The Euthyphro dilemma


2ndRateMind
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So, we owe this one to Plato.

 

Basically it goes as follows: Does God will the good because it is good, or is the good good because God wills it?

 

It's a humdinger of a question, and I haven't yet come across a simple response that is completely satisfying to me. If God wills the good because it is good, then goodness is greater than God, and constrains Him, and damages His claim to omnipotence. But if the good is good because God wills it, He could will anything and it would be good. Goodness would become arbitrary, a matter of whim, an issue of convenience. That would wreck any idea of, say, morality as an objective standard.

 

I suspect the problem lies in trying to separate God and goodness. If God and goodness are intimately united, are a single entity, if God actually is good, and good is God, then trying to distinguish between them is a conceptual error.

 

But I'd be interested to know what you guys think, and whether there is an official LDS position.

 

Best wishes, 2RM.

Edited by 2ndRateMind
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I lean towards the first option. However, a couple of quotes that come to mind that might be germane are Joseph Smith's statement that whatever The Lord commands is right, and 1 John 4:19 (we love Him because He first loved us).

I think Cleon Skousen's "intelligence theory" of the Atonement is highly intriguing. The talk in which he lays it out is copyrighted and apparently not fully available online (not for free, anyways); but there is a good summary online at http://lehislibrary.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/cleon-skousens-intelligence-theory-of-atonement/.

Edited by Just_A_Guy
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Hmmm. Interesting link, but for me, such a theory is a little contrived. If God is constrained to be Just, because He is constrained to be Good, because goodness is greater than God, why don't we just have done with God and worship goodness instead? In other words, in that scenario, should our ultimate loyalty be to God, or The Good?

 

Cheers, 2RM.

Edited by 2ndRateMind
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You can worship a completely non-intelligent[as in the state of having intelligence] abstract concept such as goodness, but the question is: Will that do you any good?

 

 

Being good and using it as a code for living is a bit different than worship. Goodness isn't deity.

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If God is constrained to be Just, because He is constrained to be Good, because goodness is greater than God, why don't we just have done with God and worship goodness instead? In other words, in that scenario, should our ultimate loyalty be to God, or The Good?

 

Cheers, 2RM.

 

Well, to turn it about a bit:

 

If I love my mother because she is kind and virtuous and benevolent, why don't I just have done with my mother and worship kindness, virtue, and benevolence instead?  In other words, in that scenario, should my ultimate loyalty be to my mother, or to kindness, virtue, and benevolence?

 

We are extremely fortunate in that--so far as we know--we simply don't have to choose between God and goodness.

Edited by Just_A_Guy
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My suspicion is that, within his area of jurisdiction, God is free to decide what is and what is not good, but that His decisions must be in conformity with a set of higher laws to which even God is subject. There's a bunch of scriptural evidence to suggest that God is subject to laws not of His making. These higher laws might or might not constitute, or be based on, some sort of objective goodness, or they might again be based on some sort of even higher law ( I doubt it), but we don't know enough to make any valid conclusions on that question. Once God has decided that something is good, then for all intents and purposes, for us here on this earth at this time, that decisions becomes our objective goodness.

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So, we are exploring the idea that God wills the good because it is good.

 

Well, this loyalty question - God, or The Good, does have implications. Suppose God does something I perceive to be wrong. For example, He orders the massacre of some tribe for no better reason than His chosen people want to settle where that tribe is living. I have various options.

 

I can say, if my loyalty is with God - 'My God, right or wrong'.

Or I could say, if my loyalty is with the Good, and I believe God to be good, but I don't trust my powers of moral discrimination - 'My perception of wrongness must be faulty'.

Or I can say, if my loyalty is with the Good, and I do trust myself - 'I want nothing to do with a God capable of such wrong'.

 

All these would be perfectly valid positions to adopt, but they are separate positions with dramatic theological consequences and we should not confuse them with a fuzzy idea like 'whatever God does must be good', which properly seems to belong on the other horn of the dilemma.

 

I have to say, none of these positions are particularly appealing to me.

 

Best wishes, 2RM.

Edited by 2ndRateMind
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Crypto said: 'You can worship a completely non-intelligent ... abstract concept such as goodness ... but will that do you any good?'

 

Perhaps 'venerate' would be a better term to have used. Nevertheless, my loving relationships are never about the good I can derive from them.

 

Best wishes, 2RM.

Edited by 2ndRateMind
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So, we owe this one to Plato.

 

Basically it goes as follows: Does God will the good because it is good, or is the good good because God wills it?

 

It's a humdinger of a question, and I haven't yet come across a simple response that is completely satisfying to me. If God wills the good because it is good, then goodness is greater than God, and constrains Him, and damages His claim to omnipotence. But if the good is good because God wills it, He could will anything and it would be good. Goodness would become arbitrary, a matter of whim, an issue of convenience. That would wreck any idea of, say, morality as an objective standard.

 

I suspect the problem lies in trying to separate God and goodness. If God and goodness are intimately united, are a single entity, if God actually is good, and good is God, then trying to distinguish between them is a conceptual error.

 

 

The LDS do not have the same "constraint" of omnipotence. God cannot do evil. The reason why God is God is because he is perfectly good, and if he were not perfectly good he would cease to be God. (Alma 42:22)

 

 

 

I can say, if my loyalty is with God - my God, right or wrong.

Or I could say, if my loyalty is with the Good, and I believe God to be good, but I don't trust my powers of moral discrimination, my perception of wrongness must be faulty.

Or I can say, if my loyalty is with the Good, and I do trust myself, I want nothing to do with a God capable of such wrong.

 

 

Let's go with #2, but slightly altered:

 

 "If my loyalty is with the Good, and I believe God to be good, but I don't trust my limited knowledge or my objectivity, my knowledge/objectivity must be faulty.

 

We can't possibly understand all the moral consequences just by experience and intuition alone. We can also let pride, grudges, etc. get in the way of it. 

 

If we all worshiped "goodness" we would all be following our limited understandings of goodness. Assuming you believe in a universal morality, that would be chaos.  That's (one of the reasons) why we need God; to guide us on the correct path.

 

So, our loyalty should be towards God because he's the only one who is actually loyal to the Good.

 

What's your complaint with #2? Now that I've added on to it?

Edited by Syme
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OK, if that's LDS thinking it's quite reasonable and I have achieved my objective with this thread, which is to gain a little understanding of where you guys are coming from in respect of this topic.

 

So, in return, here's where I'm at.

 

I certainly agree that human knowledge, individually and collectively, has it's limits!

 

Objectivity and moral discrimination work slightly differently than this, though. Individually, it's my belief that our sins and self-interests colour and distort our view of the moral world, like a pair of broken, tinted spectacles. But, as we grow more experienced, older and, one would hope, wiser, we get more accurate pictures. Furthermore, collectively, in discussions like this, we compensate for each other's distortions and tints, because we do not all suffer from the same sins and have the same self-interests.

 

So, in fact, we can build a fairly accurate moral framework, provided we listen to and learn from each other. Certainly accurate enough to decide that genocidal massacres are, in general, a bad thing, and that some apologist needs to make a case in defense of a God who perpetrates them despite His alleged perfect goodness. But that's a topic for another thread!

 

So, in short, I do trust my powers of moral discrimination, given to me by God and the world God made, at least to the extent that I can decide a massacre to be good or evil. And I am loath to abdicate my responsibility to make moral judgments on the basis that I am ignorant, or am sinful, have interests and lack objectivity, or that there may (or may not) be considerations in the past, present and future I am not party to. I acknowledge all these limits, but we humans have the capacity, necessity and duty to make such judgments, even if only tentatively, despite incomplete information.

 

Then again, I am reluctant to give up on the idea of a perfectly good God, also, despite the bad reports of Him evident throughout the Old Testament.

 

Best wishes, 2RM.

Edited by 2ndRateMind
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So, we are exploring the idea that God wills the good because it is good.

 

Well, this loyalty question - God, or The Good, does have implications. Suppose God does something I perceive to be wrong. For example, He orders the massacre of some tribe for no better reason than His chosen people want to settle where that tribe is living. I have various options.

 

I can say, if my loyalty is with God - 'My God, right or wrong'.

Or I could say, if my loyalty is with the Good, and I believe God to be good, but I don't trust my powers of moral discrimination - 'My perception of wrongness must be faulty'.

Or I can say, if my loyalty is with the Good, and I do trust myself - 'I want nothing to do with a God capable of such wrong'.

 

The fourth option--and one that I think keeps popping up in scripture--is that God knows more than we do and is therefore better equipped to know what truly is "good".  For example, you postulate (based, I assume, on the experience of Israel during the time of Joshua) that God might "order the massacre of some tribe for no better reason than His chosen people want to settle where that tribe is living".  I don't think that ever happened.  We don't know of a "better" reason; but that doesn't mean there wasn't one. 

 

 All these would be perfectly valid positions to adopt, but they are separate positions with dramatic theological consequences and we should not confuse them with a fuzzy idea like 'whatever God does must be good', which properly seems to belong on the other horn of the dilemma.

 

I'm inclined to agree.  I don't think God minds if we wrestle these types of questions out, as long as we make Him a partner in that process by seeking revelation from Him on the subject.

Edited by Just_A_Guy
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Indeed, I think it our duty to Him to pursue these sorts of enquiries. I believe God to be great enough to withstand the examination in adamantine perfection, but we cannot know that, and will not properly appreciate Him, if we do not do so.

 

Cheers, 2RM.

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I just want to add one thought to the excellent comments also made here. It sounds like you got your question answered but I wanted to pointed out a piece of context here.

Plato grew up in a politheistic culture laden with mythology as opposed to gospel and doctrine. So his philosophies were exclusive to his culture's beliefs and not so much the way our Heavenly Father is.

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Just so. The translation of the original formulation given in my dictionary (which Plato ascribes to Socrates) is as follows:

 

'Is the holy loved by the gods because it is holy, or is it holy because it is loved by the gods?'

 

The dictionary goes on to say:

 

'Such questions can be put about any moral term, and with reference to any proposed authority, human or divine.

 

'If you choose the first option you have a standard of holiness, or whatever else, which is logically independent of your authority; and one which that authority may sensibly be praised for meeting, but may also in fact fail to meet.

 

'If you choose the second, then for you the rulings of your authority are simply as such to be accepted; and since there is now no question of that authority either measuring up or failing to measure up to some logically independent standard, you cannot sensibly praise your God, or state, or party for being itself superlatively whatever it may be'.

 

A Dictionary of Philosophy, Pan Books,  Anthony Flew, London 1984

 

Hope this helps.

 

Best wishes, 2RM. 

Edited by 2ndRateMind
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So, we owe this one to Plato.

 

Basically it goes as follows: Does God will the good because it is good, or is the good good because God wills it?

 

It's a humdinger of a question, and I haven't yet come across a simple response that is completely satisfying to me. If God wills the good because it is good, then goodness is greater than God, and constrains Him, and damages His claim to omnipotence. But if the good is good because God wills it, He could will anything and it would be good. Goodness would become arbitrary, a matter of whim, an issue of convenience. That would wreck any idea of, say, morality as an objective standard.

 

I suspect the problem lies in trying to separate God and goodness. If God and goodness are intimately united, are a single entity, if God actually is good, and good is God, then trying to distinguish between them is a conceptual error.

 

But I'd be interested to know what you guys think, and whether there is an official LDS position.

 

Best wishes, 2RM.

"Good" in a religious sense is equivalent to eternal in nature.  If we are good then we can live in a state of being "one" with God to various degrees and become co-eternal with Him.  This corresponds to making our will His will.  In areas that we are successful in doing that, those acts wil become eternal.  In the areas that we are not succsessful they will not be eternal, they will turn to dust and be erased by the atoning sacrifice of Christ.

The trouble in the concept is in believing that "God" is a single individual in the context of saying that all goodness comes from God. There is a single God but when taking about goodness, eternal nature, light etc. and those kinds of phrases it is in reference to the greater meaning of "God", the part that refers to what it means to be one with God as Christ is one with God and as Christ prayed that we also be one with God.  It is God plus all of His works and society/organization that are good as all those things are eternal in nature and will continue beyond this life. Things that are eternal are good.

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this really requires knowing a "first cause" sort of situation about god on which there there is little to none info.

I'd say both, with more leaning towards God wills good because possibly Good was already there. If Christ was literal in saying that he does what he's seen his Father do, then this would seem to suggest a cycle of Gods and Saviors in which there were conditions already present within which God works. However this really doesn't answer the question just moves it along to another notch on the ring it travels.

You can probably do well with either reasoning, either way to be "Good" we must abide God's laws whether they were first or not.
 

Edited by Blackmarch
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Just so. The translation of the original formulation given in my dictionary (which Plato ascribes to Socrates) is as follows:

'Is the holy loved by the gods because it is holy, or is it holy because it is loved by the gods?'

The dictionary goes on to say:

'Such questions can be put about any moral term, and with reference to any proposed authority, human or divine.

'If you choose the first option you have a standard of holiness, or whatever else, which is logically independent of your authority; and one which that authority may sensibly be praised for meeting, but may also in fact fail to meet.

'If you choose the second, then for you the rulings of your authority are simply as such to be accepted; and since there is now no question of that authority either measuring up or failing to measure up to some logically independent standard, you cannot sensibly praise your God, or state, or party for being itself superlatively whatever it may be'.

A Dictionary of Philosophy, Pan Books, Anthony Flew, London 1984

Hope this helps.

Best wishes, 2RM.

Excellent. Yeah, that was the dilemma Plato philosophized about. But, it was still mythologically-laden and exclusive to Greek understanding of Gods, whom they had no relationships with.

Plato assumes that morals are separate from being. But, they aren't. We participate in morality, which means they exist in, and because of, our relationships. So, the two options presented are not applicable because they don't assume a relational element.

I like how Charles Taylor addresses morality.

Colors do not exist before our eyes perceive them. They exist as wave lengths that are then translated/encoded/perceived by the brain as a particular color. So, colors exist only in relation to a human or animal that can perceive them and in relation to other colors. This is what we might call a relational context. It is the same with morals. Morals exist "out there" in the world (the same as wave lengths do) regardless. However, they only make sense to us in a particular context and in relation to other morals and other people. This invokes contextualism, or contextual truth, truth that is only true given a particular context.

So, God does not just arbitrarily decide what is moral or not just because he wants to, per se. Rather, morals emerge on their own given the appropriate contexts and our relationship to them (the same as colors do). This is very different than the assumptions Plato is operating under when he proposes the Eurythmy Dilemma, which assume that morals are somehow separable from lived existence. A relational perspective asserts that this is impossible.

Let me know if you have any questions about this or if I can say something a little more clear.

Edited by Urstadt
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So, morality springs into existence as God creates the world, arising out of His relationship to it and its components? The good, then, is not like a discovered mathematical truth, more like, say, affection, which cannot exist independently, only between sentient things? I'll need to think about that, some. I've always considered moral stuff to be objective, like a scientific law, existing whether we know about it, or not.

 

Cheers, 2RM.

Edited by 2ndRateMind
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I have wondered about this question to discover some sort of truth.  In the beginning I looked at this in relatin to God being subject; yet, not sure how accurate this is anymore. Not to say it isn't, just other thoughts have entered my heart and mind when thinking upon this conept of worship good or God.

 

Is God subject to good?  In scripture we are informed God IS love.  Love.  We are informed all things which are good come from God and God IS good. Good.

 

Are we able to separate such as to form of worship when God and good, God and love are one body?  When we worship God we worship all that is good, because God is good. Good.  When a person worships God we worship love because God is love. Love.

 

When we think of good we will find God.  When we think of God we will find good.  When we think of love we will find God and when we think of God we will find love.  All roads lead to the same intelligence.

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So, morality springs into existence as God creates the world, arising out of His relationship to it and its components? The good, then, is not like a discovered mathematical truth, more like, say, affection, which cannot exist independently, only between sentient things? I'll need to think about that, some. I've always considered moral stuff to be objective, like a scientific law, existing whether we know about it, or not.

Cheers, 2RM.

Morals do exist objectively, the same as wave lengths do. But those morals only become sensible to us in the context of our relationships, the same as those wave lengths only become sensible to us when our eyes perceive them as colors.

Imagine if Plato had posed this dilemma with God and colors instead of God and morals. Charles Taylor's book The Sources of the Self: Making of Modern Identity, and John Macmurray's book Persons in Relation speak to these issues very coherently and convincingly. Consider taking a gander at these sources.

Edited by Urstadt
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I mean no disrespect toward any individual when I say this, but it seems that when our personal preoccupation with religion revolves around resolving these kinds of questions, it has gone off the rails.  Mormonism in particular is a practical religion, not a philosophical one.  If we have time to be ruminating over these kinds of questions, we need to get up and go do some Christian service instead.  There are lost souls who need the gospel preached to them.  There are families in dire need of assistance.  There are real physical needs all around us.  We need to be doers of the word, not just hearers only, like James said.  Whenever I've been involved in service to others, my heart and mind are never troubled by such questions as this.  

 

One of my sons said that Elder Packer came to his mission and one of the elders had a list of such questions to ask him.  According to the missionary, Elder Packer's reply was, "Just love the Lord!"

 

There's nothing wrong with clarifying gospel principles and preaching the message of the Restoration.  Vain philosophical questions like this are a distraction and preoccupation with them is one of the things that set the primitive Church on the path to apostasy.  When someone brings up Plato, I just remember how Neoplatonism was one of the big heresies that corrupted the primitive Church and caused its demise.  Let's just do Plato's baptism for the dead and be done with it!  Then go out an serve God by serving our fellow men and women.

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I am a little confused, are you suggesting that if we think upon philosophical questions then we must not be doers of the word?

 

Is a person able to be a doer of the word while pondering other questions, even philosophical ones?

 

I assume we are all subject to our personal opinions of what is vain and what is not.  As a bishopric member, although this doesn't make me anymore special than any of my brothers and sisters -- I don't have any issue with pondering philosophical questions while magnifying my calling, serving the youth as we go to the temple 3 times a month, they are invited to my home for duty to God, they help index and are now even finding temple names for our temple visits.

 

We serve in many other ways...yet, I agree, if we forget the basic principles of the gospel then we have missed the point. 

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I mean no disrespect toward any individual when I say this, but it seems that when our personal preoccupation with religion revolves around resolving these kinds of questions, it has gone off the rails.

I agree. I do try to bring all these dicussions back to Christ and His gospel in some way. As the philosopher Goethe daid, "Truth must be repeated again and again because error is constantly being preached round about."

Thatnk you for this reminder, spamlds.

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I am a little confused, are you suggesting that if we think upon philosophical questions...

I assume we are all subject to our personal opinions of what is vain and what is not...yet, I agree, if we forget the basic principles of the gospel then we have missed the point.

That's the impression I got. The focus of the message as I understood it was that all our questions, opinions, philosophies, etc are ok so long as the intent is to understand our Savior and His goapel, and not just seek our own ways.

Or am I missing something?

Edited by Urstadt
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That's the impression I got. The focus of the message as I understood it was that all our questions, opinions, philosophies, etc are ok so long as the intent is to understand our Savior and His goapel, and not just seek our own ways.

Or am I missing something?

 

How did you interpret, "If we have time to be ruminating over these kinds of questions, we need to get up and go do some Christian service instead."

 

Why not both?  Do Christian service and ruminate over whatever questions peak an interest?

 

As a result, my opening statement, "I am a little confused....."

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