are simply on the journey to that point by questioning our beliefs by finding equally opposing arguments to those opinions that we may possess. Carneades was famous for going to Rome and arguing for justice one day and against it the next, much to the astonishment of the Romans. Admitting the possibility of being mistaken is the first step to understanding, or so it seems.
1. If the claim is that God can't control his nature, the question posed is not why there is good outside of God (which the moral agent claim seems to sufficiently answer), but the question, If God cannot control his nature, then what made it wrong to murder (as it cannot be God, because God does not control his nature). The only solution I see (that I posed in the video) is that somehow goodness, like power, can be found logically through some explanation of perfection (Ontological argument).
1. This brings us back to the original Euthyphro dilemma. If God ordained that murder is wrong by divine command it seems arbitrary. If we apprehend value in every human life, then it was this reason and not God's command that made murder wrong. It cannot be both as the question is raised, what made it wrong God's divine command or our perception of the value (if our perceptions and God disagreed who would be right? Which came first, divine command or our perceptions?)
1. So the question remains why is murder wrong? Because God would not murder? Or because it is in alignment with some morality that we can perceive? 2. Look carefully, I did not claim any of these actions were ethical, merely that they were moral. It seems that if perceiving these "moral values" causes us to act in completely contradictory ways, they are really of no use to us. So the question remains what makes something ethical if we can only apprehend morals?
A strong point. If the problem is arbitrariness, then we are taking the first horn (of the second dilemma), God has control over his nature. In terms of moral agents the question is, why do they see certain acts as good? Either it is because God manifests himself in those acts somehow, or it is because they are good for some other reason. If God manifests himself in those acts the only reason we see them as good is that God manifests himself in them (Arbitrariness). If we ...
1. The question is not about what he wills but why he wills one thing and not another. Is there some inherent morality in some actions and not others? If so what is it that makes these actions moral? 2. There are many societies that do not believe in tolerance of others views and have been for many years (see societies where being gay is punishable by death). Many people lie, but feel no guilt, they don't perceive it as morally wrong. Some see it as their moral responsibility to deride women.
I just found a better description of the argument from Professor William Lane Craig and it's much more interesting. "How is God the standard of goodness? Because He is the creator. A thing’s goodness is determined by its purpose. A dull knife is not a good knife because the purpose of a knife is to cut. Sharpness is bad for a shoe, however, for a good shoe is one that is comfortable and supportive to a foot. God, as creator, is the determiner of all purposes of His creation. What He makes is made purposefully, and anything that stands in the way of that purpose is bad. Rape is evil because that is not what sex is made to be. Murder is evil because it is not the purpose of humans to arbitrarily decide when people should die. (Note that this does not necessarily vilify all human-caused deaths, such as capital punishment or war. If God has stated guidelines for these actions, then it is no longer arbitrary human will being carried out. In conclusion, a thing is good to the degree that it fulfills its purposes. Because God is the creator of all things, according to His own good nature, He is therefore both the standard and declarer of goodness."
The Euthyphro dilemma is the big gun for my debates with local theists, as to this day I have yet to have an answer. The claim that God would not command evil because it goes against God's nature does not actually change the problem, but only reorganizes it. The question might then be reasonably asked: "Where does God's nature come from?" Did God create it himself? If so then God's whims are still behind what he considers right and wrong, and the dilemma still applies. If, on the other hand, God did not create his own nature, then either someone else created it (in which case the dilemma applies to the creator of God's nature) or the morality contained in God's nature is inherent in some way (in which case God is not truly the author of right and wrong). The "nature" objections to the dilemma solve nothing, because they can easily be reformulated in terms of God's character: "Is God's character the way it is because it is good or is God's character good simply because it is God's character?" The structure of this modified dilemma is exactly the same as before, and it appears to be if anything harder to escape. If we identify the ultimate standard for goodness with God's nature, then it seems we are identifying it with certain of God's properties (e.g., being loving, being just). If so, then the dilemma resurfaces: is God good because he has those properties, or are those properties good because God has them? Also if Gods nature is good, and he defined immoral and evil acts, this seems one again inconsistent with the principal of Omnibenevolence: as we question, whence cometh evil if his nature only allows good? Did evil originate somewhere else other than the creator? The "nature" argument also reduces the omnipotence of God as he can only act in ways consistent with his nature; as such he would be physically unable to create or contemplate evil. Meaning he is not truly omnipotent. If omnipotence means only being able to act in ways consistent with ones nature, then you and I are omnipotent by that definition. Also one final note would be to ask: If humans are able to commit evil acts AND acts of good, then is our will apparently... more free, than God? Why is the omnipotence of a deity confined by the rules of logic? this never made sense to me. Surely if the deity in question created the universe, and everything within it (including logic) then surely it cannot be confined by the demarcations it set. Unless we argue that logic is something that exists independent of the deities manipulation, in which case we have a problem once again :S Logic just seems to shit all over most theistic positions.
David Ward I think you should direct your criticisms more at the assumptions on which this argument rests than the argument itself. Note that this attempt is contingent upon the theist being able to offer a logical definition of goodness (which I have yet to see), and on us accepting the common dodge of the omnipotence paradox (which I am skeptical of ruclips.net/video/2tEuDNsvS4c/видео.html). If you assume both of these, I think the theist has a way out. Here's how. "Where does God's nature come from?" Logic. God's nature is a consequence of logic. If we assume that some version of the Ontological argument works, this will too. "the morality contained in God's nature is inherent in some way (in which case God is not truly the author of right and wrong)" If the solution to the omnipotence paradox holds, then God does not need to be able to break or create the laws of logic. Therefore, if goodness follows from logic, he is not impotent by not creating it. As to the character reformulation, you simply need to say that God's character is dictated by the laws of logic to get the argument up and running again. As to the specific properties, (is love good because God has it or is God loving because it is good?) a similar answer can be offered. Love is good because logic says that it is a perfection, or a goodness. God is loving because he logically must have all perfections. God could not make love good because that would break the laws of logic, nor could God not be good as that would also break the laws of logic. And omnipotence does not require someone to be able to break the laws of logic. . As for "whence cometh evil?" that sounds more like a problem of evil question. I have a video on why we can't solve both the problem of evil and the Euthyphro Dilemma which agrees with many of your points ruclips.net/video/iSwkBsBARwM/видео.html . As I note at the top, you have to make a couple of big assumptions for this to work: that the ontological argument can offer some logical definition of good, and that the solution to the omnipotence paradox works, but with those I think it can be done. In my opinion, the place to object is not here in this argument, but on those two assumptions as it seems that with those assumptions, the argument can stand.
David Ward In the end I think that we agree. My point is that in order to target this defense of God's Goodness, you need to attack either the claim that his goodness can in some way be derived from logic or the claim that something is not omnipotent if it cannot break the laws of logic. My argument is that if you concede those two points then the argument is successful. However, I also have not seen a sufficient reason to support those points therefore it seems that the argument ultimately fails, but only because those other links in the theist position break and cannot support this conclusion. If some clever theist came up with a way to support those premises, then the argument would be fine.
The reason logical contradictions are outside the bounds of an omnipotent being's ability to bring things about is because logical contradictions don't actually express anything at all. Any statement of the form "P and not-P" is one in which each of its conjuncts negates the other, and which therefore expresses a sum total of nothing. Generally then, logical contradictions are just strings of words that don't actually express anything in the literal sense. In this way, there can be, in principle, no state of affairs to which they might correspond, because, contrary to their superficial appearances, they aren't the kinds of linguistic expressions that do corresponding. So, to say that an omnipotent being cant bring about a logical contradiction is not to limit what that being can do in any way. Rather it's simply to acknowledge that logical contradictions are empty words that don't actually express anything.
That does not answer the question. Why is a specific act good? Is murder wrong because it causes suffering or because God does not will it? If the answer is both, I see two versions of both that you could mean either: "Both1" Something would be wrong either if God does not will it or if it caused suffering, or "Both2" Something would be wrong only if it both caused suffering and God did not will it.
I have made this very criticism, and the argument leveled against it has been that goodness is like omnipotence, it is a kind of perfection that follows logically from a maximally great being. That "goodness is somehow like completeness. The argument is something like, God didn't define what makes power powerful, so he does not need to make what is good, good. However this rests on the assumption that "good" can follow from logic, as power does which the theist is yet to show.
Two thoughts: 1. I'm unclear whether you are claiming that the new dilemma created is a false dilemma or if you are claiming that you can make one of it's horns palatable. Which is it? 2. Even if you claim that God made men as "moral agents" it seems he did a bad job of it, as according to most religions we are told what to do by God (see bible, 10 commandments), and even so we are pretty bad a determining what is good and what is not, as we often disagree.
If you're forced to make a decision, that does seem like a practical conclusion (that logic isn't universal and God does not exist). Luckily the skeptic is allowed to suspend judgement and will willingly do so whenever not logically forced to accept the conclusions. Being skeptical of both logic and theism is a worthy project. And I just love the image of a pink puppy and orange bicycle God.
When I said murder was wrong because it caused suffering, I was just giving an example of a reason as to why murder would be wrong. There are many other reasons why it is wrong. But in relation to God, what I was saying is that it is not in God's nature to murder. It is in His nature to value human life, and He commands us to love one another. So murder is wrong because we (1) value the lives of others, and (2) we have the duty to love another. So it can be both.
It's a big problem for proponents of the Ontological argument. There are so many different versions of morality that it is hard to establish an argument that pure logic would support any specific one of them. Basically if the theist gets out of this problem they will land themselves in another one.
I have no idea why you think I said that. What I distinguished was moral values and how to ACT ethically. Values are our properly basic moral beliefs. And of course how we act on them is where people would differ. I was making the distinction because you kept asking questions concerning actions, when I was really focusing on values. And I probably spelled the word wrong.
2. My question isn't whether people choose to do right or wrong. the question is: if people only apprehend values and not ethics how then do we know that a specific, such as cannibalism, is wrong? It seems consistent with our morals but not our ethics (as you said above). P.S. I did not find aesiology in my dictionary or online, could you please define it?
If there is something that is good that is not God, then God is not "the good" by the definition of identity. X is Y only if X and Y share all the same properties. If there are things that are X and not Y, then X is not Y. Therefore if there are things that are Good and not God, then God is not the Good.
but according to your claim the foundation for why we don't murder isn't divine command, it is some deeper meaning to do with suffering "we wouldn't murder because we know others suffer". Why do we need divine command when we can apprehend values? It seems under your picture the foundation is suffering, not God. God is extraneous to why we perceive murder as wrong. If we never heard God's commands we still would not murder.
At the end of the day, we seem to have taken the 'God says things because they are good' and the 'God does not have control over his nature' horns of the dilemmas. I don't have an issue with that, its the path I would have taken.
Being an atheist, my ultimate defense for a monotheistic supernatural creator god is that this god CAN perform logical contradictions and the rest must be left to faith. Otherwise, during the process of trying to solve all these problems it becomes painfully obvious that man creates God in his image.
I can understand a strict skeptic's point of view, but I realize it's a perfectly natural thing to apply one's knowledge to form an opinion about a question, often without even intending to. I'm pretty sure that a good number of skeptics aren't quite so forthcoming with expressing their opinions, for whatever reasons. The important things for me are to question if my beliefs are practical and be open to the possibility of being wrong. I don't define existence... if such a thing exists XD
Two thoughts. First, does that mean that there were no oughts before the ten commandments (or the equivalent in your religion). Second I don't know what you mean by apprehension of values with God as the foundation. Is murder bad because God is the foundation for it being bad or is it bad because it causes suffering?
And the Christian answer is that goodness is not independent of God. It is God. So God does not will things because they are good, He wills them because HE is good.
1. Just to be clear are you claiming a kind of virtue ethics here? Actions in themselves are not good only agents are good? 2. I just want to be clear on your viewpoint. A culture that beats children is moral so long as they do it out of respect? A country that kills a certain part of their population is moral so long as they believe that they are helping those they are killing and doing it out of love? Do you really think that God would say cannibals are moral?
... 2. I'm not so sure about the claim that all humans agree on moral values. See gay marriage, abortion, etc. And even claiming that these people are going against their inherent nature seems suspicious if we think historically. There was a time when many people believed that slavery was a good thing (in fact, it's in the bible), however now we hold that it is bad. Were all of those people going against their inherent nature?
Okay, if that is the case then the theist falls on the second horn of the dilemma, that God does not have control over his nature. If he cannot do anything other than the good, then there is some reason that things are good outside of God. He does not have control over whether things are good or not. If the theist can show that Good follows from logic, as power may, then perhaps God can be saved, but even so if God is not free there is another, deeper problem lurking: /watch?v=iSwkBsBARwM
If it is asserted that a thing is good *because* God loves it, wills it, commands it, etc., then it would seem that logical consistency would demand that we also assert that a thing is evil because God hates it or forbids it. The familiar consequence of this is that God could love, hate, will, forbid, or command anything at all and we would not be in a position to judge an action or a command of God as good or evil using any independent criteria. You might think that torturing babies is evil for various reasons, but if God says it's good you have to just accept it. To argue that God would never say such a thing is to invoke an independent standard of goodness for the purpose of judging the moral merits of the thing God loves or hates which, on this system, is not allowed. How, for instance, would you know what God would or would not do, say, or command on the basis of what you deem to be good or evil if the standard of good and evil is whatever God loves or hates? The answer is, you wouldn't. Attempts to bypass this problem, while maintaining that God is necessary to solving the problem of defining good and evil in a non-tautological manner, by asserting that it's God's nature--dictated by logical necessity--rather than his will, loves, hatreds, commands, etc., result in the same problem of leaving us in the dark as to what good and evil actually mean. On theism, how would one know that logical necessity is important, good, or desirable, without using standards of logic and reason independent of one's mere 'definition' of the deity? How would you even know that perfection, in the form of God's nature would logically entail that God is perfectly good without inferring from this same 'nature of perfection' that God is perfectly evil as well? From the criterion of perfection alone, how can we logically infer the one without inferring the other? Logically consistent answers to questions like this have seemed to evade the consciousness of WLC, who merely asserts without argument that we are in a good epistemic position to know that God's actions and commands are good because we feel it deep down when we contemplate them, but that when we feel deep down that God's actions and commands are evil we are not in fact in a good epistemic position to know that they are evil since we would necessarily be unaware of the 'morally sufficient' reasons God might have for acting in a manner that makes us experience it as evil deep down in our own consciences. But, using the standard of perfection alone, why couldn't it the case that the opposite is true? How can we be sure that God's actions are good "because we feel it deep down" when it's quite possible that we're just not aware of the diabolically sufficient reasons He may have for acting in a way that unfortunately makes us experience his evil intentions as temporarily good? If we aren't allowed the luxury of having independent reasons for judging things to be good or evil, then how could we really ever know whether we're considering our moral standards to be the creation of a God or a Devil, and what would be the difference?
Fair enough on the spelling. The reason that I keep asking questions about actions is that is the original problem in the Euthyphro Dilemma. What makes a specific act good or bad?
I'm still really confused as to the distinction between morality and ethics. It does not exist in philosophy (the people who get degrees in ethics) so I don't know where that is coming from. Also where do you get the word aesiology, searching for it in Google this conversation is the 5th hit and all the others have to do with pathology. You seem to be using, ethics, values, morality and duty differently than I have ever seen them used. What exactly is your distinction?
1. Just because God cannot be anything other than good, it does not follow that He has no Will or desire on how we should live morally. Anything not of His nature and what He commands, would be wrong. 2. Gay marriage and abortion are ethics. Moral values would be things like love, respect, tolerance, etc. And just because we apprehend morals, does not mean we'll always follow them especially if they conflict with self-interest. We know it is wrong to lie, yet we lie everyday.
Your misunderstanding is that the Theist does not claim that God's inability to act against His nature stems from evil being logicaly contradictory in and of itself, but that it is logically contradictory to the nature of God.
Divine commands give us duties. We "ought" to do something for an authority (God). It also best explains our sense of moral accountability. But apprehension of values with God as the foundation just establishes what is "good" and what is "bad."
A better way to respond to Craig's objection: Is something good because it is consistent with God's nature? or Is something good because it is good and God simply acts in accordance with good? It's just the original dilemma just steel-manned.
1. It could be both. God could ordain murder to be wrong through divine command, or we apprehend intrinsic value in every human life. 2. You're getting into aesiology here. I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible. But to answer your question, just because people do unethical things does not mean they do not apprehend values and duties. People choose whether or not to do right or wrong.
The claim that the theists defend is that their god is the source of goodness. And when they are hit with the Euthyphro dilemma, they claim it is a false dilemma because there is a 3rd option: Their god's nature is the source of goodness. They are hit with the dilemma again as to whether their god has control of its nature or not control over its nature. If they select the 2nd option as in this video, it means that something other than their god is dictating what their god's nature is.
I don't understand how God being the Good leads to arbitrariness if the theist believes that God creates us as moral agents ourselves. We all apprehend objective moral values and duties, so we can discern what good and evil is. We don't have to wait for God to act to know what is right. The argument just states what the basis is for goodness, not how to know goodness. So it does not present another dilemma.
I had commented on another video of yours regarding the Euthyphro dilemma. I did not see that you had revisited this particular dilemma and seem to have answered it and even proposed another dilemma, my bad. I do have a question though, why do you believe God having control over his nature is arbitrary? And why is arbitrariness not good? Subjective?
If God has no control over his nature, why is he one way instead of another? Why does he want you to do certain things and not others? If there was no conscious decision or logical proof of the claims that particular things are good, then what makes them good, or at least what makes God that way? Arbitrariness defies the intuition that there is a reason that rape is wrong. If you think that this is arbitrary, that it could have been the case that rape was good, then this should not be a concern for you, but that seems like a pretty big bullet to bite.
*"If god has no control over his nature he's impotent"* Doesn't work imo. *Nothing* has control over its own nature. If that were the case, then *that* would become the new nature where you could still ask if it has control over the nature of having control over its previous nature, ad infinitum. The problem with 'god is the good' is imo the fact that one can imagine possible worlds where god's nature is that of creation merely for the fun of destruction, which according to the theist must either by definition also be good or it shows that 'good' is really something beyond just god's nature and thus the Euthyphro Dilemma is not answered by merely defining god as being good and good as being part of god.
Two points. First, Let's be more clear as to what we mean by nature. If we mean properties, it should be clear that things have some control over their properties. A chameleon has control over it's color. A puffer fish has control over it's size. So this cannot be what we are talking about. Perhaps we mean the decisions that one makes or the beliefs that one holds. Whether or not we have doxastic voluntarism (the ability to believe as we choose) is up for debate, but it at least seems possible that something could have doxastic volunatrism, so this does not seem to be what we are talking about. Perhaps what you are concerned about is not the ability to change one's nature, but the ability to change one's ability to change one's nature. A chameleon may be able to change it's color, but it is not able to change whether or not it can change it's color. Or is it? If a very intelligent chameleon hit itself on the head in just the right spot it seems possible that it could short circuit it's color changing abilities. So second order change cannot be what we are talking about. It is not necessary to go down the path of infinite regress because God cannot make himself evil, but the intelligent chameleon can make himself unable to change color. God cannot control his second order nature properties, but a chameleon and arguably many other things can. This brings me to my second point. The reason that God might be able to escape this problem is that he is logically required to have certain properties. If God is logically required to have certain properties then he has them necessarily and in all possible worlds. If it is the case that God is a MGB then even though you can imagine a world in which God has other properties (such as taking fun in destruction), that world is actually impossible. Note that there is an important difference between conceivability and possibility. Of course the way to object here from the atheist perspective is to simply deny that God is a MGB. In my series on the Modal Ontological Argument I go over a number of reasons that you might not want to beleive that God is a MGB and I have yet to see a convincing justification for this premise.
Carneades.org Well, what I meant is maybe better described as 'fundamental nature' or something. The natures you described that could be changed were not fundamental and not analogous to what a theist would understand god's nature is. The 2nd point I think you misunderstood what I was saying. I didn't mean that I can conceive of a world where god can be evil in the way a the theist would define evil (which is indeed logically impossible), rather that because the theist simply defines the good as 'being part of god/god's character' they would *necessarily* have to admit that a possible world where god's character is one where he enjoys inflicting pointless suffering is *still* a good god. I doubt any theist would want to make that concession. Thoughts?
Robert LC - Digital Artist As to fundamental nature you must be talking about what I might refer to as essential properties. This begins to make more sense. Essential properties are those properties that if they were changed the thing would be something else. So the statement would be something like: S1. Nothing can change it's essential properties. But this does not seem quite right either. By the above statement we can either mean: S2. Something cannot change those conditions that we would use to distinguish that thing from other things. S3. Something cannot change it's own properties such that it would not be itself anymore. However neither of these versions seem satisfactory. Let's see why by applying them to the concept of personal identity. First I will look at this from the Psychological Approach to Personal Identity and then from the Somatic Approach to Personal Identity. Imagine a person named Harold. Harold is 10 years old at T1, 20 years old at T2 and 30 years old at T3. *Memory Criterion* With the memory criterion, Harold at T2 is identical to Harold at T1 because they share memories, yet clearly Harold at T2 can change the conditions required to be Harold as he can form new memories that will be the memories that Harold at T3 will use to be connected with Harold at T2. Therefore S2 does not make sense as a version of our statement about essential properties. However S3 does not either as clearly Harold could hit himself on the head an lose all of his memories and thus make himself a different person. Under this undersstandig of Persona Identity neither of our claims about essential properties seem to hold up. *Causal Dependance* With causal dependance, Harold at T2 is identical to Harold at T1 because his mental states are causally connected to his previous mental states. Clearly here the current mental states are constantly changing so what is needed to connect him back to any previous self will be different every time so the conditions are not only able to change, they are constantly changing. Therefore S2 will not hold up. S3 will be no stronger as Harold could disconnect himself from his previous mental states by telling a doctor to fiddle around in his head until his current mental states were completely dependent on his random poking, not his previous ones. Thus he can make himself not himself. *Somatic Approach* Here it would seem as Harold's body changes and his cells are replaced the conditions that would make him Harold, change, so S2 does not seem to work. S3 seems a bit stronger here, however it does not seem impossible to put one's consciousness into a machine or computer and therefore not be oneself anymore. We can also interpret S3 as simply stopping existing, which would clearly be possible under any of these as suicide is possible. Therefore I would say the point that most things can change the essential properties or fundamental nature seems to stay strong. However perhaps what was meant was: S4. Something cannot change its essential properties and stay the same thing. This is simply the definition of essential property. This seems a trivial point to make, but perhaps it will help us with our understanding of God's properties. God cannot change the fact that he is good without becoming something other than God. But perhaps God can change what his own essential properties are as S2. While if God were to change what he is to the point that it would not line up with the definition of God he would not be God, but if he were to change the definition of what it is to be God, (as Harold could change what it was to be Harold by forming new memories etc.) then it seems that God has control over what properties are essential to him. As to the second point. *"I didn't mean that I can conceive of a world where god can be evil in the way a the theist would define evil (which is indeed logically impossible), rather that because the theist simply defines the good as 'being part of god/god's character' they would necessarily have to admit that a possible world where god's character is one where he enjoys inflicting pointless suffering is still a good god."* Clever idea. If the theist is to claim that goodness must be defined necessarily the same way, then they concede that something other than God defines goodness. This would only work though if the theist cannot somehow define wanting pleasure in others as a kind of great making property that God must posses in all possible worlds as many theists that use the argument do.
It seems to me that if you say that goodness is a part of God's nature this does entail goodness being perfect. That is, if you believe God is all-perfect, then it follows that all that is in His nature is perfect. If goodness is part of God's nature such that He is the good, then goodness is perfect necessarily. I also don't think that the theist has to show that goodness follows from logic on the basis of showing God cannot create logical contradictions. This would be like asking the theist how bachelors follow from logic after showing God cannot make married bachelors. Or asking how omnipotence follows from logic after showing there's a contradiction between omnipotence and stones so heavy that omnipotent beings cannot lift it.
This is logically fallacious. I never said that God is ONLY good. He is also omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. So it just is strange to say in order to be good, you have to be all the omnis. Goodness is part of God's nature, but it is not independent of Him.
1. He wills things because HE is good. Not because the actions are good. 2. Yeah but objective morality exists outside of human opinion. For example, a cannibalist can have objective moral values because they would not eat members of their own tribe. So in a way they would have respect, or even love for each other. To go into detail of rightness and wrongness of actions would be ethics. And of course cultures would differ in ethics, but not necessarily values or duties.
1. I guess the latter, that God can't control His nature. The reason there could be good outside of God is because He could create us as moral agents who can apprehend and do good, as I've already explained. 2. Evil and good can exist without divine command. But what divine command does is give us moral obligations. If God didn't give commands, we wouldn't be obliged to do good. But that doesn't dismiss our apprehension of objective moral values and such. All humans generally agree on values.
But I've already explained how in my first comment. The theist can say that God creates us as moral agents so that we can apprehend goodness and do good deeds ourselves. So it could follow from logic, WITH God being the foundation.
If this god's 'nature' is to *be* good, how is god able to impart the potential for moral choice to the beings god creates? God is not a moral agent but simply an automaton that does what it does without potential to do otherwise. If free will is such a good thing, why doesn't god have it?
2. My cannibalism example was only meant to show that even extremely immoral people can apprehend certain values. That suggests that there are values that exist independently of human opinion. That was the point I was trying to get across. How people can act ethically is a totally different question. But obviously cannibalism (ceremonial) would be wrong because it is murder. Aesiology is the study of ethics.
Wait, are we talking about the biblical God here? He seems to have murdered a lot of people. And it seems then it is bad to be human, because God is not human and God is the paradigm of goodness. It also seems wrong to not be omnipotent as God is omnipotent. And most importantly it seems bad to be free as God is not free (which creates all sorts of problems) /watch?v=iSwkBsBARwM
But in both of the instances you've given, you're saying the good is independent of God. The theist believes that God IS the good. God does not do acts that are good. His nature is to do good acts. He does not choose, He just cannot do anything other than good.
Interesting viewpoint. I am curious, what does a God that can perform a logical contradiction look like? How can even a God make something both p and not p? Perhaps simply because we cannot conceive of it does not make it impossible. Or perhaps, as it often seems to the skeptic, logic itself, with only true and false, is in fact flawed. Though this video may end with a solution for the theist, I am still skeptical (/watch?v=iSwkBsBARwM) and honestly the theist has a high burden of proof.
I wonder does God can not do : physical , logical , metapysical or modal contraidctions ? If the answer is yes to any does not this imply that God is not all powerfull ? Can God control any of his powers like knowledge & potency or not ? If u answer with yes so he can sometimes make himself not omnipotent & if the answer is no so he has no free will & not in full control of his powers which in turn is against him being wise or omniscient .
No I don't think there were no oughts before the Ten Commandments because I believe God was speaking to man before that. There are several reasons why murder is bad. But God would not want us to murder because He does not murder. It's the same thing as saying that hating someone is bad, because God does not hate people. He is the paradigm of goodness.
How about this: How do we define God's good nature? If God is the standard of good, then we cannot say he is good in virtue of certain traits. If we cannot say he is good in virtue of certain traits but he is still the standard, how do we DEFINE his goodness?
Darius "Just Another Atheist" M The theist being able to create a logical definition of good (something like perfections) is what this argument hinges on. If they can't do that this defense will fall apart. They might say something about good being things that are complete or logically perfect, but as I note in my objections to IP's Modal Ontological Arguement ruclips.net/video/ZZkx7yZrtRY/видео.html& that is easier said than done.
Carneades.org Possibly, but then they are reversing the order. God is good in virtue of good-making traits. If he is to be the standard, certain good-making traits can only be good making traits if God has them. The problem is that one cannot define God's goodness anymore.
I'm sorry I thought you said that God IS the good, that seems to imply that all that is Good is God and all that is God is Good. Are you saying that there are some things like omnipotence that are of God, but not Good? Are you saying that there are some things like free will that are Good but God cannot have them? If either answer is yes it seems that God is not the Good. Does that mean I can kill someone so long as I am "casting judgment" on them?
Yeah! I see now what you mean. Also another avenue of criticism of the theist argument is that definition of "maximally great" is subjective and not objective. I might say that changing the nature of logic would be maximally great but apparently the theists god can't do that. And isn't the concept of "goodness" even more subjective?
1. I already explained this and you're asking the same questions over and over again. It can be both because we can apprehend values, but commands would give us duties. So for example, we wouldn't murder because we know others suffer. At the same time, it would be our duty to follow the law. So this is how divine command and objective morality could work together. The foundation of objective morality IS God. It is not independent of Him.
None of this make the command to us arbitrary because he is the creator of all things. But for the sake of this God doesn't change his nature or never became that nature he always was that nature. Things need explanations when it is contingent God isn't contingent he is necessary. God never became good but he himself is the good God is the idea the essence good he is in nature God and he what he wills comes of his nature because he is The Good they spoke about. It is him.
So goodness is a logical conclusion that god sees and then chooses to implement? I think you can defend the "Things are good because God says they are good" "ARBITRARY" side of the argument. It goes like this: When god creates a world it has a system. The system can have different outcomes. Some outcomes are preferable to god. Some actions made by actors in the system steer the system towards a certain outcome. Now God labels actions that actors can take to steer the system towards Gods preferred outcomes as GOOD. And actions that steer the system away from his preferred outcome as EVIL. And he creates humans with an innate ability to intuit what is good. Now the concept of good is actually arbitrary outside of the system. Since in another system the exact same action may steer that particular system towards an outcome that is unfavorable to God. So in conclusion. What may seem to make God totally arbitrary actually is governed by logic and planning, and what is good somehow makes sense to God when he looks at the system. But to us it may make no sense, or we have a sense and/or intuition for what is good. But outside the system it has no meaning. This is probably full of holes, but i had fun writing it. :) Sorry for my English (thank you spell checker software).
+Lockvir Tompson Interesting argument. The question is why are certain outcomes more preferable than others? What makes God prefer one outcome over another?
+Carneades.org Hmm...I guess I assume that God has a will, and he has preferences. And that he had a clear goal in mind when he created the world, since i think it is actually impossible for him to do anything by accident(?). But I think my argument at-least needs his reasons/preferences to be amoral. Since morality, good and evil would be a layer that God added. Other than that i have no good ideas.
god does have control of his nature but gives off the illusion of not having control since he is all good. god has free will. but all his will is good.
+Joshua Dickerson If you define that as free will, then you give up on the free will defense. If he always chooses the good then he is not actually free. (ruclips.net/video/iSwkBsBARwM/видео.html).
the free will defense argues justifies how god exist and also how evil exist. god has allowed us free will. we are not perfect . we produce the evil. god is not us. we are not god.(just stating a hypothetical situation) you have the ability to get a gun and shoot your self in the head. but you have yet to and will never choose to do so? does this strip you of your freedom?
Doesn't William Lane Craig's argument mean that "God is good" is a tautology? Kind of like saying fartberries taste like fartberries and then talking about how much something else tastes like a fartberry.
You just solved the Euthyphro Dilemma? You surely yourself just showed that the Euthyphro Dilemma is a false dilemma and therefore can easily be rejected. Therefore, the theist is able to avoid this and successfully use the "Moral Argument for God's Existence" successfully, as a powerful argument for the existence of God because in order to have objective morality, it needs to be grounded in the ontological existence of God to serve as a transcendent foundation beyond all of human subjectivity.
If something else is dictating what their god's nature is, then their god is not the source of goodness. Your argument for the non-impotence of their god is a corollary to picking the 2nd option and not the main point of the original argument: The theists god is not the source of goodness.
Your logic concerning logic (lol)is a bit flawed. Our rules about morality does not stem from logic, it is corroborated by them. Logic itself is an inherent property of God. Logic does not dictate what God can or cannot do, as logic itself stems from God's nature. Nice video, even though I don't agree with the conclusion. Edit: our rules of morality stems from God's moral nature and is corroborated by logic.
1. People can do good, but what I am saying is that good is not independent of God. God is the paradigm for goodness. 2. You keep on conflating values with ethics. I am saying that everyone can APPREHEND moral values and duties. I'm not saying cannibals are good persons. I am saying that we even see them apprehending values on a different level, although they aren't ETHICAL people since they kill and eat other people. But they wouldn't kill their own. I'm not saying what they do is right.
If we're talking about the biblical God, He cast judgment on people. He did not murder them. I'm talking about things God would not/cannot do in terms of morality. You're overgeneralizing to include everything which is fallacious tactic.
The part where you tried to play the theist really just destroyed the divine command theory, as you are affirming morals really come from logic, not god.
No. Of course not everything that is good is God. Being a doctor is a good profession. But being a doctor does not make you God. If you do something good like being a doctor, one reason it would be good is because you are helping others. And this is something God would do, or commands us to do. God in the OT cast judgment on wicked people, which is a good thing.
Can God change his nature (A), or can he not change his nature?(B) {facepalm} Sorry, I'm running out of patience for the nonsense. (1) So what if it's arbitrary? In what way does that make it less compelling? He's still God, you're still His creation, and He still gets to make the rules for you. (2) Experience tells us that morality is far from arbitrary. Without it, things fall apart. So the (A) branch is contrary to reality, and therefore false. (3) The inability to change one's nature does not make one impotent, as you said. (4) If God created the universe, then he is clearly not impotent. So feel free to call him "impotent" as much as you like, that just makes you look foolish. The (B) branch could be (logically) correct in some sense, but has no impact. I choose (B). End of discussion. (5) If there is no God, and logic simply IS, then why doesn't the same dilemma ensue? Why are we obligated to follow logic any more than we are obligated to follow God? The point of 5 is to say that the notion "God can't change His own nature, therefore impotence" is to say that if reality can't be other than it is, then it can't be reality. In effect, this is simply to rule God out of the picture by definition ("He is, therefore He can't be.") That's an instance of very clever, stealth question-begging, but it's question-begging nonetheless.
philWynk (1) Sounds like Stockolm syndrom. (2) Maybe but that it is not arbitrary might just be because God does not exist. (3) Not impotent but not omnipotent either. (4) It does have impact. Maybe 'impotent' in the sense of 'no power' is less accurate than in the sense of 'not omnipotent' which is a problem for theists. (5) Following the rules of logic is no more or less of a hypothetical imperative that following the rules of chess is. If you want others to play chess with you, you should follow the rules of chess. If you want to engage in intellectual discussion/ make arguments that other take seriously/ etc. you should follow the rules of logic. The latter gives a good reason to follow logic, while there is no compelling reason to follow God. Concerning the last part: That is not what the arguments says, all it says is that if reality can't be different, reality does not contain an onmipotent God. For your response to have any ground you need to presuppose that God is in fact not omnipotent which is still a problem for theists.
He actually doesn't get out of the dilemma at all. He only complicates it.
Is an action good because it is in accordance with God's nature, or is God's nature in accordance with an action because it is good?
A better question would be "is it good because it is Gods nature or is it Gods nature because it is good?
Same situation.
good because it is Gods nature. And His nature is necessary and couldn't be otherwise.
@@EmperorOfTheAliens so can ' what is good ' change over time ?
I think your charity response was a good one that I think Theists could reasonably use and still come out. I do like that you do both sides.
Only a perfect skeptic sage has no beliefs or opinions. The rest of us are simply on the journey to that point by questioning our beliefs by finding equally opposing arguments to those opinions that we may possess. Carneades was famous for going to Rome and arguing for justice one day and against it the next, much to the astonishment of the Romans.
Admitting the possibility of being mistaken is the first step to understanding, or so it seems.
1. If the claim is that God can't control his nature, the question posed is not why there is good outside of God (which the moral agent claim seems to sufficiently answer), but the question, If God cannot control his nature, then what made it wrong to murder (as it cannot be God, because God does not control his nature). The only solution I see (that I posed in the video) is that somehow goodness, like power, can be found logically through some explanation of perfection (Ontological argument).
1. This brings us back to the original Euthyphro dilemma. If God ordained that murder is wrong by divine command it seems arbitrary. If we apprehend value in every human life, then it was this reason and not God's command that made murder wrong. It cannot be both as the question is raised, what made it wrong God's divine command or our perception of the value (if our perceptions and God disagreed who would be right? Which came first, divine command or our perceptions?)
1. So the question remains why is murder wrong? Because God would not murder? Or because it is in alignment with some morality that we can perceive?
2. Look carefully, I did not claim any of these actions were ethical, merely that they were moral. It seems that if perceiving these "moral values" causes us to act in completely contradictory ways, they are really of no use to us. So the question remains what makes something ethical if we can only apprehend morals?
A strong point. If the problem is arbitrariness, then we are taking the first horn (of the second dilemma), God has control over his nature. In terms of moral agents the question is, why do they see certain acts as good? Either it is because God manifests himself in those acts somehow, or it is because they are good for some other reason. If God manifests himself in those acts the only reason we see them as good is that God manifests himself in them (Arbitrariness). If we ...
1. The question is not about what he wills but why he wills one thing and not another. Is there some inherent morality in some actions and not others? If so what is it that makes these actions moral?
2. There are many societies that do not believe in tolerance of others views and have been for many years (see societies where being gay is punishable by death). Many people lie, but feel no guilt, they don't perceive it as morally wrong. Some see it as their moral responsibility to deride women.
I just found a better description of the argument from Professor William Lane Craig and it's much more interesting. "How is God the standard of goodness? Because He is the creator. A thing’s goodness is determined by its purpose. A dull knife is not a good knife because the purpose of a knife is to cut. Sharpness is bad for a shoe, however, for a good shoe is one that is comfortable and supportive to a foot. God, as creator, is the determiner of all purposes of His creation. What He makes is made purposefully, and anything that stands in the way of that purpose is bad. Rape is evil because that is not what sex is made to be. Murder is evil because it is not the purpose of humans to arbitrarily decide when people should die. (Note that this does not necessarily vilify all human-caused deaths, such as capital punishment or war. If God has stated guidelines for these actions, then it is no longer arbitrary human will being carried out.
In conclusion, a thing is good to the degree that it fulfills its purposes. Because God is the creator of all things, according to His own good nature, He is therefore both the standard and declarer of goodness."
The Euthyphro dilemma is the big gun for my debates with local theists, as to this day I have yet to have an answer.
The claim that God would not command evil because it goes against God's nature does not actually change the problem, but only reorganizes it. The question might then be reasonably asked: "Where does God's nature come from?"
Did God create it himself? If so then God's whims are still behind what he considers right and wrong, and the dilemma still applies. If, on the other hand, God did not create his own nature, then either someone else created it (in which case the dilemma applies to the creator of God's nature) or the morality contained in God's nature is inherent in some way (in which case God is not truly the author of right and wrong).
The "nature" objections to the dilemma solve nothing, because they can easily be reformulated in terms of God's character:
"Is God's character the way it is because it is good or is God's character good simply because it is God's character?"
The structure of this modified dilemma is exactly the same as before, and it appears to be if anything harder to escape.
If we identify the ultimate standard for goodness with God's nature, then it seems we are identifying it with certain of God's properties (e.g., being loving, being just). If so, then the dilemma resurfaces: is God good because he has those properties, or are those properties good because God has them?
Also if Gods nature is good, and he defined immoral and evil acts, this seems one again inconsistent with the principal of Omnibenevolence: as we question, whence cometh evil if his nature only allows good? Did evil originate somewhere else other than the creator?
The "nature" argument also reduces the omnipotence of God as he can only act in ways consistent with his nature; as such he would be physically unable to create or contemplate evil. Meaning he is not truly omnipotent. If omnipotence means only being able to act in ways consistent with ones nature, then you and I are omnipotent by that definition.
Also one final note would be to ask: If humans are able to commit evil acts AND acts of good, then is our will apparently... more free, than God?
Why is the omnipotence of a deity confined by the rules of logic? this never made sense to me. Surely if the deity in question created the universe, and everything within it (including logic) then surely it cannot be confined by the demarcations it set. Unless we argue that logic is something that exists independent of the deities manipulation, in which case we have a problem once again :S
Logic just seems to shit all over most theistic positions.
David Ward I think you should direct your criticisms more at the assumptions on which this argument rests than the argument itself. Note that this attempt is contingent upon the theist being able to offer a logical definition of goodness (which I have yet to see), and on us accepting the common dodge of the omnipotence paradox (which I am skeptical of ruclips.net/video/2tEuDNsvS4c/видео.html). If you assume both of these, I think the theist has a way out. Here's how. "Where does God's nature come from?" Logic. God's nature is a consequence of logic. If we assume that some version of the Ontological argument works, this will too. "the morality contained in God's nature is inherent in some way (in which case God is not truly the author of right and wrong)" If the solution to the omnipotence paradox holds, then God does not need to be able to break or create the laws of logic. Therefore, if goodness follows from logic, he is not impotent by not creating it. As to the character reformulation, you simply need to say that God's character is dictated by the laws of logic to get the argument up and running again. As to the specific properties, (is love good because God has it or is God loving because it is good?) a similar answer can be offered. Love is good because logic says that it is a perfection, or a goodness. God is loving because he logically must have all perfections. God could not make love good because that would break the laws of logic, nor could God not be good as that would also break the laws of logic. And omnipotence does not require someone to be able to break the laws of logic. . As for "whence cometh evil?" that sounds more like a problem of evil question. I have a video on why we can't solve both the problem of evil and the Euthyphro Dilemma which agrees with many of your points ruclips.net/video/iSwkBsBARwM/видео.html . As I note at the top, you have to make a couple of big assumptions for this to work: that the ontological argument can offer some logical definition of good, and that the solution to the omnipotence paradox works, but with those I think it can be done. In my opinion, the place to object is not here in this argument, but on those two assumptions as it seems that with those assumptions, the argument can stand.
David Ward In the end I think that we agree. My point is that in order to target this defense of God's Goodness, you need to attack either the claim that his goodness can in some way be derived from logic or the claim that something is not omnipotent if it cannot break the laws of logic. My argument is that if you concede those two points then the argument is successful. However, I also have not seen a sufficient reason to support those points therefore it seems that the argument ultimately fails, but only because those other links in the theist position break and cannot support this conclusion. If some clever theist came up with a way to support those premises, then the argument would be fine.
No shit they can't find an answer! No one has successfully answered this in over 2000 years!
God exists by necessity of his own nature so asking where his nature comes from is nonsensical. It is like asking, "who created God?"
The reason logical contradictions are outside the bounds of an omnipotent being's ability to bring things about is because logical contradictions don't actually express anything at all. Any statement of the form "P and not-P" is one in which each of its conjuncts negates the other, and which therefore expresses a sum total of nothing. Generally then, logical contradictions are just strings of words that don't actually express anything in the literal sense. In this way, there can be, in principle, no state of affairs to which they might correspond, because, contrary to their superficial appearances, they aren't the kinds of linguistic expressions that do corresponding. So, to say that an omnipotent being cant bring about a logical contradiction is not to limit what that being can do in any way. Rather it's simply to acknowledge that logical contradictions are empty words that don't actually express anything.
That does not answer the question. Why is a specific act good? Is murder wrong because it causes suffering or because God does not will it? If the answer is both, I see two versions of both that you could mean either: "Both1" Something would be wrong either if God does not will it or if it caused suffering, or "Both2" Something would be wrong only if it both caused suffering and God did not will it.
Wow...I would love to see Socrates grill Craig the way he did Euthyphro. What an absolute fool.
I have made this very criticism, and the argument leveled against it has been that goodness is like omnipotence, it is a kind of perfection that follows logically from a maximally great being. That "goodness is somehow like completeness. The argument is something like, God didn't define what makes power powerful, so he does not need to make what is good, good. However this rests on the assumption that "good" can follow from logic, as power does which the theist is yet to show.
Two thoughts:
1. I'm unclear whether you are claiming that the new dilemma created is a false dilemma or if you are claiming that you can make one of it's horns palatable. Which is it?
2. Even if you claim that God made men as "moral agents" it seems he did a bad job of it, as according to most religions we are told what to do by God (see bible, 10 commandments), and even so we are pretty bad a determining what is good and what is not, as we often disagree.
If you're forced to make a decision, that does seem like a practical conclusion (that logic isn't universal and God does not exist). Luckily the skeptic is allowed to suspend judgement and will willingly do so whenever not logically forced to accept the conclusions. Being skeptical of both logic and theism is a worthy project. And I just love the image of a pink puppy and orange bicycle God.
If we see them as good for some other reason then God once again does not have control over his nature as good things are good for some other reason.
When I said murder was wrong because it caused suffering, I was just giving an example of a reason as to why murder would be wrong. There are many other reasons why it is wrong. But in relation to God, what I was saying is that it is not in God's nature to murder. It is in His nature to value human life, and He commands us to love one another. So murder is wrong because we (1) value the lives of others, and (2) we have the duty to love another. So it can be both.
It's a big problem for proponents of the Ontological argument. There are so many different versions of morality that it is hard to establish an argument that pure logic would support any specific one of them. Basically if the theist gets out of this problem they will land themselves in another one.
I have no idea why you think I said that. What I distinguished was moral values and how to ACT ethically. Values are our properly basic moral beliefs. And of course how we act on them is where people would differ. I was making the distinction because you kept asking questions concerning actions, when I was really focusing on values. And I probably spelled the word wrong.
2. My question isn't whether people choose to do right or wrong. the question is: if people only apprehend values and not ethics how then do we know that a specific, such as cannibalism, is wrong? It seems consistent with our morals but not our ethics (as you said above).
P.S. I did not find aesiology in my dictionary or online, could you please define it?
If there is something that is good that is not God, then God is not "the good" by the definition of identity. X is Y only if X and Y share all the same properties. If there are things that are X and not Y, then X is not Y. Therefore if there are things that are Good and not God, then God is not the Good.
but according to your claim the foundation for why we don't murder isn't divine command, it is some deeper meaning to do with suffering "we wouldn't murder because we know others suffer". Why do we need divine command when we can apprehend values? It seems under your picture the foundation is suffering, not God. God is extraneous to why we perceive murder as wrong. If we never heard God's commands we still would not murder.
At the end of the day, we seem to have taken the 'God says things because they are good' and the 'God does not have control over his nature' horns of the dilemmas. I don't have an issue with that, its the path I would have taken.
Being an atheist, my ultimate defense for a monotheistic supernatural creator god is that this god CAN perform logical contradictions and the rest must be left to faith.
Otherwise, during the process of trying to solve all these problems it becomes painfully obvious that man creates God in his image.
I can understand a strict skeptic's point of view, but I realize it's a perfectly natural thing to apply one's knowledge to form an opinion about a question, often without even intending to. I'm pretty sure that a good number of skeptics aren't quite so forthcoming with expressing their opinions, for whatever reasons.
The important things for me are to question if my beliefs are practical and be open to the possibility of being wrong. I don't define existence... if such a thing exists XD
Two thoughts. First, does that mean that there were no oughts before the ten commandments (or the equivalent in your religion). Second I don't know what you mean by apprehension of values with God as the foundation. Is murder bad because God is the foundation for it being bad or is it bad because it causes suffering?
And the Christian answer is that goodness is not independent of God. It is God. So God does not will things because they are good, He wills them because HE is good.
1. Just to be clear are you claiming a kind of virtue ethics here? Actions in themselves are not good only agents are good?
2. I just want to be clear on your viewpoint. A culture that beats children is moral so long as they do it out of respect? A country that kills a certain part of their population is moral so long as they believe that they are helping those they are killing and doing it out of love? Do you really think that God would say cannibals are moral?
... 2. I'm not so sure about the claim that all humans agree on moral values. See gay marriage, abortion, etc. And even claiming that these people are going against their inherent nature seems suspicious if we think historically. There was a time when many people believed that slavery was a good thing (in fact, it's in the bible), however now we hold that it is bad. Were all of those people going against their inherent nature?
Okay, if that is the case then the theist falls on the second horn of the dilemma, that God does not have control over his nature. If he cannot do anything other than the good, then there is some reason that things are good outside of God. He does not have control over whether things are good or not. If the theist can show that Good follows from logic, as power may, then perhaps God can be saved, but even so if God is not free there is another, deeper problem lurking: /watch?v=iSwkBsBARwM
If it is asserted that a thing is good *because* God loves it, wills it, commands it, etc., then it would seem that logical consistency would demand that we also assert that a thing is evil because God hates it or forbids it. The familiar consequence of this is that God could love, hate, will, forbid, or command anything at all and we would not be in a position to judge an action or a command of God as good or evil using any independent criteria. You might think that torturing babies is evil for various reasons, but if God says it's good you have to just accept it. To argue that God would never say such a thing is to invoke an independent standard of goodness for the purpose of judging the moral merits of the thing God loves or hates which, on this system, is not allowed. How, for instance, would you know what God would or would not do, say, or command on the basis of what you deem to be good or evil if the standard of good and evil is whatever God loves or hates? The answer is, you wouldn't.
Attempts to bypass this problem, while maintaining that God is necessary to solving the problem of defining good and evil in a non-tautological manner, by asserting that it's God's nature--dictated by logical necessity--rather than his will, loves, hatreds, commands, etc., result in the same problem of leaving us in the dark as to what good and evil actually mean. On theism, how would one know that logical necessity is important, good, or desirable, without using standards of logic and reason independent of one's mere 'definition' of the deity? How would you even know that perfection, in the form of God's nature would logically entail that God is perfectly good without inferring from this same 'nature of perfection' that God is perfectly evil as well? From the criterion of perfection alone, how can we logically infer the one without inferring the other?
Logically consistent answers to questions like this have seemed to evade the consciousness of WLC, who merely asserts without argument that we are in a good epistemic position to know that God's actions and commands are good because we feel it deep down when we contemplate them, but that when we feel deep down that God's actions and commands are evil we are not in fact in a good epistemic position to know that they are evil since we would necessarily be unaware of the 'morally sufficient' reasons God might have for acting in a manner that makes us experience it as evil deep down in our own consciences.
But, using the standard of perfection alone, why couldn't it the case that the opposite is true? How can we be sure that God's actions are good "because we feel it deep down" when it's quite possible that we're just not aware of the diabolically sufficient reasons He may have for acting in a way that unfortunately makes us experience his evil intentions as temporarily good?
If we aren't allowed the luxury of having independent reasons for judging things to be good or evil, then how could we really ever know whether we're considering our moral standards to be the creation of a God or a Devil, and what would be the difference?
Fair enough on the spelling. The reason that I keep asking questions about actions is that is the original problem in the Euthyphro Dilemma. What makes a specific act good or bad?
I'm still really confused as to the distinction between morality and ethics. It does not exist in philosophy (the people who get degrees in ethics) so I don't know where that is coming from. Also where do you get the word aesiology, searching for it in Google this conversation is the 5th hit and all the others have to do with pathology. You seem to be using, ethics, values, morality and duty differently than I have ever seen them used. What exactly is your distinction?
1. Just because God cannot be anything other than good, it does not follow that He has no Will or desire on how we should live morally. Anything not of His nature and what He commands, would be wrong.
2. Gay marriage and abortion are ethics. Moral values would be things like love, respect, tolerance, etc. And just because we apprehend morals, does not mean we'll always follow them especially if they conflict with self-interest. We know it is wrong to lie, yet we lie everyday.
Your misunderstanding is that the Theist does not claim that God's inability to act against His nature stems from evil being logicaly contradictory in and of itself, but that it is logically contradictory to the nature of God.
Divine commands give us duties. We "ought" to do something for an authority (God). It also best explains our sense of moral accountability. But apprehension of values with God as the foundation just establishes what is "good" and what is "bad."
A better way to respond to Craig's objection:
Is something good because it is consistent with God's nature?
or
Is something good because it is good and God simply acts in accordance with good?
It's just the original dilemma just steel-manned.
1. It could be both. God could ordain murder to be wrong through divine command, or we apprehend intrinsic value in every human life.
2. You're getting into aesiology here. I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible. But to answer your question, just because people do unethical things does not mean they do not apprehend values and duties. People choose whether or not to do right or wrong.
You should talk about the Heaven Free Will problem
Certainly a good topic. I need to cover it one of these days...
The claim that the theists defend is that their god is the source of goodness. And when they are hit with the Euthyphro dilemma, they claim it is a false dilemma because there is a 3rd option: Their god's nature is the source of goodness. They are hit with the dilemma again as to whether their god has control of its nature or not control over its nature. If they select the 2nd option as in this video, it means that something other than their god is dictating what their god's nature is.
I don't understand how God being the Good leads to arbitrariness if the theist believes that God creates us as moral agents ourselves. We all apprehend objective moral values and duties, so we can discern what good and evil is. We don't have to wait for God to act to know what is right. The argument just states what the basis is for goodness, not how to know goodness. So it does not present another dilemma.
I had commented on another video of yours regarding the Euthyphro dilemma. I did not see that you had revisited this particular dilemma and seem to have answered it and even proposed another dilemma, my bad.
I do have a question though, why do you believe God having control over his nature is arbitrary? And why is arbitrariness not good? Subjective?
If God has no control over his nature, why is he one way instead of another? Why does he want you to do certain things and not others? If there was no conscious decision or logical proof of the claims that particular things are good, then what makes them good, or at least what makes God that way? Arbitrariness defies the intuition that there is a reason that rape is wrong. If you think that this is arbitrary, that it could have been the case that rape was good, then this should not be a concern for you, but that seems like a pretty big bullet to bite.
If a human doesn't agree, he/she would just be acting contrary to his/her inherent moral compass.
If the rules of logic dictates what god can and cannot do, then god is binded by logic.
*"If god has no control over his nature he's impotent"*
Doesn't work imo.
*Nothing* has control over its own nature.
If that were the case, then *that* would become the new nature where
you could still ask if it has control over the nature of having control over its previous nature, ad infinitum.
The problem with 'god is the good' is imo the fact that one can imagine possible worlds where god's nature is that of creation merely for the fun of destruction, which according to the theist must either by definition also be good or it shows that 'good' is really something beyond just god's nature and thus the Euthyphro Dilemma is not answered by merely defining god as being good and good as being part of god.
Two points.
First, Let's be more clear as to what we mean by nature. If we mean properties, it should be clear that things have some control over their properties. A chameleon has control over it's color. A puffer fish has control over it's size. So this cannot be what we are talking about. Perhaps we mean the decisions that one makes or the beliefs that one holds. Whether or not we have doxastic voluntarism (the ability to believe as we choose) is up for debate, but it at least seems possible that something could have doxastic volunatrism, so this does not seem to be what we are talking about. Perhaps what you are concerned about is not the ability to change one's nature, but the ability to change one's ability to change one's nature. A chameleon may be able to change it's color, but it is not able to change whether or not it can change it's color.
Or is it? If a very intelligent chameleon hit itself on the head in just the right spot it seems possible that it could short circuit it's color changing abilities. So second order change cannot be what we are talking about. It is not necessary to go down the path of infinite regress because God cannot make himself evil, but the intelligent chameleon can make himself unable to change color. God cannot control his second order nature properties, but a chameleon and arguably many other things can.
This brings me to my second point. The reason that God might be able to escape this problem is that he is logically required to have certain properties. If God is logically required to have certain properties then he has them necessarily and in all possible worlds. If it is the case that God is a MGB then even though you can imagine a world in which God has other properties (such as taking fun in destruction), that world is actually impossible. Note that there is an important difference between conceivability and possibility.
Of course the way to object here from the atheist perspective is to simply deny that God is a MGB. In my series on the Modal Ontological Argument I go over a number of reasons that you might not want to beleive that God is a MGB and I have yet to see a convincing justification for this premise.
Carneades.org
Well, what I meant is maybe better described as 'fundamental nature' or something. The natures you described that could be changed were not fundamental and not analogous to what a theist would understand god's nature is.
The 2nd point I think you misunderstood what I was saying.
I didn't mean that I can conceive of a world where god can be evil in the way a the theist would define evil (which is indeed logically impossible), rather that because the theist simply defines the good as 'being part of god/god's character' they would *necessarily* have to admit that a possible world where god's character is one where he enjoys inflicting pointless suffering is *still* a good god.
I doubt any theist would want to make that concession.
Thoughts?
Robert LC - Digital Artist
As to fundamental nature you must be talking about what I might refer to as essential properties. This begins to make more sense. Essential properties are those properties that if they were changed the thing would be something else. So the statement would be something like:
S1. Nothing can change it's essential properties.
But this does not seem quite right either. By the above statement we can either mean:
S2. Something cannot change those conditions that we would use to distinguish that thing from other things.
S3. Something cannot change it's own properties such that it would not be itself anymore.
However neither of these versions seem satisfactory. Let's see why by applying them to the concept of personal identity. First I will look at this from the Psychological Approach to Personal Identity and then from the Somatic Approach to Personal Identity. Imagine a person named Harold. Harold is 10 years old at T1, 20 years old at T2 and 30 years old at T3.
*Memory Criterion*
With the memory criterion, Harold at T2 is identical to Harold at T1 because they share memories, yet clearly Harold at T2 can change the conditions required to be Harold as he can form new memories that will be the memories that Harold at T3 will use to be connected with Harold at T2. Therefore S2 does not make sense as a version of our statement about essential properties. However S3 does not either as clearly Harold could hit himself on the head an lose all of his memories and thus make himself a different person. Under this undersstandig of Persona Identity neither of our claims about essential properties seem to hold up.
*Causal Dependance*
With causal dependance, Harold at T2 is identical to Harold at T1 because his mental states are causally connected to his previous mental states. Clearly here the current mental states are constantly changing so what is needed to connect him back to any previous self will be different every time so the conditions are not only able to change, they are constantly changing. Therefore S2 will not hold up. S3 will be no stronger as Harold could disconnect himself from his previous mental states by telling a doctor to fiddle around in his head until his current mental states were completely dependent on his random poking, not his previous ones. Thus he can make himself not himself.
*Somatic Approach*
Here it would seem as Harold's body changes and his cells are replaced the conditions that would make him Harold, change, so S2 does not seem to work. S3 seems a bit stronger here, however it does not seem impossible to put one's consciousness into a machine or computer and therefore not be oneself anymore.
We can also interpret S3 as simply stopping existing, which would clearly be possible under any of these as suicide is possible.
Therefore I would say the point that most things can change the essential properties or fundamental nature seems to stay strong. However perhaps what was meant was:
S4. Something cannot change its essential properties and stay the same thing.
This is simply the definition of essential property. This seems a trivial point to make, but perhaps it will help us with our understanding of God's properties. God cannot change the fact that he is good without becoming something other than God. But perhaps God can change what his own essential properties are as S2. While if God were to change what he is to the point that it would not line up with the definition of God he would not be God, but if he were to change the definition of what it is to be God, (as Harold could change what it was to be Harold by forming new memories etc.) then it seems that God has control over what properties are essential to him.
As to the second point.
*"I didn't mean that I can conceive of a world where god can be evil in the way a the theist would define evil (which is indeed logically impossible), rather that because the theist simply defines the good as 'being part of god/god's character' they would necessarily have to admit that a possible world where god's character is one where he enjoys inflicting pointless suffering is still a good god."*
Clever idea. If the theist is to claim that goodness must be defined necessarily the same way, then they concede that something other than God defines goodness. This would only work though if the theist cannot somehow define wanting pleasure in others as a kind of great making property that God must posses in all possible worlds as many theists that use the argument do.
It seems to me that if you say that goodness is a part of God's nature this does entail goodness being perfect. That is, if you believe God is all-perfect, then it follows that all that is in His nature is perfect. If goodness is part of God's nature such that He is the good, then goodness is perfect necessarily.
I also don't think that the theist has to show that goodness follows from logic on the basis of showing God cannot create logical contradictions. This would be like asking the theist how bachelors follow from logic after showing God cannot make married bachelors. Or asking how omnipotence follows from logic after showing there's a contradiction between omnipotence and stones so heavy that omnipotent beings cannot lift it.
This is logically fallacious. I never said that God is ONLY good. He is also omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. So it just is strange to say in order to be good, you have to be all the omnis. Goodness is part of God's nature, but it is not independent of Him.
1. He wills things because HE is good. Not because the actions are good.
2. Yeah but objective morality exists outside of human opinion. For example, a cannibalist can have objective moral values because they would not eat members of their own tribe. So in a way they would have respect, or even love for each other. To go into detail of rightness and wrongness of actions would be ethics. And of course cultures would differ in ethics, but not necessarily values or duties.
1. I guess the latter, that God can't control His nature. The reason there could be good outside of God is because He could create us as moral agents who can apprehend and do good, as I've already explained.
2. Evil and good can exist without divine command. But what divine command does is give us moral obligations. If God didn't give commands, we wouldn't be obliged to do good. But that doesn't dismiss our apprehension of objective moral values and such. All humans generally agree on values.
But I've already explained how in my first comment. The theist can say that God creates us as moral agents so that we can apprehend goodness and do good deeds ourselves. So it could follow from logic, WITH God being the foundation.
What kind of distinction is involved in the Euthyphro dilemma?
If this god's 'nature' is to *be* good, how is god able to impart the potential for moral choice to the beings god creates? God is not a moral agent but simply an automaton that does what it does without potential to do otherwise. If free will is such a good thing, why doesn't god have it?
2. My cannibalism example was only meant to show that even extremely immoral people can apprehend certain values. That suggests that there are values that exist independently of human opinion. That was the point I was trying to get across. How people can act ethically is a totally different question. But obviously cannibalism (ceremonial) would be wrong because it is murder. Aesiology is the study of ethics.
Wait, are we talking about the biblical God here? He seems to have murdered a lot of people.
And it seems then it is bad to be human, because God is not human and God is the paradigm of goodness. It also seems wrong to not be omnipotent as God is omnipotent. And most importantly it seems bad to be free as God is not free (which creates all sorts of problems) /watch?v=iSwkBsBARwM
But in both of the instances you've given, you're saying the good is independent of God. The theist believes that God IS the good. God does not do acts that are good. His nature is to do good acts. He does not choose, He just cannot do anything other than good.
Interesting viewpoint. I am curious, what does a God that can perform a logical contradiction look like? How can even a God make something both p and not p? Perhaps simply because we cannot conceive of it does not make it impossible. Or perhaps, as it often seems to the skeptic, logic itself, with only true and false, is in fact flawed. Though this video may end with a solution for the theist, I am still skeptical (/watch?v=iSwkBsBARwM) and honestly the theist has a high burden of proof.
I wonder does God can not do : physical , logical , metapysical or modal contraidctions ?
If the answer is yes to any does not this imply that God is not all powerfull ?
Can God control any of his powers like knowledge & potency or not ?
If u answer with yes so he can sometimes make himself not omnipotent & if the answer is no so he has no free will & not in full control of his powers which in turn is against him being wise or omniscient .
No I don't think there were no oughts before the Ten Commandments because I believe God was speaking to man before that. There are several reasons why murder is bad. But God would not want us to murder because He does not murder. It's the same thing as saying that hating someone is bad, because God does not hate people. He is the paradigm of goodness.
How about this:
How do we define God's good nature?
If God is the standard of good, then we cannot say he is good in virtue of certain traits. If we cannot say he is good in virtue of certain traits but he is still the standard, how do we DEFINE his goodness?
Darius "Just Another Atheist" M The theist being able to create a logical definition of good (something like perfections) is what this argument hinges on. If they can't do that this defense will fall apart. They might say something about good being things that are complete or logically perfect, but as I note in my objections to IP's Modal Ontological Arguement ruclips.net/video/ZZkx7yZrtRY/видео.html& that is easier said than done.
Carneades.org Possibly, but then they are reversing the order. God is good in virtue of good-making traits. If he is to be the standard, certain good-making traits can only be good making traits if God has them. The problem is that one cannot define God's goodness anymore.
I'm sorry I thought you said that God IS the good, that seems to imply that all that is Good is God and all that is God is Good. Are you saying that there are some things like omnipotence that are of God, but not Good? Are you saying that there are some things like free will that are Good but God cannot have them? If either answer is yes it seems that God is not the Good.
Does that mean I can kill someone so long as I am "casting judgment" on them?
Yeah! I see now what you mean. Also another avenue of criticism of the theist argument is that definition of "maximally great" is subjective and not objective. I might say that changing the nature of logic would be maximally great but apparently the theists god can't do that. And isn't the concept of "goodness" even more subjective?
1. I already explained this and you're asking the same questions over and over again. It can be both because we can apprehend values, but commands would give us duties. So for example, we wouldn't murder because we know others suffer. At the same time, it would be our duty to follow the law. So this is how divine command and objective morality could work together. The foundation of objective morality IS God. It is not independent of Him.
None of this make the command to us arbitrary because he is the creator of all things.
But for the sake of this
God doesn't change his nature or never became that nature he always was that nature. Things need explanations when it is contingent God isn't contingent he is necessary.
God never became good but he himself is the good
God is the idea the essence good he is in nature God and he what he wills comes of his nature because he is The Good they spoke about. It is him.
You should debate craig to see whether yoy really is right
So goodness is a logical conclusion that god sees and then chooses to implement?
I think you can defend the "Things are good because God says they are good" "ARBITRARY" side of the argument.
It goes like this:
When god creates a world it has a system. The system can have different outcomes. Some outcomes are preferable to god. Some actions made by actors in the system steer the system towards a certain outcome. Now God labels actions that actors can take to steer the system towards Gods preferred outcomes as GOOD. And actions that steer the system away from his preferred outcome as EVIL. And he creates humans with an innate ability to intuit what is good. Now the concept of good is actually arbitrary outside of the system. Since in another system the exact same action may steer that particular system towards an outcome that is unfavorable to God. So in conclusion. What may seem to make God totally arbitrary actually is governed by logic and planning, and what is good somehow makes sense to God when he looks at the system. But to us it may make no sense, or we have a sense and/or intuition for what is good. But outside the system it has no meaning.
This is probably full of holes, but i had fun writing it. :) Sorry for my English (thank you spell checker software).
+Lockvir Tompson Interesting argument. The question is why are certain outcomes more preferable than others? What makes God prefer one outcome over another?
+Carneades.org Hmm...I guess I assume that God has a will, and he has preferences. And that he had a clear goal in mind when he created the world, since i think it is actually impossible for him to do anything by accident(?). But I think my argument at-least needs his reasons/preferences to be amoral. Since morality, good and evil would be a layer that God added.
Other than that i have no good ideas.
god does have control of his nature but gives off the illusion of not having control since he is all good. god has free will. but all his will is good.
+Joshua Dickerson If you define that as free will, then you give up on the free will defense. If he always chooses the good then he is not actually free. (ruclips.net/video/iSwkBsBARwM/видео.html).
the free will defense argues justifies how god exist and also how evil exist. god has allowed us free will. we are not perfect . we produce the evil. god is not us. we are not god.(just stating a hypothetical situation) you have the ability to get a gun and shoot your self in the head. but you have yet to and will never choose to do so? does this strip you of your freedom?
+Carneades.org but what is good?? is necessary evil good?? choosing the opposite maybe good?? hmm
Doesn't William Lane Craig's argument mean that "God is good" is a tautology? Kind of like saying fartberries taste like fartberries and then talking about how much something else tastes like a fartberry.
You just solved the Euthyphro Dilemma? You surely yourself just showed that the Euthyphro Dilemma is a false dilemma and therefore can easily be rejected. Therefore, the theist is able to avoid this and successfully use the "Moral Argument for God's Existence" successfully, as a powerful argument for the existence of God because in order to have objective morality, it needs to be grounded in the ontological existence of God to serve as a transcendent foundation beyond all of human subjectivity.
Christian Existentialist Is goods nature good because of an independent standard or is it arbitrary. The euthyphro dilemma is back.
If something else is dictating what their god's nature is, then their god is not the source of goodness. Your argument for the non-impotence of their god is a corollary to picking the 2nd option and not the main point of the original argument: The theists god is not the source of goodness.
Your logic concerning logic (lol)is a bit flawed. Our rules about morality does not stem from logic, it is corroborated by them. Logic itself is an inherent property of God. Logic does not dictate what God can or cannot do, as logic itself stems from God's nature.
Nice video, even though I don't agree with the conclusion.
Edit: our rules of morality stems from God's moral nature and is corroborated by logic.
Anything god can't do, shove it up gods ass and say it's the nature of my god so he can't do otherwise. 😹
@@scarziepewpew3897 Wonderful refutation. Your logic gives me chills.
1. People can do good, but what I am saying is that good is not independent of God. God is the paradigm for goodness.
2. You keep on conflating values with ethics. I am saying that everyone can APPREHEND moral values and duties. I'm not saying cannibals are good persons. I am saying that we even see them apprehending values on a different level, although they aren't ETHICAL people since they kill and eat other people. But they wouldn't kill their own. I'm not saying what they do is right.
If we're talking about the biblical God, He cast judgment on people. He did not murder them.
I'm talking about things God would not/cannot do in terms of morality. You're overgeneralizing to include everything which is fallacious tactic.
The part where you tried to play the theist really just destroyed the divine command theory, as you are affirming morals really come from logic, not god.
+JBudz I syruggle to defend positions which are so difficult to defend, skepticism is much easier.
Carneades.org sophistry is hard work!
Love your channel.
No. Of course not everything that is good is God. Being a doctor is a good profession. But being a doctor does not make you God. If you do something good like being a doctor, one reason it would be good is because you are helping others. And this is something God would do, or commands us to do.
God in the OT cast judgment on wicked people, which is a good thing.
Can God change his nature (A), or can he not change his nature?(B)
{facepalm} Sorry, I'm running out of patience for the nonsense.
(1) So what if it's arbitrary? In what way does that make it less compelling? He's still God, you're still His creation, and He still gets to make the rules for you.
(2) Experience tells us that morality is far from arbitrary. Without it, things fall apart. So the (A) branch is contrary to reality, and therefore false.
(3) The inability to change one's nature does not make one impotent, as you said.
(4) If God created the universe, then he is clearly not impotent. So feel free to call him "impotent" as much as you like, that just makes you look foolish. The (B) branch could be (logically) correct in some sense, but has no impact. I choose (B). End of discussion.
(5) If there is no God, and logic simply IS, then why doesn't the same dilemma ensue? Why are we obligated to follow logic any more than we are obligated to follow God?
The point of 5 is to say that the notion "God can't change His own nature, therefore impotence" is to say that if reality can't be other than it is, then it can't be reality. In effect, this is simply to rule God out of the picture by definition ("He is, therefore He can't be.") That's an instance of very clever, stealth question-begging, but it's question-begging nonetheless.
philWynk
(1) Sounds like Stockolm syndrom.
(2) Maybe but that it is not arbitrary might just be because God does not exist.
(3) Not impotent but not omnipotent either.
(4) It does have impact. Maybe 'impotent' in the sense of 'no power' is less accurate than in the sense of 'not omnipotent' which is a problem for theists.
(5) Following the rules of logic is no more or less of a hypothetical imperative that following the rules of chess is.
If you want others to play chess with you, you should follow the rules of chess.
If you want to engage in intellectual discussion/ make arguments that other take seriously/ etc. you should follow the rules of logic.
The latter gives a good reason to follow logic, while there is no compelling reason to follow God.
Concerning the last part: That is not what the arguments says, all it says is that if reality can't be different, reality does not contain an onmipotent God. For your response to have any ground you need to presuppose that God is in fact not omnipotent which is still a problem for theists.
Craig would have refuted this in same way...so Craig's answer is valid