A Playful Waltz through Enyart's Christian Answer to Euthyphro's Dilemma
A Playful Waltz through Enyart's Christian Answer to Euthyphro's Dilemma
Bob, I appreciate the effort you made to address Euthyphro's Dilemma. It is obvious that you are intelligent and well-read. But I am dissatisfied, like some others on this thread, with the answer you provide to the dilemma. Please allow me to explain with the following parable:
Suppose we had begun our deliberations about Euthryphro's Dilemma not as Christians, but as devout followers of the good Lord Zanath, God of all creation and all that is pious, holy, and good. Now Zanath is exactly like the Christian God in nearly every respect except he differs in one important characteristic. Whereas the Christian God is believed to be one God in three persons (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit), Zanath is believed to be one God in four persons: the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and the Good Biki (pronounced BEE-kee).
The precise details of the nature of the Quad-head deity is the subject of intense debate, but it is generally accepted among Zanathian theologians that one must first believe in and submit to the Quad-head deity Zanath before one can truly understand his wisdom. Unfortunately we do not have time to fully discuss the doctrine of the Quad-head unity now, nor is it necessary to do so. All that is important to know for our discussion here is that there is one God in four persons; there are four who bear witness and who testify to the goodness of Zanath: the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and the Good Biki. And the four are in agreement, for each bears witness to all the others.
For many centuries Zanathian theologians were deeply troubled by Euthyphro's Dilemma. Then one of their brightest scholars, Brother Albert Newton, stumbled upon an answer to the dilemma that dispelled all those lingering disquietudes which the babbling Socrates had cursed the souls of believers with so long ago. And the answer was right under their noses all along; it lie in the Quad-head deity himself. Brother Albert reasoned that a God who exists in one person could not reliably bear witness to himself, for who is likely to disagree with himself? In this way he discounted Islam's Allah, by pointing out that there is no one of equal stature who can rightly challenge Allah's judgements if his actions should prove to be immoral or unjust. For this reason, so it was thought, Allah was occasionally prone to violent outbursts and unjust punishments. Now the Christians liked to argue that their triune God saved them from the folly which was apparent in Islam, since there are believed to be three persons in the one God. The three persons of the Trinity, so said the Christians, bear witness to each other and the three are always in agreement. It was like this: if one of the persons in the Trinity tried to do something wrong (which, mind you, is impossible) then the other two would be right there to keep him in line. For example, suppose that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are all playing a game of "Rock, Scissors, Paper," and the Holy Spirit throws down paper. Then Jesus throws down a rock, but then changes his mind as soon as he sees the Holy Spirit's paper and tries to throw down scissors instead. Because God the Father is right there watching he could say, "Jesus Christ, what are you doing? I saw that!" Remember, this is just an example. It could never actually happen because there are three of them. Since there are three of them all watching each other you can bet your bottom dollar that Jesus would never risk doing anything with which the other two disagreed -- that would be way too embarrassing. Keep in mind, you need three to bear witness, according to the Christians, because two just isn't enough to bear witness and have a majority in case of a tie. It's like this: suppose that two people are riding in an elevator and one of them lets out a loud stinker. Then the guy who did it points to the other and says, "You did it," when in fact he did not do it. What's the innocent bystander to do? If there are only two of them then the guilty perpetrator can always claim that the other person is responsible if, say after the fact, a third person enters the elevator and smells his dirty business. The innocent bystander needs a third person around, a wingman, who can help him point two fingers back at the guilty party and say with authority, "No, it is YOU who is the farter, man!" Now all of these popular Christian apologetics sorta made sense to Brother Albert. But since he was not a Christian, but rather a committed orthodox Zanathian, these lines of logic were all considered suspicious and prone to error since they were all first proposed by non-Zanathians. Then Brother Albert reasoned that if a triune deity, such as the Christian Trinity, could guarantee a definite degree of certainty when it bears witness (let's say with certainty
T ) then the Quad-head (
Q), being four persons, not three, could guarantee just a little bit more certainty than that. So Brother Albert took out his calculator, punched in a bunch of numbers, and soon discovered the following formula (which, by the way, is still used today to refute the unbelieving heathens whom the devil has blinded with their foolish philosophies):
Q >= 4/3 T
Or, Q is greater than or equal to 4/3 T. In layman's terms, Brother Albert's formula says that whatever probability of certainty that T (the Trinity) offers by his testimony, Q (the Quad-head) always guarantees at least 4/3 the certainty of T (or + 133% of T). Since there are four who bear witness, and not three, and since four is always bigger than three, therefore four is always more reliable than three.
Brother Albert's formula swept across the land like wildfire, and soon everybody knew it and could recite it by heart. It gave the people great comfort. Finally all Zanathians were able to put away Plato, Socrates, and Euthyphro's Dilemma and never think of them again.
Now if I may step back out of character. What have I done? All I've done is I've played with words to convince myself of something that is patently absurd. I acknowledge that you (Mr. Enyart) declare early in your essay that some arguments are intended for theists only: [ "(atheists) will reject much of the reasoning herein; but this material is not included primarily for them but to convince theists, on our own terms"]. However it seems that the bulk of the essay is devoted to answering arguments posed by atheists and offered as an answer to the skeptic: ["Thus the Christian answers the skeptic with a logically consistent explanation of how morality can flow from God Himself without requiring that God arbitrarily decide what kinds of traits will be considered 'good,' by showing how the triune God can objectively know righteousness."] Actually your essay offers no answer to a skeptic at all, but is only a clever sophistry intended for christians who already accept the authority of scripture. You challenge readers to point out exactly where the flaw in your logic is found. So I would have to say that the flaws begin exactly where you first begin quoting the ancient writings.
Perhaps this is not the place to engage in a thorough examination of the reliability of the Christian ancient writings. So I will limit myself to a single example from the scriptures where I attempt to apply a standard for reliability that you endorse in your essay. You say "Morality is likewise non-contradictory, and some particular action cannot be both moral and immoral in the same way. Simultaneously embracing opposing sides of a moral issue means to be immoral. Thus as truth cannot include falsehood, morality cannot include immorality. Any view that permits truth or morality to be founded upon arbitrariness fails." And you say, "God is truth, and thus His nature cannot be sufficiently pliable that He could remain good and embrace the contradictions of theft and private property, perjury and truth, adultery and faithfulness. God could not do evil and remain holy...The description of God's nature is a definition of righteousness. If God did anything contrary to that description, such an act would be deemed correctly as unrighteous." And later you also add: "But atheists typically deny the existence of absolute morality, so since they reject absolute morality for a system of opposing preferences, for their argument against God to succeed, they would have to show from the Christian doctrine of God a violation of His own standard of righteousness, within for example, the biblical record."
Therefore I will offer a single example of a moral standard from the Christian scriptures, and then cite a few passages where God himself (according to the record we have) violates his own standard. Deut 24:16 says, "Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin." This passage is also quoted in two others: 2 Kings 14:6, and 2 Chron 25:4. The passage from Deuteronomy establishes one of the most basic principles of moral behavior in every civilized society, that of personal responsibility. Since we humans deem ourselves as free individuals, the thought of being punished for another person's actions is considered unjust in nearly every productive society. For how can one free individual temper the actions of another free individual who is determined to cause harm?
Now for the counterexamples: God inflicts his blameless servant, Job, with unspeakable suffering (Job 1:13-19). He takes the life of his sons and daughters, his servants, and his livestock on a whimsical bet with Satan. We are offered little comfort when, in Job 42:10-15, God rewards Job with twice as much as he had before. What about his dead sons and daughters, what comfort is afforded to them? Next, God punishes David for a census he takes of his army by killing 70,000 of his men (2 Samuel 24:10-15). It is granted that David disobeyed God when he took the census, by counting what was not his. But we are not told why God's wrath is turned toward 70,000 innocent soldiers rather than toward David alone. David, in fact, aware of God's moral standard of personal responsibility, actually rebukes God a short time later, saying "I have sinned: I, the shepherd, have done wrong. These are but sheep. What have they done? Let your hand fall on me and my family" (verse 17). We could also cite the sin of Adam and the punishment which all future generations must endure because of it. We are told that the wages of sin is death, but it was Adam's sin which doomed all of humanity to experience death and damnation, and in need of salvation. One writer comments on the preceding proposition:
"Who in the exercise of reason can believe, that Adam and Eve by eating of such a spontaneous fruit could have incurred the eternal displeasure of God, as individuals? Or that the divine vindictive justice should extend to their unoffending offspring then unborn? And sentence the human progeny to the latest posterity to ever lasting destruction?
... There could be no justice or goodness in one being's suffering for another, nor is it at all compatible with reason to suppose, that God was the contriver of such a proposition." --- Ethan Allen, writing in the year 1784, from Reason the Only Oracle of Man or a Compendious System of Natural Religion.
Therefore we find ample evidence, from the record of scripture itself, that the moral principle of personal responsibility and accountability is at once professed and ignored by the same God. You admit that Socrates destroys Euthyphro's claim that the pantheon of Greek gods defined absolute morality by showing that they opposed and contradicted one another, "thus refuting any claim that those 'quarreling' gods could present a cohesive moral absolute." Can't we likewise dismiss the idea that a cohesive moral absolute exists within the Trinity? From my point of view we are left with only one of two conclusions. Either (A) the divine command horn of Euthyphro's Dilemma is the view which describes the Christian God, or (B) the record of scripture is not a reliable source about God. If A is true then we are back to square one and on equal footing with Socrates and Euthyphro, who end their deliberations scratching their heads, only certain that they know that they do not know. And if B is true then your (Enyart's) argument completely falls apart, since your answer depends upon clever arrangements of words and doctrines that can only be mined from the scriptures.
The doctrine of the Trinity cannot answer Ethyphro's Dilemma, because ANY notion of god that we propose, no matter how frivolous it appears to be, might be thought good by introducing a similar doctrine of God's nature: Three-in-One, Four-in-One, Five-in-One, the sky's the limit. And the higher you go, the more certain you can be. Any such invention could, in a similar way, be thought logically consistent as well. The question really goes back to whether one can believe the testimony of the ancient writings. The solution you propose can only possibly make sense to the christian who already accepts the christian ancient writings as authoritative in the first place. Therefore you have not answered the skeptic at all, but only fortified your own understanding with higher and thicker walls.
In conclusion I would like to challenge your assertion that the atheist position on morality is no more than "a system of opposing preferences." Nature is a wonderful instructor on matters of morality, and on the possible origins of morality. There's a delightful show on television called Meerkat Manor, which chronicles the lives of a family of Meerkats living in the Sahara desert. Meerkats are a furry adorable creature, of the mongoose family, that look a bit like squirrels or raccoons. Meerkats have no religion (as far as I can tell), and they have no ancient writings that instruct them on the rules of correct behavior. Yet there exists a hierarchy of authority where certain members of a family have certain roles, and a single female alone is permitted to bear offspring. If another female is found to have given birth then the consequences are severe. Such order is necessary in order to control population growth in a region where food is scarce. This behavior emerged presumably without the benefit of a divine revelation from a Meerkat savior. Rather it arose from a long history of experimentation (or luck) within the species itself, where those families who practiced advantageous behaviors survived, and those who practiced disadvantageous behaviors perished. To draw from another area of nature, incest taboos are routinely enforced in plant and animal species. "Inbreeding produces a statistical genetic deficit that takes its toll chiefly in the deaths of infants and juveniles..There is considerable evidence for this in many--though by no means all--groups of animals and plants. Even in sexual microorganisms, incest causes striking increases in the deaths of the young...Many animals, including the primates, have taboos that inhibit mating with close relatives." (Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search for Who We Are; pg 249; by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. 1992). We must presume that corn, primates, and microorganisms do not possess a soul that is in need of saving, and that they are free to enlist any system of "opposing preferences" that their hearts (or kernels) desire. We must presume that a savior for all these species has not revealed a divine plan for how they are all to behave. Yet a successful strategy for their survival involves certain "moral" behaviors that are "right" for any given species to thrive. Furthermore, in an experiment with macaque (also known as rhesus) monkeys, subjects were fed so long as they were willing to administer a shock to an unrelated macaque, which could be seen through a one-way mirror. In one experiment only 13% would pull the chain to administer the shock and reveal the food, while 87% refused and preferred to go hungry. "One macaque went without food for nearly two weeks rather than hurt its fellow. Macaques who had themselves been shocked in previous experiments were even less willing to pull the chain" (ibid., pg. 117). We must presume that no macaque savior ever appeared to macaques teaching them to observe the golden rule, and that macaques do not worry themselves with thoughts of divine retribution if they fail to behave righteously. Yet they do employ a certain moral standard that is not arbitrary at all. All I would like to suggest to you, Bob, is that there is nothing bleak about the proposition that morality might exist without God. Nature has provided us with plenty of reasons for how and why morality may have developed within the human species. Therefore I disagree with your estimation that atheist morality is no more than "a system of opposing preferences."
I hope that you have been challenged by my effort here, as I have been challenged by reading yours. It is for you, and your readers, to decide whose is the stronger position. Thank you.
Trebla E
