Euthyphro

[Dagda]

Basicly, are things good because they come from God or because God says they are so? Is God good or is He just telling us that?(ignoring the questions of Him existing)
What are your thoughts?

[Sonart]

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Are tornadoes good? The Ebola virus? Alzheimer's Disease? Scorpians? Earthquakes? Black Holes? Malaria?

Are these not God's creations?

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[Anmon]

Not everything is good, but everything is there for a reason, everything has a purpose, bad or good.

[gallo]

Quote by: Anmon Not everything is good, but everything is there for a reason, everything has a purpose, bad or good.

So we can therefore assume that god is not good if he created some things that are bad.

[ryanatau]

Quote by: Dagda Basicly, are things good because they come from God or because God says they are so? Is God good or is He just telling us that?(ignoring the questions of Him existing) What are your thoughts?

Are you asking for peoples opinions or for what Socrates/Plato said?

I guess it also depends what you mean by God. Do you mean God as Plato does in Euthyphro (the Olympic gods), as Plato uses the demiurge in Timaeus, or what Plotinus (and other neo-Platonists) mean by God as the One?

If the Olympic gods then the gods would be subject to morality because they are not beyond the Good.

If the demiurge, then the demiurge is co-eternal with the idea of the Good however is still subject to it.

If the neo-Platonic One, then the ideas only exist in the mind of God and thus is a creation of God as Goodness (morality gains being from the One).

In general, in order to answer this an answer to the Problem of Universals must be obtained. Does Goodness have ontological extramental being (ultra-realism), intramental being (something like Aristotle said); is it an abstraction that has no being (just a generalized word like what Roscelin said), etc..

[Anmon]

Quote by: gallo So we can therefore assume that god is not good if he created some things that are bad.

we see them as bad, but like I said, everything has a reason.

[tommy5x]

Why would a benovolent being create anything that may promote distress in the eyes of others? It seems illogical to me that God in the Christian sense should have created the Tree for this purpose. It seems malicious to tempt somebody with the apparant ultimate, and then to punish them for being led astray by the warped thought that they may be closer to Him with this knowledge.

[Anmon]

I think Eden was a tragedy just waiting to happen, maybe God likes something about tragedy's?

[tommy5x]

Shakespeare is God?

[Morality Games]

The Fall of Man was more 'comic' in Jewish thought. Snakes are cunning and humans a gullible. Christian reinterpretation of the myth made it tragic by positing man is naturally damned to Hell because of the Fall, and it is only by divine mercy we can have a position in paradise (whereas before, right to that position was as much a part of our nature as sin is now).

Basicly, are things good because they come from God or because God says they are so? Is God good or is He just telling us that?(ignoring the questions of Him existing) What are your thoughts?

That's not how Euthyphro works. More correctly, are things good because God decides they are good or because they are that way naturally and God identifies them as such?

The question is significant. For example, God in Old Testament commands Abraham to break the standard morality by sacrificing his son. Ultimately God backs off from this command, but the question remains, "Would have killing Isaac, or even psychologically torturing an old man with the idea, constitute a good or evil act?" Since it is allegedly not in God's nature to err morally, it must be good, but if that is the case, then it means acts are only good or bad because God says so, not because of their own nature.

[Anmon]

Quote by: tommy5x Shakespeare is God?

no but Shakespeare was undoubtedly inspired by God.

[Sonart]

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Quote by: Anmon Not everything is good, but everything is there for a reason, everything has a purpose, bad or good.

So when someone looks out over a sunset meadow and mutters how great God is His wonders to behold, aren't they conveniently forgetting that He also created everything that is arbitrarily brutal, deadly and cruel?

C'mon, God... did we REALLY need cancer, Huntington's disease, infant exencephaly and alzheimer's?

Quote by: Anmon no but Shakespeare was undoubtedly inspired by God.

Really? How about D.H. Lawrence... lady Chatterly's Lover. Or Vladimir Nabokov... Lolita.

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[nerdvincent]

Eh...I read Euthyphro perhaps 2 months ago, but I think it talked more about piety and how to please gods, not wether or not Gods were good.
But it's an interesting question and here is my answer: the christian definition of God cannot be perfect. Jealous, destructive, sadistic...it sounds more like a turbulent kid that the great creator. Pantheism is less contradictory.

[Morality Games]

Quote by: nerdvincent Eh...I read Euthyphro perhaps 2 months ago, but I think it talked more about piety and how to please gods, not wether or not Gods were good. But it's an interesting question and here is my answer: the christian definition of God cannot be perfect. Jealous, destructive, sadistic...it sounds more like a turbulent kid that the great creator. Pantheism is less contradictory.

Euthyphro did talk about those things, but the dialogue has acquired fame throughout history for being the first known philosophical articulation of the Divine Command Theory. The theory is more or less rejected by Socrates, who counter proposes gods merely identify and agree with the nature of good things because it is in there nature to do so. However, many philosophers of various religions throughout time have been less skeptical of the theory and have championed it as a standard view of what is right or wrong.

In Euthyphro, it is pondered if 'good' and 'evil' are intrinsic properties of objects (like a hard drive is an intrinsic property of my computer) or if they are external properties applied by God on basis of his 'mood' at the time. According to the Divine Command Theory, it is the latter -- there is nothing naturally bad about any activity, the activity is only bad because God decides it will be (for awhile anyway).

Hence, why every apparent evil committed by God in Old Testament is justified -- as the decider of right and wrong, his morality goes beyond the properties of objects (activities count as objects too). If God determines rape, pillaging, murder, and genocide are acceptable, then it is so.

[Jagged]

I don't see how one can argue that "good" is not subjective. The subjective good, i think, comes from a pretty even combination of thought, what we are taught, and "pre-progammed" stuff. I can actually think of few things that absolutely everybody would universally consider "good."


I'm not religious, but i doubt that if the pope tells a devout catholic that x is good, then the person will actually know and feel that x is good, or that x is on the same obvious goodness level as, say, pleasure and contentment (even though God supposedly said x is good) .

if that makes any sense

[Morality Games]

I don't see how one can argue that "good" is not subjective. The subjective good, i think, comes from a pretty even combination of thought, what we are taught, and "pre-progammed" stuff. I can actually think of few things that absolutely everybody would universally consider "good."

Platonic thought (Plato was the writer of Euthyphro, namesake of this thread) goes that good (and perhaps evil) have tangible form in a heavenly world apart from this one -- either you comprehend these forms and relate them correctly to the particular instances of good and evil in the world or not, but the nature of good and evil depend on these forms and not on your perceptions of them.

Early Christians inherited this style of thinking, and even as few of them know the name 'Plato' today, his thinking continues to watercolor most of their theologies.

[nerdvincent]

Quote by: Morality Games Early Christians inherited this style of thinking, and even as few of them know the name 'Plato' today, his thinking continues to watercolor most of their theologies.

Thanks to Saint Augustine.
Saint August-who?
So depressing. Most people act the way he told us (through christian tradition), but we hardly remember him or Plato. Sill we (society, not me) obstinate to deny acess to any other philosophy but this one, hidden behind expressions such as "family values" or "decency".

[Anmon]

[quote]

Quote by: Sonart . So when someone looks out over a sunset meadow and mutters how great God is His wonders to behold, aren't they conveniently forgetting that He also created everything that is arbitrarily brutal, deadly and cruel? C'mon, God... did we REALLY need cancer, Huntington's disease, infant exencephaly and alzheimer's?

Yeah well I guess it just makes us appreciate all the good stuff more.

Really? How about D.H. Lawrence... lady Chatterly's Lover. Or Vladimir Nabokov... Lolita.

I would go with Lawrence, hes wrote some very good books, particularly The Seed and the Sower.

[Anmon]

Quote by: Morality Games Early Christians inherited this style of thinking, and even as few of them know the name 'Plato' today, his thinking continues to watercolor most of their theologies.

You assume that.

[Morality Games]

Quote by: Anmon You assume that.

It is a sound assumption. Most people have no interest in or knowledge of the history philosophy, and Christians aren't any exception. Plato's name is not typically mentioned in sermons.