I’ve had a busy couple of days and I’ve only just had time to peruse the latest batch of comments.

Tom,

I believe throughout much of this discussion you are still confusing the ED’s central inquiry – to disclose the nature of goodness, or how we know and define goodness – with an argument for or about the existence and nature of God. Clearly, the ED does not seek to disprove God – it assumes God. (It has implications about God, but those are secondary.)

That’s why questions or statements like these are completely beside the point:

Cannot the God of all the universe, the one eternally infinite person, your creator and mine, have the right to speak what is good?

and

So, unless someone can come up with some answers that do not involve mis-understanding the questions, mis-addressing them, or repeating errors already noted, then I have nothing else but to provisionally conclude that no case against theism has been successfully made.

The (current form of the) ED doesn’t make a case against theism. It asks, given theism, how do we know what is good?

I believe your claim to be avoiding circularity is based on your reframing the dilemma to be about imagining a godlike explanation that avoids the horns without answering the actual question. If your third horn is seen as a response to the question raised in the ED, then it remains circular.

You wrote:

This is a discussion that starts with, “If there is a God, can we present some kind of coherent way of viewing God and his goodness that does not fall prey to the failings of the Euthyphro dilemma?”

But I think this basically reframes the question so as to avoid the ED, rather than respond to it – by that measure, lots of things don’t fall prey to the ED, but to present a way out you have to answer the question first. In other words, I don’t think the ED asks, Can we conceive of a way that goodness could exist that would make goodness unchanging and part of God? It basically asks, How is goodness known?

If your explanation three, the so-called third horn is to be read as a response to the ED, you have indeed made a circular argument – you have assumed that goodness is defined by God’s character — “Goodness is an eternal aspect of God’s eternal nature…” This presumes to know what goodness is (without defining it). So you have inferred the crucial part of the conclusion – that we know goodness is good because it’s good – by stating it in your premise, and that, as FG has so ably pointed out, is viciously circular.

Circular? No. Here’s why. If this were an argument in which I was attempting to prove that God is good, and I were saying “God is good, therefore … we can conclude that God is good,” that would be circular. But this is not that kind of discussion. This is a discussion that starts with, “If there is a God, can we present some kind of coherent way of viewing God and his goodness that does not fall prey to the failings of the Euthyphro dilemma?” Circularity does not apply to an argument of that sort.

I addressed this above. Saying that good is good is not an explanation, and it is circular. If you do not explain why good is good, you have attached yourself to the second horn, and admitted that God defines good. This does not disprove Christianity, mind you – it just lays out the logic of the system.

I do not have to assume that God is as I claim, in order to support my position that if God is as I claim, then there is no logical incoherence in his relationship to the good. (That is all I need to show in order to answer Euthyphro.) I really hope that is sufficiently obvious by now, and that this charge of circularity never comes back again, for clearly it is a charge that could only apply against some other kind of argument, not the one I’ve been presenting here.

To answer Euthyphro you have to explain how you know what is good, and you have to do it in a way that doesn’t beg the question. By not defining good, and by having God be the standard of good, you are the one who is choosing the second horn / inviting the “turtles all the way down” regression.

You can either accept as good the good that we know, or you can imagine some other possible world where there is a different good. And then you would have to imagine yourself or some other entity judging between the good of that world and the good of this world, and pronouncing one of them the real good. But that’s a god-like ability. And since the Euthyphro dilemma begins ex hypothesi with the assumption of God, who is both infinite and necessary, your other possible world is also ruled by this same God, and it would necessarily be he who judges good between worlds. In fact this renders absurd and impossible the conception of another possible world where a different good applies.

I hadn’t responded to this because I don’t see it as explaining any issue that is part of the ED. I assume the Christian God with respect to the ED, and possible worlds is not an issue that FG or I or anyone else here who is skeptical about the Christian solution to the ED has raised.

I apologize for contributing so late, and for echoing, more feebly, FG in this discussion. I just didn’t want my silence to seem like I was acquiescing to your most recent determinations on the topic.

Tom, would you consider that there is/was a limitation on what good could have been from God’s perspective?

Yes.

Could what is good, as defined by God, have been different, even eternally?

No. That’s what ‘arbitrary’ means to get at in this sense.
For my point, this is why I’ve emphasized that God is The necessary Being, and that goodness is of His necessary nature.

Doesn’t “arbitrary” mean, for the ED, not that God could change what is good, but that good is whatever he decides/declares/defined it to be, even if it is decided/declared/defined eternally because it is part of his nature.

Tom, would you consider that there is/was a limitation on what good could have been from God’s perspective? Could what is good, as defined by God, have been different, even eternally?

Edited: I’m trying tease the changing part of “arbitrary” out of the sense of the word, leaving only “without limitation to be defined” behind.

This is getting too messy to write in a series of comments. I am writing a blog post. Will add a comment when it is up.

This s a very interesting debate I will try and sum up where we are and I am going to make separate comments on distinct points so they can be addressed individually.

Focus: Good or God?

This is more an observation rather than a debate point. The issue here is that our focus should be what is moral good – this is the explandum. The explanans is the answer. Euthyphro and you and offering god as part the explanans. However what seems to be happening is you changing the subject to as if I am asking for a definition of god and you are offering your definition God as the explanans to that question. My only interest in your God is as to whether it can provide a definition of good. As far as I can see the question is over a possible defition of moral good in term of god. Once that is established one can look to see as to whether your God can fit that possible explanation. That is after Euthyphro is resolved , if it is.

So all I need is for you to show how god could be part of the explanans. Certainly you can draw off your understanding of your God and you might have the position that no other god could do this. That this is the only way to resolve the dilemma. I am guessing this is your position.

Incoherence

Still I only have interest in your definition of your God to the degree it might resolve the dilemma and no more. All I ask is what are these aspects(?) or attributes(?), that is all that is should be required here. The issue of incoherence is that you have not provided a coherent explanation of the relevant aspects of God that can answer this question. You say that:

God is the ground of being and a being
God is three beings and one
God has no parts but has attributes and aspects
You have knowledge of God but are unable cannot judge God

These are all contradictory and render your definition of God incoherent and to base a definition of moral good on an incoherent concept is… incoherent. But I am not here to debate your definition of God. And the issue of incoherence is different to the issue of transparency and opaqueness (I will address that in another comment).

What results is that you keep on moving the goal posts or it is like getting rid of a bubble underneath clingfilm, it moves around but does not go away.

So here I am asking you to provide the coherent relevant features (?) of your God, that is required to, in your view, satisfy a definition of moral goodness and no more. Once I have that I can then address the other interesting points you have raised.

If I can form other questions in parallel to this question I will do so. I will check after I have posted this comment.

You’re still assuming goodness. You do this in two places: you use revelation as if goodness is completely evident, and later on you use the qualifier of “if” to establish goodness in all possible worlds, like maximal goodness has already been assumed; but that’s the entire issue we’re arguing. Nor can we consider evidence unless we know exactly what we’re looking for. Normally such an assumption wouldn’t bother me terribly if it was the only option, but there are a few problems here:

1. We have opened up an interesting avenue of inquiry: at which point can we presuppose the existence of God and his character? I don’t want to get too broad, as we have the other post to talk about the disparate elements of evidence, but certainly there is a point in your argument where we merely reduce God to an utter mystery. Paul says that God is evident so that no man is with excuse, but how can that be if we don’t even have a readily understood standard? One would need access to the Bible and centuries worth of accumulated theology in order to understand him and make sense of his attributes; obviously, this is access that many people do not have, now and in the past.

Even worse, a firm understanding of Christian theology doesn’t always clear things up. There are many people who profess to know the goodness of God’s perfect will, but if the standard cannot be understood, and if God himself is justified through his perfection, then what of the people who are absolutely convinced that they are channeling God’s will? They will justify their actions as God’s perfect will. Usually this is harmless; “God wants me to marry Susan” or “God wants me to go to Yale”. But it can result in people trying to impose certain standards on others or perhaps silly little men trying to interpret every disaster as God’s wrath upon humanity. Or it could even be taken to its worst conclusions. What are you going to say to them? That God never did any of these things? So it’s desirable to set direct, obvious parameters here.

2. Maybe there is no clear definition of goodness because objective goodness is impossible. Can you rule that possibility out? That to even feel or act is a subjective experience, incapable of being taken to a perfect end, which is what I mean by arbitrary. Even if you were to take an emotion like love and say that such a thing can exist perfectly within the essence of being, we all have different ways of expressing it or balancing it with other characteristics.

I asked this question here: is there an objective good for every situation? For if we equate goodness with perfection, then goodness cannot change. As an example: if God punishes, there is no other way in which he could punish. Otherwise his mind would be changed. But if his nature is the very foundation of existence, then there is nothing to change.

Yes, I have read Romans, but I’m not sure what you’re referring to. I’ll refrain from going further for now, as I don’t want to get ahead of myself.

Which is what I’ve been asking. Is there a way in which we know that goodness cannot be adjusted?

We know because of God’s self-revelation on this.

re: your comment 157:

I think that there is one obvious question: how do you know if goodness itself is not arbitrary?

What do you mean by arbitrary? If it means that goodness could be re-defined at any moment with nothing to stop God from doing that, we know that God will not do that, for that would be a denial of his own self, his own character. If arbitrary means that there was no external referent for God in defining goodness, I’ve addressed that already in pointing out that God did not define goodness for himself, he just was and is good. It’s not God but humans who require definitions. If arbitrary means that the lack of an external referent prevents us from assessing whether God’s goodness is real goodness, then you’re starting to walk the path of infinite regression I described earlier.

God’s goodness has no external check or referent on it. Granted. If that means “arbitrary” to you, then I would say that word hardly applies to the source and basis of everything that has ever existed.

could there be a world in which the nature of God changes without any loss of goodness?

God is already maximally good. To “lose” goodness or to “gain” goodness—neither is possible for a maximally good person. For God to be different in another possible world than he is in this one is an interesting suggestion. I’m not sure how far I want to go into this, but here’s the bare bones of it: if God is infinite and maximally perfect in this world, then he is the same God in all possible worlds, for if that is true of God, there are no possible worlds that are actually possible with a different God than this one, or no God at all. That’s not the whole argument. If you want to follow that further I’ll try to find you a link to it; or maybe you can just see how the conclusion follows from the premise.

We must establish why the greatest good is always being done in each circumstance, and that might be difficult if there are certain aspects of God that cannot be expressed perfectly.

Not just difficult, impossible. It would take God’s knowledge to be able to accomplish that. We cannot do that in every circumstance. We can know God well enough to trust that it is true in each circumstance, however, even though we cannot prove it. We have evidence of God’s maximal goodness, and we can extrapolate that to cases where we cannot see exactly how it works out that way.

But this is not about Euthyphro so much. The resolution of the ED as applied to the God Christians worship has three steps:

1. To show that the dilemma has an out; to outline at least the possibility of a non-contradictory, coherent third horn.
2. To describe the kind of God to which this might apply.
3. To demonstrate that this God exists.

But the ED is actually resolved after step 2. Step 3 is important in many respects, but not with respect to resolving the ED.

He can’t always be just if he’s being merciful, for instance. Or perhaps the concept of justice itself is arbitrary. What is just? God’s nature. But what is God’s nature? Justice? We could also probably establish a similar circular argument for obedience, but there are many issues to deal with, so I’ll stop there

Have you read the book or Romans in the New Testament? In there it explains how God can be both just, and the justifier of those who have sinned (which means among other things to show mercy). It’s a challenging read but very worthwhile.

There are a whole lot of unsupported assertions in there.

At this point I think I’ll add in another layer of explanation, which I’ve been thinking about including for a day or two. God has no parts, and is of one essence, but he exists in three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We have something here that is beyond our understanding, but not something that is contradictory; for his oneness is in essence, and his tri-ness is in persons.

Being eternally triune, God exists eternally in relationship with himself. There is a relationship between the persons of the Trinity. “God is love,” it says in 1 John, and because of the Trinity that was true before he created something other than himself to love. Similar things could be said about other aspects of God’s character.

I deny that I have implied we have no knowledge of God. I addressed this in the previous comment. In the case of the Trinity, there actually is something beyond our knowing or comprehension. God is certainly far beyond our complete comprehension. But that does not prevent him from communicating truly to us—truly, but not exhaustively.

You rephrased my statement as you said: “It is the very claim that it is coherent to speak of God as setting the standard that is being questioned.”
I am not disputing that but this is not the issue.

But I think it is. As I understand ED, the problem is that the relationship between God and the good cannot be stated coherently. If that problem can be resolved, the ED is resolved.

Exactly! And it does not matter what God is unless you define all the properties of being away which you attempt to do below. Then it is not God in any meaningful sense we are talking about at all.

But I have not defined all the properties of being away. This is a strange argument you make!

he implciatin of Socarates argument is that good is not the type of thing that could be an inherent property of an object, let alone a being, let alone god, let alone God.

But why does he assert this? Because of an analogy of carrying, where the carrying precedes the being carried. God being eternal (past and present) there is no preceding. He has the property of being good just because he has that property eternally. Socrates’ analogy is misplaced in this case.

So to assert a relational property as an inherent property is incoherent.

Socrates’ analogies rest on verbs: love and carry–transitive verbs, in fact, which require an object, so that a subject-object relationship is implied in them. “Good” is not a verb, especially not a transitive verb, it’s an adjective, a descriptor. I don’t see why it must be a relational property. Why cannot God be inherently good?

So you are rendering God as so entirely unlike anything else there is no basis to for any analogical reasoning from what we know. Which disqualifies you from any of the following claims …

You made quite a logical leap there, with no explanation. Because God has no parts, we can know nothing whatsoever about him? How does that necessarily follow?

In fact, God is in many ways unlike anything we know, except that he has created humans in his image, which includes things like sharing in attributes like personality, moral awareness, intellect, volition, free will, and so on.

It is therefore not impossible to make claims about God. To say that we can know nothing about God, or say nothing true about God, is to say that the omniscient omnipotent God could never quite figure out a way to let his creatures know anything about himself. That’s just not the case. He has revealed enough of his nature to us that we can say we know some things about him truly, though certainly not exhaustively.

So everything you say from that point about God’s being opaque is just not the case.

“How do we know that God’s evil is the real evil? The answer is quite simply that there is no real anything at all except what is based in God. There is God and his creation; creation was his idea; there is no other possible source of evil, no other possible standard by which to test God. He is the standard, by virtue of his being eternally infinite, or infinitely eternal.”

Evil is not a creation of God; it is a privation of the good. There is no evil in God.

Further, you have already said it takes a god (or god-like ability) to judge God therefore you cannot know with any certainty any of your claims. You nor anyone else can have any knowledge of God.

I am not judging God when I agree with him. To judge him is to pronounce him wrong. And of course I have already explained that knowledge of God is not impossible.

[I wrote]You said later that a definition must have “a meaningful referent.” But God does not “define” goodness for himself in that way. He just is good (according to (3)).

[You responded] Therefore there s no reason therefore this is still the good old second horn of the original ED!

Do you think so? Then explain what it is about the second horn that is objectionable in the case of a God who is eternally and unchangeably good. If the reason behind goodness is a good God who is the basis for all meaning and existence, then what is to complain about?

I also have to say that, while I agree that the theists have not resolved the ED, Tom’s #177 post was excellent. It moved the discussion forward, it directly addressed previous questions and issues, was substantive, etc. It was reasoned even if I disagree with some of its reasoning.

we might say that before creation when it was just God, all of reality (God himself, that is) was in accord with his character and nature. That was it, and it was good.

Prior to “creation” good and bad did not mean anything. You cannot both assert that God has no parts and is the ground of being – good or bad or anything else could not exist there. You cannot also assert that he his also a being with as a character and nature as this contradicts your ground of being and no parts arguments. All you are doing is creating a completely opaque definition of good by relying on a completely opaque notion of God (and about whom you have implied you have no knowledge of) – you have explained absolutely nothing and that is what Socrates would most certainly have complained about.

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