On Wednesday in class we discussed the Euthyphro Dilemma, which questions whether God loves things because they are good or if things are good because God loves them. If the latter part were to be true, that God chooses what is good (what Antony referred to as the Divine Command Theory), then many problems can be raised. One student in class – I can’t recall who – stated that if this were the case, then if God decided murder were moral and good, then it would be moral and good. This is true. But, assuming that the Divine Command Theory is correct, how do we know that God at some point in time didn’t decide something as egregious as this is “good?” For all we know, we could be accepting something as morally right that at one point was considered wrong. The question is: does this matter? Does it give us a moral – not God’s morality, in this case – reason to object against God’s good and bad and create for ourselves what these words mean? I suppose the main problem I’m trying to get at is that the Divine Command Theory provides almost a paradoxical view of good and bad; that if we were to accept God’s good as our good, it is impossible to object without being bad, even if what is being objected really is bad. This is why Antony’s Divine Independence Theory must be correct; morality must be independent from God. Good has to be something that comes from within ourselves. It has to be something that individually we can know and understand, because if not it muddles us what good and bad really are.
I completely agree with you. I argued that same thing, that logically, the DIT must be correct and the most convincing argument. If DCT was true, then God has all the power he can to change what is considered good and the guidelines of morality. This leads to something not truly being moral in its most raw definition. If basing morality on God’s statement, then anything He commands could be moral, even something as awful and horrendous as animal cruelty for example. I think that your reasoning follows through and your argument is easy to follow, as is Antony’s.
I think you bring up good thoughts about how what is “good” changes over time. For instance, slavery was once seen as a “good” thing, and that has since changed. It is something worth thinking about because it is even happening today, with movements such as the gay rights movements and such. But if the DCT were to be true, then there would have to be some way for God to denote these changes in morality, which I don’t think has happened.
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