Is something good because God says it is good, or does God say it is good because it is good? The so-called "Euthyphro dilemma".
Is murdering someone bad? I would certainly hope that most people would say, "yes." That's an easy question. But when you take it one step further it gets harder. How do you know that murder is bad? This question will probably spur tons of different answers. Some people will talk about the inherent value of human life. Others will say that if we don't kill each other we promote the greatest good for all. Still others may claim that there is some universal moral law that we are all subject to. But inevitably, any time we try to describe morality it seems we always fail to explain how moral rules were created to begin with or we come up with some moral truth that our theory can't explain.
A classic example is the prohibition against killing little babies. I think we would all agree that it is morally wrong to kill an innocent child. Now one particular moral philosophy (called "Utilitarianism") claims that the morally correct decision is whichever decision leads to the greatest benefit for the greatest number of people. That seems appealing on the surface, doesn't it? But now suppose the baby we are talking about killing is little Adolf Hitler, and we know what he is going to do when he grows up. Now should we kill him? Utilitarianism would say "yes". Whether you agree or not, the moral question certainly gets more complicated.
It all boils down to this. We all know that certain things are morally wrong. What we don't know is "why".
One Christian answer to this complicated question is called the "Divine Command Theory." Basically, this says that moral truth comes from God. We know what is morally right based upon what God tells us to do. Similarly, we know what is morally wrong based upon what God forbids.1
400 years before Christ was born, Plato raised an interesting "dilemma" for this theory. Because Plato was a Greek philosopher, he raised his questions in the context of the Greek gods, but the logic applies equally to Christianity or any religion that looks to a divine being for it's moral compass. In his work Euthyphro, Plato presents a fictional dialogue between Socrates and Euthyphro. During the course of this dialogue, Socrates raises the question of whether something is good because the gods declare it to be good, or whether the gods declare something to be good because it is good?
What does all this philosophical mumbo jumbo mean? For starters, look at the first scenario Plato presents. Let's use stealing as an example. Plato basically asks, "Is stealing wrong simply because God says so?" If so, Plato believes this leads to serious problems. If stealing is wrong simply because God says so, couldn't God just as easily have said stealing is OK? Doesn't this make all morality arbitrary? It's nothing more than the result of God's whim, and easily could have gone the other way if God had chosen otherwise. If God had just woken up on the other side of the bed that morning, we'd be living in a world where stealing, murder and rape were all considered OK.
Not only that but doesn't this also mean that it is pointless to say, "God is good." A central theme to Christianity is that God is infinitely good. But if God defined "goodness", aren't we basically just saying, "God is God"? How much more meaningless could you get?2
Supposedly, the logical conclusion is that Plato's first scenario cannot be correct. Moral truths cannot come from God's commands. So that leaves the second alternative, namely that God commands something because it is otherwise true.
Basically, this scenario claims that if morality does not originate from God, then God must simply be telling us about some universal natural law that exists outside and above God. In other words, even God is subject to this universal moral code. Its origins are unclear, but wherever it comes from God has to follow it just like we do. So when God issues His commands, all He is doing is educating us about this universal law that exists outside of Him.
The implications of this on Christianity are severe. Christianity teaches that God is sovereign; i.e., He is the ultimate authority on everything. But if He is subject to an outside moral law, then he is not sovereign. He is subordinate to that moral law.
So in the end we are left with the conclusion that if moral truths come simply from God's commands, then they are arbitrary and it is meaningless to say "God is good." However, if moral truths come from somewhere outside God, then God is not sovereign. Either way, a serious blow has been dealt to the Christian notion of God.
So let's look at Plato's dialogue to see if it really poses a problem for Christianity. Before we look at some overall problems with the so-called "Euthyphro dilemma", let me point out one obvious logical problem with Plato's first scenario.
According to Plato's first scenario, something is good because God says it is good. Supposedly, this makes God's commands arbitrary. After all, God was free to decide whatever He wanted. He could have said murder was great, or thievery was fine and dandy. But does the mere fact that God was free to make a different decision render His decision-making process arbitrary? In order to answer this question, let me give you an example.
Suppose you want to walk from point A to point B and there is a sidewalk that goes straight from one to the other. Now suppose that as you are walking along, you come across another sidewalk that veers off to the right. That sidewalk will take you to point C. Now you have a decision to make. Will you keep going straight or will you turn right? Of course you will go straight because your goal is to get to point B. The sidewalk straight in front of you will get you to point B, whereas the sidewalk to your right will not. You weigh the consequences of your two possible courses of action and you make a decision based upon those consequences. Were you free to choose to turn right if you wanted to? Of course. But the mere fact that you were capable of making a different decision does not somehow render the decision you made arbitrary. You made an informed decision in choosing one sidewalk over the other.
The same applies to Plato's first scenario. It is based on a faulty assumption; namely that the mere fact that God was free to make different moral decisions renders the decisions He chose to make arbitrary. How are we to know that God's decision to choose one alternative over the other was not an informed decision? As you can see above, the "arbitrariness" argument makes a logical leap, and there is no evidence in the Euthyphro dilemma to support making such a leap.
Now understand that I am not arguing that Plato's first scenario is a correct description of the origin of moral rules, only that Plato has failed to show that it actually leads to any logical inconsistency. Even the explanation I provided begs the question, "If God's decision was informed, what was it informed by?" Atheists would claim that this forces us into the second of Plato's scenarios, namely that there must be a universal moral law that exists outside of God, and all God does is tell us what that law says. That brings us to the really big logical problem with Euthyphro.
If you read some of my other articles, it shouldn't come as any surprise for you to hear that I have spent most of my adult life as a practicing attorney. When I am in a trial, and I am questioning a witness from the other side, I get to do something called "leading the witness". Basically, this means I get to put words in their mouth. For example, instead of asking, "How fast were you going when your car impacted my client's car?" I can ask, "You were going 50 miles per hour when you smashed into the back of my client's car, weren't you?" Why is this important? Because people generally want to be agreeable. And you'd be surprised what you can get people to admit when you give them the answer ahead of time (besides, the jury also got to hear me use the word "smashed", so I've created a mental picture in their mind of how severe the accident was). By putting words into the witness' mouth, I limit the boundaries of our discussion. I define the terms, not them.
People who want to try to disprove something use this same practice, as did Plato (whether knowingly or unknowingly). In his dialogue, Plato tells us that there are only two alternatives, and most people simply accept that as being true. People look at his first scenario and say, "Well, that can't be true." Then they look at his second scenario and say, "Well, that can't be true either, so I guess the Christian God doesn't exist." The problem is they fail to recognize that Plato has successfully limited the realm of discussion to only those two alternatives when in reality there is a third.
Goodness is a part of God's character. He has a character just like you have a character. Just like you are who you are, God is who He is. People may describe you as "trustworthy", "honest" or "polite". These are all aspects of your character. When we learn moral laws about what is good and bad, we are really learning a little bit about God. When God lays down moral rules, all He is doing is telling us about the nature of His character. That character is internal to God. He is basically saying, "Hey guys, this is what I am like, I made you, so I want you to live like me." 3 It is no different than when you learn a little bit about another person by looking at something they created. Take this article, for example. By reading it you can learn a few things about me. For example, you know that (1) I'm a Christian; (2) I tend to try to argue my points based upon logic; and (3) I've done a bit of reading on moral philosophy. If you look at someone's activities, you can probably draw some conclusions about their moral character as well. Of course, this isn't perfect (people who otherwise seem to be behaving in a morally upright manner do sometimes surprise us and engage in morally repugnant behavior), but as a general rule it holds true.
Similarly, the rules God has laid down reflect the nature of His character. So the moral rules that we all live by are defined by God's immutable (i.e., unchangeable) character. For this reason, I believe that a more accurate description of Christian moral philosophy is "Divine Character Theory" instead of "Divine Command Theory". After all it's God's character, not His commands , that is ultimately the source of morality.
So what does all this have to do with the Euthyphro dilemma? Look at Plato's first scenario. He says that one alternative is that moral truths are right because God declared them to be right. This misses the mark on the cause and effect relationship. The moral truths weren't created at the time God declared them. They already existed inside God as part of His character. By giving us moral rules, God is just telling us what His nature is like and telling how we should live in order to please Him (and to move toward our original nature; see footnote 3).
So if God is simply informing us about pre-existing moral rules, does that lead us into Plato's second scenario? The problem here is that Plato assumes that if morality was not created at the time it was "declared" by God, then God must be appealing to some moral truth that exists outside Himself. But this is a faulty assumption. The moral truth is part of God's character, so it exists inside God. God is still the absolute sovereign creator of all things. He is not subject to any other authority, even some universal moral law.
This notion of morality as part of God's nature points out that Plato did not adequately present all the possible alternatives in his dialogue. He basically said, "Either morality came into existence when God declared it, or God must have been appealing to some outside source." But what the above argument points out is that there is a third alternative; i.e., God was appealing to some inside source.
One objection to this third scenario was raised by Jeff Dee in his paper "The Euthyphro Project: A Response to Gregory Koukl" (March 6, 2005; available at http://www.euthyphroproject.com/arguments_koukl.html), in which he responded to this same argument when it was presented by Gregory Koukl.4 Mr. Dee stated,
This is not a third option at all, but obfuscation that merely pushes the question back one step. Where did the god get his "immutable character"? If he created it himself, then his own character is arbitrary, as would be any moral laws that follow from it. Or, if he did not create his own character, then he is subject to whatever created it for him - and thus not the author of the moral laws he reports.
Those of you who have read my articles on "Why should I believe God exists in the first place?" and "Was the universe created by an intelligent God or by a random natural cause?" may already know where I'm going with this. Mr. Dee's mistake is one that is often made when someone is speaking on an issue but has really has only examined that issue from one particular perspective. I was recently dialoguing with an atheist about moral truths, and in the course of our discussion I raised some of the cosmological and astronomical evidence for the existence of God. His response to me was basically that he could neither affirm nor deny what I was telling him, because his "expertise" was in philosophy, so he tended to examine things from a philosophical point of view. As a result, he was clueless about whether his philosophical arguments were disproven by cosmology.
Mr. Dee has made the same mistake. Notice that his argument makes one huge assumption: that God was created. He assumes that, at some point in time, this moral character must have been given to God. Maybe God was born with it, but even then something had to cause Him to be born. But if you examine the evidence from cosmology and astronomy, you see that God was never created. God has always existed, literally existing before time began.5 Therefore his character also has always existed. If God has existed eternally, then so has His character. So any discussion about the "creation" of His character is meaningless. So contrary to Mr. Dee's claims, the "character" argument does not "push the question back one step." It answers the question once and for all.
So one point still remains, namely the objection that saying "God is good" is really saying the same as saying, "God is God." You may think that I have only exacerbated the problem by saying that goodness is part of the character of God (as opposed to simply being something He declared). But are we really talking about the same thing when we say "God" as when we say "goodness"?
Think about it this way. If I were to say "my thumb" and then say "the opposable digit on my left hand", you would know that even though I am using different words I am describing the same thing. This is called a "tautology". That is the allegation that is made against God; i.e., that "God" and "goodness" are the same in the same way as "my thumb" and "the opposable digit on my left hand" are the same thing. But the analogy is inaccurate. If I were to say to you "Abraham Lincoln" and then say "honesty", would you think I was describing the same thing? Of course not. "Honesty" is an attribute of Abraham Lincoln, but they are not one and the same. The same could be said of "goodness" and "God". Goodness is an attribute of God, but it is not God. After all, God is a lot more than just good. He is also just, perfect, infinite and holy. So when we say, "God is good", we are describing an attribute of God, not God Himself. There is no tautology after all.
All this discussion may leave you with one nagging question, "So if everything you are telling me is true, what the heck does 'goodness' mean?" That's a good question (pun fully intended). And the answer is, "Who knows?"
Remember that God is infinite. There is no end to His existence, His knowledge, or His power (for the evidence of this, you'll have to read all the articles on proving the validity of Christianity; its a pretty complicated issue, to say the least). There is no limit to what God can understand. However, man is finite. There is a limit to what our finite little brains are capable of comprehending. It is perfectly logical, then, assuming that God is infinite, to conclude that it is impossible for man to ever fully comprehend God. After all, the finite can never fully grasp the infinite.
Once we realize that morality, and goodness in particular, is a part of God's character, we also realize that it is likely we will never be able to arrive at a fully adequate definition. Morality, like God, is an infinite concept. There is no end to the number of "exceptions" you could come up with to any moral law. After all, even killing another human being is generally considered acceptable in some circumstances (i.e., self-defense, etc.). A finite mind can never fully explain all these exceptions. Only an infinite mind could ever fully explain morality.
So when we try to define morality, essentially what we are trying to do is to fully describe God. But God cannot be described in finite terms. We will never succeed at this. As a result, we will never be able to arrive at an acceptable definition of "goodness" because we can never fully understand all that goodness entails.
The problem is that human ego believes that we can uncover all the answers. We have been taught that, "if you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything." Christianity says, "No you can't." People don't like that answer, but it certainly explains a lot. Anyone who is well read in philosophy could tell you that a large number of moral theories have tried to explain our moral code without God. And yet they all fail. Inevitably, some problem arises. Perhaps some "exception" comes up in which the theory tells us that something should be morally correct which we all "know" is really morally wrong. Perhaps the theory provides a possible psychological explanation for why we hold certain beliefs but fails to provide evidence for whether what we believe is actually true. In the end, no one theory has ever fully satisfied the philosophical community.
Why do we continually fail in our attempts to explain morality? The answer is simple: because morality cannot be explained by finite beings. This doesn't mean that we should give up trying, because with every attempt we may learn a little more about God. But it does mean that we need to accept that some truths may simply be beyond our limited ability to comprehend. We have to get over our human pride and arrogance and realize that we don't know everything, and we never will.
But God didn't leave us walking blind. He created us in His image. We are not a perfect image by any means, but we do at least resemble Him in some rudimentary manner. God has given us intuition by which we instinctively know moral truths. This intuition allows us to "know" morality in a similar manner to how God knows morality, but to a much lesser degree. Of course we're not perfect. For example, some people suffer from psychiatric disorders that throw their "intuition" out of whack. Different cultures can also come to different conclusions on moral questions. But on a general scale, the human race has been instilled with a common moral compass (see footnote 3 for a more detailed explanation of this intuition).
Most atheists claim that our so-called "moral intuition" is simply something that evolved, or something that is learned through our culture. In support of this argument they point to various moral differences between societies. If we all had the same moral compass, they argue, shouldn't we all come to the same conclusions? The problem with their argument is that it defeats itself. If supposed moral differences show that morality is culturally learned, then unexplained cultural similarities would demonstrate a common moral intuition. Atheists can't have their cake and eat it too.
Yes, there are a lot of differences between societies. But as I said before, we are not perfect reflections of God, so we should not expect to perfectly reflect His morality. What is more striking is the vast number of similarities between cultures.
If we were to examine various cultures around the globe, we would see some amazing similarities. For example, every culture has prohibitions against murder and lying and in favor of caring for its young. Of course, every culture also has exceptions to these rules, and different cultures may define the exceptions differently, but the general rules remain the same.
Some philosophers claim this is simply a matter of survival. These rules exist because a society could not survive without them. If murder were not prohibited, for example, people would not associate with one another for fear of being harmed. So any collective activities would fall by the wayside. Everyone would only look out for him or herself. Without cooperation, society could not survive. Similarly, if we did not ban lying then we could never effectively communicate with one another (because we would never know if we were hearing the truth). Without effective communication, complex society also could not exist.
The problem with this line of thinking is that it assumes human beings will care about the survival of their culture. When we see that a culture has survived, we can conclude that it holds these values because it could not have survived without them. This is looking back in hindsight. However, this does nothing to help us determine why the society held these values in the first place; i.e., looking forward from the start of the society into the future.
Why should these people care whether their culture survives several generations from now when they won't be alive to see it? They have no necessary interest in the "greater good". Their primary interest is only going to be in themselves. Rules against murder and lying may make sense on a large scale, but let's face it, it may very often be in an individual's best interests to lie or to kill. In order to use survival as the basis to explain morality, you have to show how moral behavior would benefit survival on an individual basis. After all, absent morality there is no reason to conclude that any one person should care about anyone other than himself.
So in the end we are left with the same problem. Every culture shares some of the same moral laws. When we see that these cultures have survived over time, we can conclude that they must have these laws because they are necessary for the survival of a culture. However, that does not bring us any closer to determining why they adopted these laws to begin with. If morality is really just a matter of cultural learning, we should expect to see cultures popping up without these moral laws in place (even if these societies do not survive long). After all, if morality is a random, unguided process, then it should branch off in all sorts of different directions as it "evolves" in different areas around the globe. But we do not see this.
Ultimately, atheism has to claim that these cultural similarities just arose by happenstance. After all, if moral law is culturally derived then there cannot be any outside source guiding it to any common destination. Yet all these separate cultures seem to have arrived at the same conclusion on some vitally important issues. If you subscribe to atheism, you simply have to chalk that up as one heck of a coincidence.
When you take a multi-disciplinary approach to whether or not God exists (i.e., looking at the arguments from multiple disciplines such as philosophy, cosmology, astronomy, astrophysics, biology, etc.) you keep coming across situations in which atheism simply has to chalk something up to chance. Coincidences just get piled on top of coincidences. Cultural similarities are just another example. As I said before, a major problem with many people is that they confine themselves to one particular discipline without looking at the "big picture". Within the confines of any one discipline, the "coincidences" may be acceptable.6 But when you look at all the disciplines together (and all the coincidences that must fall into place in order for atheism to be true) you start to realize that it takes far more faith to believe in atheism than to believe in God.
Footnotes
1 Some atheists and philosophers misrepresent this position by stating that the Christian perspective is that whatever God "commands" is morally right, meaning the mere fact that God commanded something is what made it right. However, it is more accurate to say, "Moral truth comes from God". Later in this article I will show why the statement "it's right because God commanded it" is actually an oversimplification and inaccurate description of Christian philosophy. However, I will also be the first to admit that the "Divine Command Theory" is not always presented in the manner I will put forth (in fact, the name of the theory itself implies that the source of morality is God's act of issuing "commands", which actually confuses the issue). As I will explain later, what I am presenting in this article perhaps could be more properly referred to as "Divine Character theory", which may in some respects differ somewhat from "Divine Command theory."
2 Some critics also claim there is a third problem with Plato's first scenario, sometimes called the "problem of abhorrent commands." Basically this says that if God decided to command some morally repugnant act, His command would thereby make that act morally acceptable. But ultimately this is the same objection as the "arbitrariness" objection, just with a different timeline. The arbitrariness objection states that God could have set the moral code anywhere, including declaring repugnant acts acceptable. So it looks at the time the moral code was first created. The "abhorrent acts" objection says that if God were to command today that we commit a morally repugnant act, it would all of a sudden become acceptable. So its focus is more on modern day, and the fact that God could easily change something from being morally wrong to being morally right based only on His whimsy. Both of these objections ultimately stem from the same perceived problem; namely that Plato's first scenario leads to a moral code without universality, in which the moral laws could end up commanding just about anything. Therefore, both arguments are refuted by the same counterargument, which I will present later in this article.
3 This is perhaps an oversimplification. In reality, man was originally made in God's image, so God's character was originally man's character, albeit in a finite sense (i.e., because we are finite creatures, we could only be finitely good, whereas God is infinitely good, but both were good). When mankind fell, our character also fell. Our "moral intuition" is really our true nature, hidden beneath sin, reminding us of what our true nature was designed to be. This is where our sense of "ought" comes from. We are sensing that we are not as we were designed to be. God knows we will never know true happiness until we are restored to our originally designed nature (which is now possible through Christ's redemptive work). The closer we get to this goal the happier we will be. God wants us to be happy, so in giving us moral commands He is telling us how we "ought" to behave in order to move back toward our original state, at least as much as we possibly can in our fallen existence, with the full realization achieved when we are raised again in glory, washed clean by Christ's sacrifice.
4 Gregory Koukl is the president of Stand to Reason. His article is titled Euthyphro's Dilemma and is available at http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5236.
5 If you have not yet read the aforementioned articles, I encourage you to do so. Basically, they demonstrate that the universe had a beginning, at which point time, space and matter all came into existence. God, however, pre-existed the universe, which means He also pre-existed time. Because God exists outside the confines of time, it is meaningless to discuss a "cause" for God. God does not require a "cause" because He never "came into existence." He has always been in existence.
6 Although I would certainly argue that the coincidences in the realm of cosmology and astronomy are far too great to be accepted by anyone who is truly being objective, even without looking to any other disciplines.
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