On Euthyphro

[Faizal_Ali]

@structureoftruth

My point is that those arguments remove the grounds for your charge of arbitrariness against the theist. You can still deny that the arguments work, and that’s another debate, but within the theistic framework they give a principled reason for saying that God is the ground of goodness.

So if arguments don’t work, we should act as if they worked, anyway?

I’m sorry, that is not how any of this works at all.

@structureoftruth

So as long as we have some independent reason for thinking that God actually is morally perfect if he exists, then we can infer that necessary existence and moral perfection are necessarily co-instantiated, even if we can’t explain why.

Oh, jeez. No, that is also not how it works.

For instance, if I see a car that happens to be red, it does not mean that all cars are red, nor that all red things are cars.

I can’t believe I have to explain this.

@structureoftruth

Wow. If you genuinely believe it is possible for things that are (in actuality) moral atrocities to be morally permissible, then obviously you have different moral intuitions than mine.

I understand your confusion. Allow me to explain. Let’s take, as an example, the moral proscription against rape. I have no hesitation in saying that rape is not morally permissable for us as humans.

However, suppose there are other intelligent life forms on another planet for whom the act of sexual reproduction occurs thru a process as emotionally neutral and physically innocuous as breathing or blood circulation is for us, and issues of pleasure/unpleasure and consent/coercion do not even pertain. In that case, “rape”, i.e sexual interactions without consent, may not be considered an incursion onto the rights of another individual and not be a moral issue at all.

Which gets to my main position, which is that morality is something that arises contingently from our nature as human beings and has no existence apart from that. It is not some thing that exists “objectively” out there somewhere.

Whereas you believe that a statement like “It is immoral to masturbate” still pertained in the Cambrian era, because it would be “grounded” in the nature of a god somehow. That is just absurd to me.

@structureoftruth

The Euthyphro dilemma is, I take it, supposed to point out an internal inconsistency in the theistic metaethical view.

You are simply asserting that the Christian view is consistent and coherent, without demonstrating this or responding to the argument showing otherwise. That is why you have failed to refute the Euthyphro.