The Euthyphro Dilemma

The Euthyphro dilemma is often used by atheists to argue that the Christian understanding of morality either makes God subject to a greater morality that is independent from God or it makes God’s judgments concerning what is and is not moral merely arbitrary. This is not as difficult or complex as you might think so, stay with me and you will experience a return on your investment of time.

Euthyphro is part of the dialogues of Plato. The actors in this dialogue are Socrates and Euthyphro. The scene takes place on the porch of King Archon. The dialogue begins with Socrates admitting to being under prosecution by a Meletus, moves to Euthyphro’s family situation in which his father had murdered one of his family members, and whether the act was just or not, and then to Euthyphro’s method for distinguishing himself above others. Euthyphro argues that what makes him more pious is his exact knowledge of what is pious and impious. Socrates then asks if piety and impiety change, a statement which Euthyphro affirms. Then Socrates asks, what is piety and impiety.

Socrates: “I mean to say that the holy has been acknowledged by us to be loved of God because it is holy, not to be holy because it is loved.”

The Euthyphro Dilemma: In our own paraphrase of this you would get, “Is something moral because God loves it or does God love it because it is moral?”

If the Christian says that something is moral because God loves it, this logically ends in an arbitrary morality. So if God had loved rape, it would have been moral or murder, etc. As you can imagine, this would not be consistent with Christian theology. On the other hand, if we say that God only loves things because those things are moral, this separates morality from God, meaning that things can be moral or immoral independent from God. Such a position would make God subject to a moral law which would mean that God is not absolute or supreme in any sense whatsoever. He is just as subject to moral actions as humans are. This does not bold well for the Christian.

The Euthyphro Dilemma seemingly forces the Christian to choose between a God who is arbitrary or one who is not supreme. Both choices destroys Christianity as we know it. What is the Christian to do?

First, the best Christian apologetic is Christian theology. Far too many Christians want to run out and do apologetics will skipping theology. This is like an astronaut who wants to fly to the moon but skip math class. It isn’t going to work out very well. So then, know the God you serve. Know what Christian theology claims about the God who is!

The Dilemma is a common form of argument. The premises of the syllogisms so combined are formulated disjunctively, and devised in a way to trap the opponent by forcing him to accept one or the other of the disjuncts [Copi, 279]. In this case, the disjuncts are both devastating to Christian theology. There are three ways to respond to a dilemma: go between the horns, taking it by the horns, or offering a counter dilemma.

Socrates’ choices are the problem. He has offered Euthyphro only two choices. Either an act is moral because God loves it or God loves an act because it is moral. God loves himself. God is perfectly moral. An act is moral when it reflects God’s nature. Because God loves himself and because God is morally perfect, it is obviously the case that God would love any act that reflects his own nature. Since God is absolute, unchanging, independent, morality is absolute, unchanging, and independent. Since God’s nature is the greatest of all possible good, an act is moral when it reflects God’s nature. Conversely, an act is immoral when it contradicts God’s nature. Morality then is not arbitrary since God’s nature is not arbitrary. Neither is morality independent from God since God’s nature is not independent from God.

As it turns out, the Euthyphro Dilemma  is no dilemma at all for the Christian who has bothered to take the time to understand precisely what Christian theology understands Scripture to reveal about the nature of the God that is!

Here is another quick point about morality. All moral arguments presuppose absolute morality. Arguments that advocate for and those that are opposed to absolute morality presuppose absolute morality in order to argue for their respective morality. This is unavoidable. The opponent to absolute morality will claim that his version of morality is the correct one and will ultimately land on the logical conclusion that every other moral theory is itself immoral and should be surrendered in order to embrace his particular moral theory. If he does not hold this view, then why bother even debating the matter? You can excuse such a person from the discussion which I am pretty sure he will think is immoral. See how that works. You see, a rational person “ought” not to hold to a view that is without sufficient proof or evidence or so the argument goes. And since I think my theory of morality is the only one with sufficient evidence, I also think that every one else ought to give up their view once they understand my view. That is a moral claim. There is an “ought” in that position. You cannot argue for a subjective morality without presupposing objective morality. It is a self-referentially incoherent position. It makes no sense.

Atheistic Justification for Moral Judgments: A Response to and Rebuttal of Gerrit Morren

Someone recently pointed me to a long Facebook article that was written nearly a year ago is response to my arguments around the inability for atheistic thought to provide the necessary preconditions for the intelligibility of the human experience of morality. This post is my response to and rebuttal of that article, written by Gerrit Morren. Mr. Morren attempts to justify morality within his atheistic paradigm as well as point out that Christian morality is self-contradictory. In other words, atheism can account for morality but Christianity is actually inherently immoral.

The Christian has an authoritative guide for all of reality; we call it the Bible. However, it would be a mistake to think that the atheist does not have a guide for all of reality as well; he or she calls it science. According to popular atheist, Alex Rosenberg, “Science provides all the significant truths about reality, and knowing such truths is what real understanding is all about. … Being scientistic just means treating science as our exclusive guide to reality, to nature—both our own nature and everything else’s.” [Alex Rosenberg, The Atheist’s Guide to Reality, pp.7-8] This quote is also found over at James Andersen’s blog. It was Dr. Andersen’s article that prompted me to pick up a copy of Rosenberg’s book. If it is true that science provides all significant truths about reality, then science must also provide the truth about morality as well. And that truth will either be a naturalistic explanation for morality or its outright denial. The former will always end in moral relativism or even moral skepticism while the latter leads to the unimaginable: anything goes.

“I’ll argue that if naturalism is true, then so is moral nihilism, the view that there are no objective moral standards and that anything goes, ethically speaking. I’ll also call this view moral relativism, moral subjectivism, and moral skepticism. [Mitch Stokes, How to be an Atheist, p. 151] Stokes tells us that naturalism produces moral relativism because it is relative only to human desires or preferences. It produces moral subjectivism because it seems to require a personal subject to affix value. And it produces moral skepticism because we can have no knowledge of objective moral standards – pretty much because there really aren’t any such standards. Now presents no small problem for science. Contrary to what many atheists and even Christians have been led to believe, the problem of evil is a much bigger problem for atheistic thought than it is for Christian thought.

As I said at the beginning, this post is a response to and rebuttal of Gerrit Morren’s open letter to me that he posted on Facebook nearly a year ago. I did not see the letter because I am no longer a FB participant. From the very beginning of the article Mr. Morren gets it wrong. He writes:

Dear Ed Dingess, you asked me to account for my morality after I accused Jesus -  disguised as the holy spirit - of cruelly and unjustly slaying Ananias and Sapphira, because of their ‘crime’ of not giving all of their savings to the early Christian church and lying about it.

Note that Ananias and Sapphira were not judged because they did not give all their money to the church. They were judged because they liked to God. That is a vastly different scenario than Mr. Morren has created. If Mr. Morren is going to indict Christian belief, he should at least criticize this historical facts of the matter. Not only is this the case, but Morren goes on to classify the lie that the couple told as a white lie. But Morren offers not defense, to definition, no criteria for why he classifies this lie as a white lie versus a more serious one. We are left to just accept Morren’s ethical system on the face of it.

Morren also contends that Adolf Hitler was a committed Christian:

Well I’d like to inform non-dr. Frank Turek and all of his type of Christians that Adolf Hitler was a Roman Chatholic [sic], remained so all of his life.

This is simply another error concerning the facts. Hitler stopped going to mass after he became a man and there is no indication that he ever returned to his Catholic faith.

Morren then lays out his basic foundation for objective morality:

I think informed opinions can contribute to working towards better and more universal beneficial ethics, that are so commonly shared  (even instinctively longed for) that they gain such an inter-subjectivity – meaning they are shared across cultures by most of the Homo Sapiens-family – that they may be considered ‘objective’ in the sense that their generality is accepted world-wide. Even then they would not be absolute in the sense of divinely issued. They would just be commonly shared, and thus reach a certain level of universality.   

 

To begin with, what is it exactly that informs this universal ethic as Morren calls it. That is the whole point in dispute where the presuppositional apologist is concerned. The challenge to Morren is that he must provide the necessary preconditions for the intelligibility of morality. To say that everyone seems to agree that right and wrong exists is merely to beg the question. Yes, there is a universal sense of morality within humanity. That is exactly my point as it has been the point of every Christian theologian and philosopher down through history. What else must be true, or must be the case in order for this state of affairs to make sense? Morren does not say. He just points out what we all already know. Morality seems to be innate. Moreover, Morren talks about information, agreed upon information. That opens a whole new can of worms. Where does this information come from? Is it inside us? I go back to Hitler and ask, did Hilter have the same information about morality as Gandhi? So it seems that while humans have a universal sense of morality, they differ on the details of moral behavior. For example, I think sex outside of marriage is immoral. There are many who disagree with me. That raises the question as to the truth value of the proposition: All extramarital is wrong. This proposition can either be true or false. It is a strong universal claim about a very specific kind of human behavior. What information could Morren or any atheist provide either affirm or refute this proposition? Do we vote on it? Perhaps American culture should decide? Maybe all of Western culture should have the say? But who gets to establish the method by which morality is determined? It seems to me that under all circumstances, the choice reduces to an unavoidable arbitrariness.

Morren then categorizes Christianity in such a way that it becomes obvious to any reader that he is actually arguing with a Straw Man version of Christianity instead of biblical Christianity: I reject the Christian ethical system because in its theology, its veracity claims, its presuppositions and view of other worldviews I think it is non-benevolent and seeking world-supremacy by force. So Morren thinks that Christianity is basically unloving and seeking to impose itself on the world by force. This is a pretty bold claim. I wonder if Morren has any evidence that this is actually what Christianity teaches. If one reads Morren’s article here, they will discover that he engages in one lie after another where Christian teaching, Scripture, and even history is concerned. Morren seems intent on not letting the facts stand in the way of his attack on the morality of Christian theism.

In one example, Morren claims that Paul attempted to justify lying. Saint Paul already teaches that lying is a lesser vice than not being able to convert people. Here’s from Romans 3:7: “For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory; why yet am I also judged as a sinner?” Morren neglects the fact that Paul is saying that he was being accused of lying, not that he was actually lying. This seems to be one more attempt by a dishonest atheist to set up his own version of Christianity so that he can knock it over.

The task of grounding morality in something other than God…has occupied nearly all of Western ethical philosophy since the Enlightenment. I don’t think it has been at all successful; all the main moves have been tried and found wanting. [Mitch Stokes, How to be an Atheist, 154] In the end, it comes down to two basic choices even though these choices encompass a number of nuances that do become highly complex. Either morality is grounded or not grounded. From there we have the second choice. If morality is not grounded, then we fall into moral nihilism and anything goes. If we ground morality at all, we must ground it in God or in man. If we ground morality in God, our task is to understand God’s revelation about himself in nature and in Scripture so that we may understand what constitutes moral behavior. If, on the other hand, we ground morality in man, we are left with the task of determining how it is possible to remove the bias of men so that we can avoid moral relativism; to remove the personal subject so as to avoid moral subjectivism; and to discover an objective standard so that we can avoid moral skepticism.

Gerrit Morren concludes his argument by attempting to ground his morality in a list of virtues. In other words, Morren adopts, for the most part, Kant’s philosophy of morality. Morren says he thinks of morality as duty: I think of morality mainly as a set of unbiased, civil duties. This is a deontological approach to ethics. And as we shall see, atheism is not capable of providing the necessary foundation for deontological ethics. Morren contends that the virtues that he lists existed before Christ, in ancient Greek philosophies and in Confucius. Well, the first known philosophy was purported to be Thales, was born in 624 and Confucius was born in 551. Yet, we find Moses writing in Leviticus what has become the golden rule in modern vernacular. And this predates both Greek philosophy and Confucius by approximate 1000 years. In addition to this, Solomon pinned Proverbs over 300 years before Thales and nearly 400 years before Confucius was even born. Finally, in Christian theism, Christ always is. There is never a time when Christ was not. In summary then, not only does Moses and Solomon predate Greek philosophy, and Confucius, Christ does as well, being the eternal Son of God within the self-contained ontological Triune God of Christian Scripture.

An atheistic deontological morality ultimate lands Morren in the sea of moral skepticism. If morality is the product of the human mind, and it seems that it must be so within his system, then it follows that such rationalism must inevitably lead to irrationalism as John Frame puts it. To anchor morality to the rational mind is to anchor it to unknowable chance or fate. Frame tells us that rationalism leads to dogmatic certainty about an absolute that is empty.

Frame writes, “But, in the end, nobody has the right to argue an ethical principle unless he is willing to listen to the God of Scripture. Moral norms can come only from a personal absolute, and the Bible is the only written revelation that presents such a God to us. So we must now turn to Scripture to hear the word of the Lord.” [Frame, The Doctrine of the Christian Life, p. 125]

On Morality

William Lane Craig on Ayn Rands Objectivism

In case you were reading some of the silliness over at "Incinerating Presuppositionalism" here is William Lane Craig making the very same criticism of Ayn Rand's definition of morality that I am making. So when Dawson Bethric and his followers claim that I simply have misrepresented his understanding of morality, they are either ignorant or desperate, or perhaps a little of both. I intend to follow up my post and my you tube critique with a short overview, and I do mean short, of morality and how to use it and not use it in arguments with atheists like Bethric. For the most part, you can't spend must time with these sorts because the conversation deteriorates into profane juvenile insults as soon as they realize they are dealing with an informed and equipped Christian. I suppose it is their way of avoiding embarrassment or perhaps avoiding the gospel or both.

Man’s Pursuit of Utopia

In “The New Atlantis,” Francis Bacon gives us a picture of the ideal state of humanity. In this ideal state, men possess the highest of moral qualities. The people of this Baconian community are devout, virtuous, and upright. In this utopia, science is the cause and ground for why man has been able to attain such happiness. Here, science is practiced perfectly and because the right method of science is employed, sound science is the result. And the product of sound science is the natural elevation of man to his proper place of absolute autonomous rule and reign over the physical world. In such a utopia, man acquires unimaginable cooperation, unsurpassed peace, and unceasing harmony.

Since men have existed, they have been in pursuit of the summum bonum. Bacon is clearly no exception. The problem with such lofty goals is that the manner in which each man defines the highest good differs almost to the man. What is humanity’s highest good? Philosophers have offered a number of alternatives for the highest good over the years and that is just the beginning of the problem. The answers have ranged from hedonism to rational eudemonism to ethical pluralism and many others. Bacon believes, as do many of his ardent students, that science has or is the solution to man’s problems. Not only can science define the highest good, it can carve out the path to this wonderful utopia.

In his book, “That Hideous Strength,” C.S. Lewis uses a fictional novel to expose the naïve belief that scientific materialism can actually deliver the utopia it promises. For modern readers, we cannot help but envision the same experiment guided by communism. One of the main characters of the novel, Mark Studdock, from the very beginning, is moved about like a pawn without any regard for what he might hold as the highest good. The arrangement at the N.I.C.E. is deliberately vague, slippery, and impossible for Mark to quantify or understand. The leaders of the N.I.C.E. clearly place little value on Mark as an individual. They only see him as a means to an end. In time, Lewis reveals that this is how the N.I.C.E. operates. This is their core philosophy. What matters is the ideal, not the person. Individuals are depersonalized and valued only for their ability to achieve the ideal. If they are deemed unhelpful, they are quickly disposed of in short order. Additionally, the N.I.C.E. seems to operate upon a purely pragmatic ethic. What is moral and just is that which promotes the ideal. If murder promotes the ideal, then murder is moral. If lying promotes the ideal, then lying is moral. If torture and false arrest and imprisonment promote the ideal, then these things are moral. One does not have to read about the N.I.C.E. for long before they realize that this utopia is indeed the strangest utopia one could ever imagine.

What Lewis is getting at is that thing which Bacon never seemed to consider. One man’s utopia is another man’s nightmare. One man may consider unrestricted access to another man’s wife whenever he pleases as utopia while for couple; such a scenario is much closer to hell. The modern ISIS group is a perfect example. Recently, ISIS terrorists that do well on the battlefield are rewarded with female slaves to do with them as they please. For these godless terrorists, such an arrangement may very well represent utopia. For the female slaves, it is sheer hell.

When man is the measure of all things the most natural question in the world is, “which man?” Utopian thinking requires criticism of the current state of affairs. One has to ask what the basis is for such criticism. How does one man look at the world and see deficiencies? Where does this idea that things ought to be better, originate? It is the myth and folly of rational thinkers to suppose that science can answer that question. It is not a scientific question. Moreover, it seems equally implausible for one to consider that a rationalist could provide a cogent answer. In that question, the question of the highest good, the summum bonum, is bound up a mystery, a puzzle that neither science nor pure rationalism can solve. Indeed, the solution rests someplace else.

The motives and values of the N.I.C.E. are clearly a very different set of values held by those of St. Anne. Who is to say, if man is the measure, which set of values ought to be preferred. How can we appeal to science to settle such a dispute? How could we appeal to logic to settle the matter? Indeed, an appeal must be made and that appeal must be made to that which stands over humanity, that which transcends humanity. There is no other way to address the riddle that is utopia.

The Moral Implosion of American Culture

Two very interesting things took place this week that caught my attention. The first was a spot that Shawn Hannity aired about spring break and the behavior that college students engage in when they head to the annual ritual. One student was asked to describe their drinking routine. He said they begin drinking as soon as they get up and they only stop drinking when they pass out. This behavior goes on all week. For years we have all known what goes on during the spring break ritual. We know there is abusive drinking, abuse of drugs, violence, and numerous instances of lewd sexual behavior.

In one instance, the reported talked to one young man who watched two girls have sex with five guys on the beech in public for all to see. In another instance, the reported talked about a young woman that stood on a platform with her bottoms off and allowed anyone who wanted to come by and grope her without embarrassment. I don't know if spring break is worse than it used to be because I never participated in the event. I suspect it is worse but I also suspect that it has always involved drunken lewd behavior, if not so much in the open, then behind closed doors. In other words, I suspect there has always been a lot of fornication between young men and women that do not know each other and will likely never see each other again. Parents with the kind of money it requires to send a kid off to spring break know what happens there. Shawn Hannity and the reporter both seemed shock by the behavior and maybe they were. We all should be shocked by such immorality. But can we provide the sort of rational justification for that shock that we once could?

Another story that came out this week is the sad story of the Mozilla CEO. In 2008, Brendan Eich donated $1000 to California's proposition 8 to ban gay marriage. Little did he know that in 2014, that his personal beliefs about gay marriage would cost him his career in a country that boasts about religious freedom. America has seemingly decided that it is immoral to oppose gay sex or the gay lifestyle or gay marriage. It is no longer acceptable to have a different moral opinion about the nature of gay sex than mainstream culture. More than a few have argued that this is not an infringement on religious freedom because corporations have a right to hire and fire whomever they please. If this is true, then religious discrimination is now legal. The whole point about religious freedom is that you should be able to hold to your deeply held religious beliefs without fear of losing your job or without fear of being eliminated from contention for a job purely on the basis of your religion.

When one examines these two stories, they should evaluate the underlying presuppositions for both. Long ago now, America has said to true biblical Christianity that our morality is out of date, that the Bible cannot be trusted, and that the kind of God we preach does not exist. Liberal Christians have been preaching tolerance and love for so long now that morality, sanctification, and holiness have simply faded into the background and died the same death as modernism. I would say that it is the individual that decides what is right and wrong in our culture. But that is not quite right either as the Mozilla story indicates. We have a real problem on our hands. Spring break kids are deciding that open orgies are perfectly fine. Why not? On the other hand, corporations are firing good men because they simply have a different view of homosexuality. Where are we as a culture when it comes to morality?

Since we have removed Christian theism as the objective reference point for moral behavior, what are the remaining options? If we went with private subjectivism, the college kids should be allowed to do as they please and everyone else should view their behavior as different rather than offensive or immoral. One person likes chocolate and another vanilla. One woman takes a high view of sex while another sees it as nothing more than an opportunity for physical pleasure. Neither is moral or immoral. They are mere preferences. However, it is clear that private subjectivism does not work in our culture. If it worked, Brendan Eich would still have his job. What we see with Eich is cultural relativism. This is a subjectivist form of ethics similar to private subjectivism but it extends to the majority of the culture. If the cultural majority deems something as good or bad, then it means simply that the culture likes that behavior or does not like it. But Americans think that cultures cannot be allowed to determine their own morality because Hitler taught us this lesson all too well.

If private subjectivism is a valid way to view ethical behavior, then how could one condemn date rape under such a scheme? Why shouldn't the boys at spring break take advantage of every girl they can seduce or trick? One might say that we should never hurt or take advantage of someone else. But that is not consistent with private subjectivism. That abandons private subjectivism and seeks to impose an objectivist position into the scheme. Such a move is rationally inconsistent. Moreover, why should one human care about taking advantage of another human? After all, we are not only just sophisticated apes, we are worse than that. We are, according to modern science, nothing more than extremely fascinating accidents of nature.

If cultural relativism is a valid way to view ethical behavior, then how does the culture progress? If the culture is always right, then how did we move beyond slavery? At one time, slavery was morally acceptable in this culture. How did that change if cultural relativism is valid? To go against the culture would be immoral. But great men like Martin Luther King Jr. did just that. And we laud him as a hero and rightfully so. Moreover, cultural relativism would dictate that we stay out of the affairs of other cultures.

Both private subjectivism and cultural relativism fail as systems for ethical behavior when subjected to critical examination. Perhaps we should be more critical. Human beings are created in the image of God. We exist to bring God glory. We exist to honor Him in all that we do. We exist to be a reflection of His image in all of creation to one another and back to God. For this reason, human life has value, dignity, and worth. For this reason, others are to be respected, honored, and appreciated. Because this is true honor and shame are possible. Any appeal to right and wrong, to good and evil, are bankrupt apart from the basic presupposition that God exists and that He brought man into existence for His own glory. Philosophy has failed to establish ethics apart from God. Not only does Christian theism provide for ethical behavior, it provides the motivation for such behavior as well. Fear God and keep His commandments for this is what every human should do!