Dear rayruiz, Thanks for asking your question about what many call Euthyphro's Dilemma regarding whether God follows an external standard of righteousness, or arbitrarily defines righteousness. In Battle Royale VII, I raised this issue beginning in Round 6(b) and Zakath and I dealt with it on and off through post 8(b), and I mentioned it again in post 10. Below, I've cut and pasted the relevant passages. While this is mostly self-explanatory, a bit of it refers to material outside of these excerpts. So of course, it would be best to read the whole 10 rounds. By the way, I think this is the most complicated material of the whole debate. I hope these excerpts help. God bless you!
-Pastor Bob Enyart, DenverBibleChurch.org & KGOV.com
TOL BR7 DGE? Post 6b (Enyart):
Zakath, I know you agree that we theists are not infallible, and in this long paragraph, I will address an error theists commonly make regarding the origin of the physical laws. Perhaps this will help you or some other atheist by removing this unnecessary hurdle which many Christians likely have put in front of you. God created the material universe, and the physical laws are simply the inherent properties of that universe, which properties we reduce to words in order to understand the functions of nature. The physical laws do not exist unto themselves, as though you could isolate one or see it with a microscope. Also, these laws are not arbitrary, as though they could have been any different. God could have made matter that exhibited different laws, but then He would have made a different universe. When He created the space and matter that He did, God did not then need to ‘invent’ a law of momentum. Rather, momentum is simply an inherent property of matter relating to mass and velocity, which we then reduce to a description; thus momentum describes the innate behavior of the kind of matter God created. God could have created different subatomic particles, and thus different kinds of atoms. If He had created matter without electrically charged particles, then that matter would have behaved differently. If He had done so, H20 might not exhibit the capillary action that lifts water against gravity to nourish tree tops. If He had made a different kind of water, then it might have behaved like most other compounds which contract when cooled and expand when heated, but then ice would be heavier than liquid water and so lakes would freeze from the bottom up killing all their fish. God comprehended the laws which would come into being, so to speak, attendant to Creation, and so He designed matter in order to achieve the functionality He desired, which functionality is described by those laws. Now here’s the correction of a common Christian error: God created the physical universe, not the physical laws. Some might think this a minor distinction but ignoring it presents an unnecessary stumbling stone to those non-theists like Albert Einstein who think clearly about this, as when he said “God Himself could not have arranged those connections [the physical laws] in any other way than that which factually exists” (Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory, 1992, p. 242). Theists assert wrongly when they say that God could have decreed the laws to be otherwise. God is not a magician. Making the laws arbitrary gives unbelievers like Einstein a valid objection to that part of the theist message. For he rightly rejected this sloppy theist notion that God could arbitrarily establish the physical laws. Perhaps this misconception led to Zakath’s non sequitur question about the physics of creation. Perhaps too, Zakath misunderstood my point that the absolute moral standard comes from God’s nature partly because the same misinformed Christians also say that God created the spiritual laws. He did not. They are a reflection of His nature. Thus, they could not be different than they are. Because God is righteous, the spiritual laws uphold righteousness and condemn evil. Many Christians have unwittingly undermined the holiness of God by suggesting that He can be spiritually arbitrary, because He is God. That’s wrong. God could not do evil (anything against the present description of His nature), and remain holy. He remains Holy because He acts consistent with His nature. God did not have to invent the command against kidnapping, nor the prohibition against perjury. Once He created beings made in His likeness, then the moral and spiritual commands followed automatically from His nature, and they are simply the properties of these beings, prohibiting behavior that inflicts harm and leads toward death. By the way, while spiritual and moral laws are absolutes, any symbolic ordinances that God may issue could be arbitrary, such as feast days which may symbolize spiritual truth. Thus God cannot issue righteous laws which defy His holy nature, for example, prohibiting all love and requiring envy. So, God created physical entities and spiritual beings, but He did not create the physical and spiritual laws.
Zakath, I’d like to know, have you ever heard theists state or imply that the physical and spiritual laws are as they are because God created them that way? On behalf of all Christians who agree with this, I apologize to Zakath and other unbelievers for this unnecessary stumbling stone. This illustrates to me that wrong ideas about God certainly can affect an individual’s decision making, although ultimately, people will reject the just and loving God not because of confusion, but because they oppose His goodness.
...
BQ24: Zakath, have you ever heard theists state or imply that the physical and spiritual laws are as they are because God created them that way?
TOL BR7 DGE? Post 7a (Zakath):
5. God’s nature defines the absolute standard of right and wrong.
With his claim that “many Christians have unwittingly undermined the holiness of God by suggesting that he can be spiritually arbitrary, because he is God…”, Pastor Enyart posts an answer to an argument that I have not yet posted. (His point actually sounds like even more support for my Argument from Confusion). To be fair, I’ll now post the argument, Euthyphro’s Dilemma, so you can have a bit of context to understand where he’s coming from.
Euthyphro’s Dilemma
More than 2,000 years ago, the Greek philosopher Plato discussed the issue of how ethical standards come from deity and what the different theories mean to theists in his dialogue Euthyphro, a young man of that name meets Socrates. They have a discussion while Euthyphro is on his way to court to act as a sort of “state’s attorney” to prosecute a murder case. Unfortunately for Euthyphro, the man he will be prosecuting is his own father. Since the Greeks (and their gods) valued loyalty to family highly, Socrates asks Euthyphro to explain why his prosecution of a family member is not immoral in the sight of the gods. During the ensuing discussion, Euthyphro attempts to defend a position called “divine command theory” of ethics. This theory, apparently held by Pastor Enyart and many other theists, states that we humans know what is good because a deity tells us what is good. If Pastor Enyart does not believe this, I hope he will explain just what he does believe…
Plato’s story proceeds to one of Socrates’ famous two-point questions (called a dilemma, in Greek):
a) Is something morally good (pious) because the gods command it? or
b) Is something morally good (pious) because the gods recognize it as good?
In the ensuing twenty centuries, these two questions have become known as Euthyphro’s Dilemma. A discussion of these two questions may shed some light on Pastor Enyart’s views on the relationship of absolute morals and his deity. Let’s begin with the first point; that something is good because God commands it. In essence we are saying that God’s will defines what is good…
A. God’s will defines good
In this position, the one Pastor Enyart appears to hold, we find that, quite literally, anything goes as long as it is the deity’s will. What kinds of things are included in Pastor Enyart’s deity’s will? He has refused to discuss the Bible, but for most Christians it provides a touchstone for describing the will and nature of the Christian God. According to the Bible, genocide, murdering children, incest, killing the unborn, even stealing virgins for brides are all acceptable acts to God because he ordered them. Remember that the basis of the “divine command theory” is that if God commands it, it’s good. So by definition, good and evil exist only at the whim of the deity.
As the philosopher Bertrand Russell pointed out:
“If the only basis for morality is God’s decrees, it follows that they might just as well have been the opposite of what they are; no reason except caprice could have prevented the omission of all the “nots” from the Decalogue.” (Russell, B. Human Society in Ethics and Politics. New York. Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1962, pg. 38)
Essentially, Russell is saying that the Ten Commandments (the Decalogue) could have been just the opposite of what they are and they would still be the will of God, since that is the definition of good, in this viewpoint.
Theists who accept this horn of Euthyphro’s Dilemma must admit that they do not operate from or even have a standard of ethics. They have replaced their ethical standard with obedience – they do what their God commands. Unfortunately, they have confused the obedience of a slave with ethics.
Next, it makes little logical sense to say that “God is good” if god is the standard of goodness. After all, if God is good, in the sense that God is identical to the standard of goodness, then to say “God is good” is merely to say “God is god.” Such a statement is fundamentally uninformative. In such a statement the subject and predicate nouns are the same object so the sentence loses its meaning.
Furthermore, this stand of Divine Command Theory makes it difficult, if not impossible to tell if a given being is a deity. There is no set of standards with which one could compare that being to identify it as “God.” In human experience, if I want to determine whether a person is a clinical psychologist, I can develop a list of actions which I might expect a person knowledgeable in psychology to perform. This might include things like understanding how to conduct a patient interview, having a particular type of university training, knowing a variety of psychological theories, etc. In addition, I can also develop a list of actions that would indicate that the subject is not a clinical psychologist. Such a list might include failure to be properly licensed, not understanding a range of psychological theories, never having conducted a patient interview, etc. I can then measure my candidate against my concept of a clinical psychologist. If the individual measures up, I can declare him or her a clinical psychologist. In the case of God, when Pastor Enyart declares that “God is the standard”, there is no list or set of criteria to identify whether such a being is the good God or something else entirely. Since God can perform or command any act because he is the standard, what kinds of acts could we put into our identification list? There is no action about which we could ever say, “An evil being might command these but a good being would not.” All we would be doing is placing our preferences on an allegedly absolute standard, a process it’s likely that Pastor Enyart would abhor. Thus no action could be required or ruled out with regard to God since the deity could always decide to perform or command the opposite of any given criterion. After all, GOD SETS THE STANDARDS, doesn’t he? Without an independent standard of moral and immoral acts against which to measure him, god could never be identified by his moral standard. We risk falling into the trap of applying our subjective preferences to the behavior of God with which we agree (blessings, financial prosperity, healing, or otherwise meeting our needs) while selectively ignoring or rationalizing away those behaviors we may find disagreeable (genocide, child slaughter, murder, human sacrifice, human slavery).
Morally speaking, there is no objective way to distinguish between being a slave to an evil demon (a very real possibility, according to some religionists) as opposed to being a slave to a god (the belief of Christians). In both cases the one in command could order any action whatsoever and carrying out that command would be, by definition, a good, moral act. Anything from rape to murder to genocide can be considered good if commanded by the being who serves as the standard.
One objection commonly raised by theists to this argument is the proposal that God will not act against his own nature. Unfortunately, to define the nature of a being we cannot see, touch, hear, or smell, we must look at his actions in the physical universe. So, we must define God’s nature based on what God does. You may see how this rapidly becomes a circular argument. In addition, we have already shown that no action can be forbidden for the being giving the commands because the being giving the commands would not have any independent standard of morality by which it could be limited to a certain set of acts. So no action performed by God can be out of his character
If such a situation exists, the only true immoral (evil) act is disobedience to God. His followers must be committed to a system of blind obedience to a being who cannot meaningfully be called “good”.
For theists, this option is undesirable.
B. God recognizes another standard of good
The other horn of the dilemma is that God recognizes what is good from a source outside himself, and then wills in accord with that good.
Pastor Enyart has NOT chosen this horn of the dilemma, but for interested readers, I’ll explain it briefly.
When a theist chooses this path, that God commands what he recognizes as good, the theist is admitting the standard of good and evil is independent of God and that God, in fact, is not the standard of morality. This is because this view tells us that God, in some way, observes or “sees” what is good and the n tells us what to do on the basis of that observation. Since the action observed by God is what he commands, he is not acting as a source of morality, but merely a channel. In this view God becomes an intermediary or a reporter about ethics and morality, but not the source.
This is undesirable for the theist since it admits that God is not the source of their ethics and morals. This horn of the dilemma is particularly unpopular because if God is not the source, there is no sound argument which demonstrates that atheists could not have an ethical system apart from God.
In the question of whether or not God can be the source for “absolute morals”, the choice for the theist boils down to this choose between:
admitting that he has no real standard of morality, only a morality based up on the slavery of blindly following orders; or
Admitting that God is not the source of morality.
Neither position actually allows for the possibility that god is source of a system of ethics or morals. The Euthyphro Dilemma demonstrates that the Divine Command Theory of ethics and morality cannot work.
TOL BR7 DGE? Post 7b (Enyart):
4) God’s Accountability to an Unchanging Standard: This section goes beyond the point in the Absolute Nature of Laws section above, where Zakath said that I hold to an “anything goes” morality and that for this morality, “by definition, good and evil exist only at the whim of the deity.” (Interestingly, atheists often do this with humans, justifying homosexuality as an inborn nature, denying the personal responsibility of drug addicts, and some even defending rapists and murderers as simply living out their natures.) Zakath then carried this one step further claiming that therefore: “…no action performed by God can be out of his character;” that is, because if God does something, then by definition it is in His nature to do it, and we theists would also declare anything He does as righteous. So Zakath misrepresented my position by implying that I had not already responded to this. He ignored an important clarification in my post:
Bob: “God could not do evil (anything against the present description of His nature), and remain holy.”
Why did I insert the word present into the above sentence? Zakath, if you read carefully, I will resolve Euthyphro’s Dilemma for Plato and Socrates, and deny you the honest use of it in the future. But Zakath, if while reading this section you allow your mind to fly through a thousand counter arguments, without discipline, you will once again fail to even understand the point. So please put your auto-pilot Bible rebuttal mode in its upright and locked position, and first comprehend this new material.
God’s nature is not sufficiently pliable that it could embrace truth and perjury, private property and theft, loyalty and disloyalty, and punishing and rewarding of the same behavior. Thus, God could conceivably violate His own nature, because once His nature is described (in what becomes a definition of righteousness), then anything God does contrary to that description would correctly be deemed as unrighteous. For example, using the biblical paradigm, if Jesus Christ gave into temptation by submitting to evil and worshipping Satan, then He would not have remained righteous.
It is not that anything God conceivably could do would therefore be moral, just because He did it. It is that we expect God to remain steadfastly good, consistent with the existing description of His nature. God does not save those who trust Him because He has no choice, but because He wills to, but if He willed to embrace evil (as described currently by His nature) then He would no longer be the righteous God. Quoting the overlooked sentence again:
“God could not do evil (anything against the present description of His nature), and remain holy.” Thus, moral inconsistency is an absolute determinant for wrong. Plato and Socrates missed this important test partly because their dialogue was replete with mentions of Greek gods who, as Socrates noted, contradicted one another as to goodness. Thus the contradictions within the mythical pantheon of Greece falsified any claim of absolute morality made by Euthyphro on behalf of his gods and goddesses. But Plato recorded this dialogue without the knowledge that you possess Zakath, that of the claim of a Christian God who has no such internal inconsistency. God does not fight within Himself about what is right and wrong; but if He ever did, then He would no longer remain the holy God. And there is nothing remotely circular about this. We look for inconsistencies in courtroom testimony because inconsistencies reveal lies and deceptions. Thus consistency is a necessary property of righteousness (and thus of being right). “A faithful witness does not lie, but a false witness will utter lies [and inconsistencies]” (Proverbs 14:5). Again, moral inconsistency is a litmus test for evil. Thus a religious book like the Bible generally claims in forty passages that the steadfast love of the Lord never changes in that He is faithful, that is, He is consistent.
Humans are social beings, and our morality magnifies itself in our actions toward others. But because we are social beings, even actions committed against ourselves affect others, as for example when we hurt ourselves to manipulate others, like Gandhi did; or even the person seeking to escape his own pain by committing suicide, who hurts those around him. Thus because morality is social, a social God who interacts with multiple persons has an additional context in which to objectively demonstrate His morality. Let me illustrate the implications of this using the Christian conception of the Trinitarian God, Father, Son and Spirit, three persons in one God. If God is a Trinitarian God, then He has an eternal track record of interaction between the persons of the Godhead. And if during that eternal fellowship, if any moral inconsistency appeared, then God would be objectively evil. But an atheist may ask, “What if there was no inconsistency because this God is consistently evil?” A God with other persons to interact with has other frames of reference, that is, other perspectives from which to declare Himself. Thus if the Son willingly submits to the Father, because He implicitly trusts the Father from whom He has never experienced harm, and the Spirit brings glory to the Son, because He has never felt threatened by the Son, and the Father loves the Son and the Spirit, never having His wellbeing jeopardized by either, then “by the mouth of two or three witnesses the matter shall be established.” Thus even though it is the only standard He has ever known, God the Father can determine that His own standard is righteous because He has never violated it, and because the independent persons of the Son and the Spirit testify that the Father has never violated their own self-interests [Luke 16:12].
This process is greatly amplified when God creates other beings, and as He reveals Himself to them in various ways. For, He must behave toward them in their own best interest, or else He violates His own standard of love. And He must punish those who hurt others, or else He violates His own standard of justice. And if God’s intention was not for the welfare but for the harm of created eternal beings, then He would have violated His own declared standard.
Thus while moral inconsistency indicates wickedness, eternal consistency proves either continuous good or continuous evil; and multiple perspectives from independent persons provide information regarding whether God acts on behalf of, or against, their best interests. Of course, an atheist will accuse the Bible’s God, if He exists, of endless evils, but since atheists deny any system of absolute morality, for their logical argument to succeed, they would have to show that the concept of the Christian God is internally inconsistent, violating His own standard of righteousness.
In his talk, “Why I Am Not a Christian,” Bertrand Russell wrote that: “if you are quite sure there is a difference between right and wrong, then you are in this situation: Is that difference due to God’s fiat [arbitrary decree] or is it not? If it is due to God’s fiat, then for God himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is good. If you are going to say, as theologians do, that God is good, you must then say that right and wrong have some meaning which is independent of God’s fiat, because God’s fiats are good and not bad independently of the mere fact that he made them. If you are going to say that, you will then have to say that it is not only through God that right and wrong came into being, but that they are in their essence logically anterior to God.”
Plato, Socrates, Bertrand Russell… morons. (Actually, I’m just quoting from Princess Bride, one of our favorite movies.) Well, not morons, but fools yes, because they denied the Creator. Because of their prejudice against God, their fertile minds did not conceive of the simple possibility that a description of God’s nature is independent of His nature itself, and thus, God could hold Himself to that description of His nature, which description I admit initially existed only within Himself, but after Creation it would exist in any of the manifest ways in which God has revealed Himself. And so, right and wrong are not due to God’s arbitrary decrees, but flow from the description of His nature, a description which He could theoretically violate. Thus, the system of morality based upon God is not logically unsound as claimed by atheists.
Because Zakath uncritically accepted the popular atheist use of the Euthyphro Dilemma, he summed up its challenge this way: “In the question of whether or not God can be the source for ‘absolute morals,’ the choice for the theist boils down to this, choose between: admitting that he has no real standard of morality, only a morality based upon the slavery of blindly following orders; or admitting that God is not the source of morality.”
Zakath, do you agree that I have solved Euthyphro’s Dilemma by observing that, if God exists, a description of God’s nature can be independent of His nature itself, and thus there is no logical contradiction in the possibility that God’s nature defines an objective moral standard?
If there were no God, then absolute right could not exist. Thus, atheists reason correctly from their atheistic premise when they declare that absolute right and wrong do not exist, for if God did not exist, neither would right and wrong. Thus, for the reader questioning the existence of God, weigh the evidence: ask yourself, is it really wrong to rape a woman, lynch a black, torment a child, or are these not absolutely wrong, but simple valid preferences of others. If such crimes are not really wrong, then there is no God. If crimes are truly wrong, then a personal, loving, and just God does exist and you should ask Him for forgiveness for the hurt that you have inflicted upon others.
Also, you attempted another slight of hand with this: If “‘God is good’ [and] if god is the standard of goodness… then to say “God is good” is merely to say “God is god.”“ Oops. You are confusing the property of an entity with the entity itself. If the boss is also the janitor, you do state a pointless tautology by substituting one for the other to get the boss is the boss. But to say that the boss is the janitor speaks volumes. And to say God is love [meaning that His nature defines commitment to others], or that Michael Jordan is the standard [meaning that he has defined basketball skill], does not require us to reduce either to God is God or Michael is Michael, as though nothing real is being communicated. Otherwise, you make the bizarre claim that no aspect of a thing could ever conceivably set a standard. For example, by your faulty logic, the speed of light cannot even theoretically be an absolute, because then all Einstein said was, “the speed of light is the speed of light.”
(I can already hear the atheists in the Grandstands whining: “Wha wha wha, none of that proves that God exists!” Quick, somebody call them a whambulance! I offer the above not as proof but to rebut this argument of atheism.)
TOL BR7 DGE? Post 8a (Zakath):
In my previous post, I presented Euthyphro’s Dilemma which essentially argues that moral absolutes must exist either because the god(s) decree them to be so or because the god(s) acknowledge another external standard.
Pastor Enyart, in a fit of apparent hubris, claims that, after 24 centuries he has “solved Euthyphro’s Dilemma by observing that, if God exists, a description of God’s nature can be independent of his nature itself, and thus there is no logical contradiction in the possibility that God’s nature defines an objective moral standard.” I will demonstrate that he has not yet done so and that philosophy students everywhere may continue, as they have for some 24 centuries, to argue Euthyphro’s Dilemma in their classrooms.
In his failed effort to refute Euthyphro’s Dilemma, Pastor Enyart makes use of what is referred to as “Essential Moral Attribute Response” (EMAR) to attempt to answer the first horn of the dilemma by claiming that right and wrong are part of the nature of his deity and that, to again use his own words, “God could not do evil (anything against the present description of his nature), and remain holy.”
A bit of examination demonstrates the weakness of this argument. Appealing to God’s character does not solve Euthyphro’s dilemma, it only postpones the problem of since it merely restates the dilemma in terms of God’s character. Is God’s character the way it is because it is good or is God’s character good simply because it is God’s character?
Is there an independent standard of good or does God’s character set the standard? If God’s character is the way it is because it is good, then there is an independent standard of goodness by which to evaluate God’s character. For example, suppose God condemns rape because of his just and merciful character. His character is just and merciful because mercy and justice are good. Since God is necessarily good, God is just and merciful. According to this independent standard of goodness, being merciful and just is precisely what a good character involves. In this case, even if God did not exist, one could say that a merciful and just character is good. Human beings could use this standard to evaluate peoples’ character and actions based on this character. They could do this whether or not God exists. So, in this case, God is not necessary for the existence of a moral system.
Suppose God’s character is good simply because it is God’s character. Then if God’s character were cruel and unjust, these attributes would be good. In such a case God might well condone rape since this would be in keeping with his character. But one might reply that God could not be cruel and unjust since by necessity God must be good? It is true that by necessity God must be good. But unless we have some independent standard of goodness (outside of God) then whatever attributes God has would by definition be good: God’s character would define what good is. It would seem that if God could not be cruel and unjust, then God’s character must necessarily exemplify some independent standard of goodness. Using this standard one could say that cruelty and injustice are not good whether God exists or not.
Pastor Enyart’s argument also raises some other interesting problems to consider in future posts, if we have time:
Is God only capable of doing good acts? If so, then perhaps Pastor Enyart could explain how he has concocted a God that is not a free moral agent while the most menial human being possesses the power to choose good or evil. In addition to making the deity internally incoherent, such a belief also appears to be contradicted in the bible.
If all “good” is essentially dependent upon the nature of the deity; then it would follow that, if Pastor Enyart’s God did not exist, then basic moral beliefs, for example that the gratuitous torture of babies is morally wrong, would be mistaken. This is absurd.
...
Euthyphro’s Dilemma
1. Explain why his Essential Moral Attributes Responses to the dilemma should not be considered a mere restating of the dilemma, but actually providing an answer.
TOL BR7 DGE? Post 8b (Enyart):
BQ27: Zakath, do you agree that I have solved Euthyphro’s Dilemma?
ZA27: Zakath answered no. [IMA: Ignored My Argument] I answer his related ZQ29 below.
...
ZQ27: Is God only capable of doing good?
BA27: God does good not because He is unable to do otherwise, but because He wills to do good. In post 7 [IMA] I stated:
• “Using the biblical paradigm, if Jesus Christ [the Christian God] gave into temptation by submitting to evil and worshipping Satan, then He would not have remained righteous.”
• “The Son willingly submits to the Father.”
• “If He willed to embrace evil (as described currently by His nature) then He would no longer be the righteous God.”
If God did evil, which He could do, then He would no longer be a righteous God, but He commits that His faithfulness will remain forever.
...
ZQ29: “Explain why [Bob’s] Essential Moral Attributes Responses to [Euthyphro’s] dilemma should not be considered a mere restating of the dilemma, but actually providing an answer.” And, “Is God’s character the way it is because it is good or is God’s character good simply because it is God’s character?”
BA29: Zakath, while I maintain that I solved Euthyphro’s Dilemma in post 7b, the actual question I then posed to you did not sufficiently incorporate my solution, so below I provide BQ35 which restates BQ27. You summarized this dilemma stating that “…no action performed by God can be out of his character.” In my response I warned you that, “without discipline, you will once again fail to even understand the point. So please put your auto-pilot Bible rebuttal mode in its upright and locked position, and first comprehend this new material.” And what did you go and do? In this section you made twelve accusations against the Bible’s God, and you ignored much of my argument, which I will now cut and paste for you to consider again:
“Moral inconsistency is an absolute determinant for wrong… Thus consistency is a necessary property of righteousness (and thus of being right)… Humans are social beings, and our morality magnifies itself in our actions toward others. Thus because morality is social, a social God [IMA] who interacts with multiple persons has an additional context in which to objectively demonstrate His morality. Let me illustrate the implications of this using the Christian conception of the Trinitarian God, Father, Son and Spirit, three persons in one God. If God is a Trinitarian God, then He has an eternal track record of interaction between the persons of the Godhead. And if during that eternal fellowship, if any moral inconsistency appeared, then God would be objectively evil. But an atheist may ask, ‘What if there was no inconsistency because this God is consistently evil?’ A [Trinitarian] God with other Persons to interact with has other frames of reference, that is, other perspectives from which to declare Himself. Thus if the Son willingly submits to the Father, because He implicitly trusts the Father from whom He has never experienced harm, and the Spirit brings glory to the Son, because He has never felt threatened by the Son, and the Father loves the Son and the Spirit, never having His wellbeing jeopardized by either, then ‘by the mouth of two or three witnesses the matter shall be established.’ Thus even though it is the only standard He has ever known, God the Father can determine that His own standard is righteous because He has never violated it, and because the independent persons of the Son and the Spirit testify that the Father has never violated their own self-interests. This process is greatly amplified when God creates other beings, and as He reveals Himself to them in various ways. For, He must behave toward them in their own best interest, or else He violates His own standard of love. And He must punish those who hurt others, or else He violates His own standard of justice. And if God’s intention was not for the welfare but for the harm of created eternal beings, then He would have violated His own declared standard. Thus while moral inconsistency indicates wickedness, eternal consistency proves either continuous good or continuous evil; and multiple perspectives from independent persons provide information regarding whether God acts on behalf of, or against, their best interests.”
...
BQ35 (BQ27 restated) Zakath, is the following reasoning internally consistent, and if so, do you agree that I have solved Euthyphro’s Dilemma with these two observations: 1) if God exists, a description of God’s nature can be independent of His nature itself, and 2) a track record of eternally interacting, independent persons (of the Trinity) who have never experienced a threat to their own wellbeing can each testify of the eternal consistent goodness of the others, and by these three independent witnesses, they can declare their mutual standard as righteous.
TOL BR7 DGE? Post 10 (Enyart):
[After Zakath bailed in the 9th round, Bob role-played Zakath on truth serum and answered those queries which Zakath had failed to answer. Below, ZOSP stands for "Zakath on Sodium Pentathol."]
BQ35: [BQ27 restated] Zakath, is the following reasoning internally consistent, and if so, do you agree that I have solved Euthyphro’s Dilemma with these two observations: 1) if God exists, a description of God’s nature can be independent of His nature itself, and 2) a track record of eternally interacting, independent persons (of the Trinity) who have never experienced a threat to their own wellbeing can each testify of the eternal consistent goodness of the others, and by these three independent witnesses, they can declare their mutual standard as righteous.
ZOSP: I don’t like to make a judgment such as that these two statements are “internally consistent.” But let me just say that I cannot find any inconsistency in them at the moment. As to whether they solved Euthyphro’s Dilemma, when Euthyphro wrote, he had no conception of the christian trinitarian god. So, of course he wouldn’t have considered that possibility. Also, as I have read atheists who use this argument, neither have they attempted to evaluate whether this dilemma stands in light of the specifically trinitarian claims that you make. So, you are asking me to consider and respond to something in the short timeframe of a debate which atheists have not considered for two thousand years. I know that I put a lot of concentration into presenting this argument, but I don’t want to think through your rebuttal. So, have you solved this dilemma that tries to disprove even the possibility of absolute morality? I doubt it, but I don’t have the energy to find whatever logical flaw may exist in your argument. Besides, I really hate it when christians use the trinity to make their points.
-END OF BR7 EXCERPTS-
ps. Dear Ray, "Ruiz" leads me to ask if you speak Spanish? If so, we have a project underway, translating my manuscript, "The Plot" into Spanish titled "La Trama." Please let me know if you'd like a review copy of this work in progress. May God bless you!
-Bob Enyart