Well, hello and welcome to the Speak Life podcast. My name is Thomas Thurrogood, media producer at Speak Life, and today we have another philosophical episode for you. Glenn reflecting on the ancient Euthyphro dilemma. That's a hard word to say, Euthyphro. Euthyphro. I think that's how you say it. This episode will explore what is the Euthyphro dilemma? Why is it still relevant today? Why do atheists need to answer it as well as believers? What is the response of Richard Dawkins to this particular dilemma? And we have a shocking clip from a conversation that Richard Dawkins had with Justin Brierly back in 2008. And finally, how is the dilemma resolved by the Jesus God alone? So we've got a packed episode ahead. I hope you find it interesting. Just to say that the Speak Life podcast is going to be taking a bit of a break over the summer period. Glenn is speaking in Australia at Perth and Brisbane. So do please be praying for him that people would see more of Christ through his speaking. We do have some content that will be going out on the Speak Life YouTube channel over August, though. Episodes of Post-Christianity, which is a podcast that Glenn Scrivener and Andrew Wilson recorded back in 2023 with the Keller Centre for Cultural Apologetics. It was a limited series podcast, Post-Christianity. And those episodes originally went out on the Gospel Coalition YouTube channel, but they have very kindly allowed us to repost them on the Speak Life channel. So if you haven't yet caught those episodes of post-Christianity, they're right up your street as listeners of the Speak Life podcast, Glenn and Andrew, talking about our current cultural moment and uh putting it in historic context. So some really interesting stuff there, drawing on material from both their books, Glenn's book, The Air We Breathe, and Andrew Wilson's book, Remaking the World. So those will be going out two episodes a week on the Speak Life channel. If you prefer to listen to them rather than watch them, then the podcast exists on its own feed. If you just type in post-Christianity question mark to your podcast catcher of choice, it will it will come up and you'll get immediate access to all eight episodes because they first dropped in 2023. So uh that's our recommended viewingslash listening for the August period post-Christianity. And uh we will be back on the Speak Life Podcast feed in September with some very exciting things. So thankful to you all uh for listening to the Speak Life Podcast. I can't believe we've passed 600 episodes and can't wait to continue exploring all of life through the lens of Jesus with you wonderful listeners. That's all from me. I will hand over to Glen and uh have a wonderful August. We will be back soon.
SPEAKER_02This was the moment the mask slipped on the new atheism. 2008, Justin Briley talks to Richard Dawkins and he says this.
SPEAKER_03But ultimately, your belief that rape is wrong is as arbitrary as the fact that we've evolved five fingers rather than six. I mean you could say that. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02You could say that, says Richard Dawkins. Now, what is the context for this wild conversation? How has Justin Briley turned the tables on Richard Dawkins and what does it reveal about the nature of God and ethics? Hi, I'm Glenn from Speak Life. We like to see all things through the lens of Jesus, including the Euthyphro Dilemma. The Euthyphro Dilemma explains this conversation between Justin Briley and Richard Dawkins. It's a philosophical problem dating back two and a half millennia. It was written down by Plato, a dialogue between Socrates and Euthyphro. And in this video, we will look at Euthyphro's dilemma, we will see how the solution to Euthyphro's dilemma is as old as the problem. We'll see how Jesus really solves it, why atheists too must answer the challenge of Euthyphro, and why Richard Dawkins fails so spectacularly. Before we go any further, why don't you give the channel a subscribe so we can see you on the next one? But to explain Euthyphro's dilemma, why don't we go to my debate with Michael Shermer that I recently had on The Unbelievable show? Vince Vitali is setting things up with Michael Shermer, and they're basically laying out what Euthyphro's dilemma really is.
SPEAKER_00And if I'm understanding correctly, you know, God might uh say, don't murder. And, you know, if he if he says that just willy-nilly arbitrarily, uh th then it seems like there's no basis for it. He could have just said something else, but that doesn't seem right because we feel like murder would be wrong no matter what God said. But then if he says it because he has reasons for it, then you know, are you saying, okay, well then he has reasons which are outside of himself, so just give us give us the reasons. Yeah, give us the reasons, skip the middleman.
SPEAKER_02Just give us the reasons for your moral judgment, you can skip the middleman, i.e., skip God. Euthyphro's dilemma is all about do we need God in order to make moral judgments? As Vince Vitale puts it, if God is on the throne saying what is right and wrong, then his choice that murder is wrong is what determines the rightness or the wrongness of murder. God in that sense is privileged, but then the danger is it sounds willy-nilly, it sounds arbitrary. It sounds like murder is only wrong because of the whim of a deity. And maybe tomorrow he says that murder is right, and maybe the next day God says you've got to hop on one foot and sing show tunes for 20 minutes every day, and that's what is moral. If God's choice is privileged, then goodness seems to fade away. And it's all about the arbitrary, capricious choices of God. On the other hand, if all God is doing when he says that murder is wrong is recognizing the true nature of the case, then goodness seems to be calling the shots, and God can do no other but appreciate a goodness that is outside of himself. At which point the atheist Michael Shermer says, let's just skip the middleman. If there are reasons already why murder is wrong, we don't need God. That's a good articulation of the Euthyphro dilemma. Now it's called the Euthyphro dilemma because Socrates was in conversation with Euthyphro. It's the final dialogue of Socrates. He was being charged with impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens. And while he was waiting for his trial, he met another guy called Euthyphro. And Euthyphro, shockingly, was there to bring his own father to court for murder. Euthyphro therefore has a very pronounced sense of piety and what goodness is, and even familial relations are trumped by this thing called piety. Murder is simply wrong, says Euthyphro, and we must be pious even if it means putting our own father on trial. Socrates is interested by that, and he wants to press into Euthyphro's understanding of piety. So he says to Euthyphro, is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods? We're back to this dilemma. Does God call murder wrong because it is wrong? Well, if it is wrong, then we don't need the gods to understand morality. But if we do need the gods to pronounce on morality, then is murder wrong only because of the choice of a god? And especially when you consider the moral character of the Greek gods, who would very commonly be capricious and arbitrary, they'll be deceptive, they will be rapists and murderers, that doesn't seem like a great option. So which is it? Is God on the throne, in which case goodness becomes arbitrary? Or is goodness just such a thing that the gods can do no other than affirm what this goodness is, in which case, why are we bothering with the gods? That's the dilemma, but obviously when you are faced with a dilemma, you always want to ask the question: are these really the only two options available? Like if I said to you, which is the best kind of music, country or Western?
SPEAKER_04What kind of music do you usually have here? Oh, we got both kinds. We got country and western.
SPEAKER_02Country and Western does not exhaust the possibilities of the kinds of music that there are out there. Country or Western, which is it? You must decide. That's not a dilemma, that's a false dilemma. There are more options than country or Western, and there are more options than Socrates gives to Euthyphro. Is it really the case that there are only two options, that either God forces the matter on what is goodness, or goodness forces the matter on who is God? Is this really actually a dilemma that only the choice of God makes for morality, or the existence of morality radically questions God? Why is the goodness of God only really considered to be a matter of his arbitrary choice as opposed to his eternal being? You see, Plato, who is writing down this dialogue between Socrates and Euthyphro, he has a solution to the dilemma. Plato himself refuses the dilemma because for Plato, the good and God are synonymous. Yes, there might be all sorts of squabbling deities like Zeus, but there was the form of the good that existed above the gods, and for all intents and purposes, was God in Plato's system. And certainly for the Neoplatonists, many of whom became Christians, God and goodness are ultimately one. Whatever it is that is the form of the good is God, and God is the form of the good. Which means that God does not affirm something as good simply as a matter of arbitrary choice, but as an expression of his eternal nature. God says that's good, not simply because that thing is good outside of himself, but because he is good. And goodness and God are ultimately one. Now, how satisfying do you find that as an answer? You might think that as a Christian, I really like that answer. To be honest, I think that answer is lacking a lot. And it does seem to come back to a certain arbitrariness. And for Christians, the top of the tree is obviously God's. As Augustine says, God is not only good, but goodness itself. Or Aquinas says, the divine will is not bound by any law outside itself, yet it always wills in accordance with his own nature, which is goodness itself. God does not approve of the good simply because it is good, but because he is good. He is goodness itself, goodness himself. And you might worry that that is arbitrary, but everybody's got something at the top of the tree. And for Christians it is God and not just any God, the triune God. And that's the second thing to say about the apparent arbitrariness of saying that God is goodness. It's not arbitrary for the triune God to be goodness itself, because God is love. Godness and goodness are the same because both are love. Godness is love, a father loving his son in the joy of the spirit. Goodness is love, a life of outpoured blessing for the other. The good life and God's life are the same. Because of the Trinity, godness and goodness are one. Trinitarian theology is really important here because a God who is just by himself, a monad, could only approve of that which was outside of his own nature, and he must via his will either approve or disapprove of that thing. Everything becomes a matter of the will, and in Latin, will is arbiter. That's where we get the word arbitrary from. A unitarian God is arbitrary, and the morality of such a God is a will-based affair. The triune God is different. The Father approves of the Son in the Spirit, not as a matter of mere choice in time, but this is his nature in eternity. Which means the good life is not simply a matter of approbation or disapprobation, it's not simply a matter of the will of the Unitarian God. No. Because of Trinity, God's life is love. Father, Son, and Spirit share a life of liberty, equality, and fraternity and have done before the world began. It's not just something God chooses to approve of. Liberty, equality, fraternity, the life of love is something that God is. 1 John 4 says God is love, and then it goes on to say, those who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. Goodness and godness are ultimately one because both are love. That is, hands down, the most satisfying answer to the question of godness and goodness. You could not have a better answer to that question. But then why did I go to Richard Dawkins? Why am I even talking about an atheist? And that is because the atheist also must answer this question about goodness and where goodness comes from. Do you remember Richard Dawkins talking about moral arbitrariness? Justin Briley was trying to pin Richard Dawkins down to the Euthyphro dilemma. I think he was right to do that. Because Richard Dawkins doesn't believe in God or the gods, but he does believe in a source of life, blind evolutionary forces. And Justin Briley wants to know, is your source of life, Richard Dawkins, telling you what goodness is, or does goodness exist outside of these blind evolutionary forces? And can we have a sense of goodness that is beyond your source of life? Evolution. We'll go back, we'll hear the dialogue, and we'll see how Justin Briley is actually forcing Richard Dawkins to choose one of these horns of the dilemma. Let's have a listen.
SPEAKER_03When you make a value judgment, don't you immediately step yourself outside of this evolutionary process and say there there is the reason this is good is because it's good and you don't have any way to stand on that statement?
SPEAKER_02So, Richard Dawkins, you have a source of life, the evolutionary process. You also have a notion of goodness. Is there a real existence to that goodness? Or is goodness merely what the evolutionary process has determined? Like, what are we gonna do? You've got a source of life, you've got a creator, and we we are all in relationship with this creator called evolution. But is there a thing that's called goodness that is beyond these evolutionary processes? Can you ground that sense of goodness? That's what Justin Briley's trying to ask.
SPEAKER_04My value judgment itself could come from my evolutionary past, and I suppose.
SPEAKER_03So therefore it's it's just as random in a sense as any product of evolution. Well, you could say you could say that.
SPEAKER_02So Justin is taking him down one of the horns of the dilemmas, and he's basically saying, okay, so your creator evolution is what is calling the shots in terms of goodness, and there is no goodness that really exists outside of the evolutionary processes. Your God, evolution, is calling the shots. That's why Justin keeps calling it morally arbitrary. It's it's a very euthyphro kind of a dilemma that actually Justin is forcing on Richard Dawkins, and Richard Dawkins is saying, yeah, no, you could say that, and he is happy to go with that horn of the dilemma. There is not for Richard Dawkins a goodness that exists outside of these evolutionary processes. So Justin Briley is going to press him on the implications of that. Richard Dawkins is going to object that none of this makes God more likely.
SPEAKER_04Uh, but it it doesn't in any case, nothing about it uh makes it more probable that there is anything supernatural.
SPEAKER_02Well, the existence of an objective realm of moral facts and values would make it much more likely that God exists. Actually, Richard Dawkins, but just Justin Bradley just sort of lets that one go through because he is wanting to press Richard Dawkins on the implications of the side of the dilemma that he has chosen. Our morality is arbitrary, it's not arbitrarily chosen by God or the Greek gods, it's arbitrarily chosen by natural selection. And that leads to some very disturbing implications. Here is one of them.
SPEAKER_03Okay, but but ultimately, your belief that rape is wrong is as arbitrary as the fact that we've evolved five fingers rather than six. I I mean you could say that. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02You could say that, says Richard Dawkins. On his system, I would say he must say that. While the rest of the world says, you shouldn't say that, Richard Dawkins. On his system, he must say that, because he's not going to say that there's an abstract goodness outside of the evolutionary process. That would sound far too theistic. So we have evolved to have five singers rather than six. That's an arbitrary kind of a thing to have happened. We've also evolved a sense that rape is wrong, and that is as arbitrary as the fact that we've got five fingers rather than six. There is a Euthyphro dilemma for atheists to answer. Justin Briley forced the Euthyphro dilemma on Richard Dawkins. Richard Dawkins made his choice. Morality does not exist outside of the evolutionary processes. And if Socrates was scared of a capricious and arbitrary deity defining goodness in his day, I think we should be scared by a capricious and arbitrary evolutionary process that is determining for us what is good. And if you don't like that horn of the dilemma, then there must be a goodness that is outside of nature. A goodness that is outside of your creator, your source of life, outside of evolutionary processes. And if that's true, well, Richard Dawkins is wrong. And at least Plato comes back onto the table as an option. But I hope that I've shown that Christianity provides something so much more satisfying than Plato's form of the good. The love that you really do feel is at the top of the hierarchy. That really does belong there. The reason why we think that love is the greatest thing is because God the greatest thing is love. Which means the life of God is the life of love, and the life of goodness is the life of love, and ultimately they are one. Something must be ultimate in your system that with Jesus, your ultimate can be worthy of the name. God is love. Those who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. That'll do for this video. I don't know what you think about the Euthyphro dilemma. Do you think that atheists also have to answer the Euthyphro dilemma? I do, but that might be controversial. We can get into that in the comments. Do you want to discover more about how love is at the very center of reality? Come and do 321. Go to 321course.com and you can see how God is love, how the world has been split from love, and how in love Christ has come to redeem us and bring us back to the love for which we were intended. That's the whole love story at the heart of Christianity. Go now, start an account. It's totally free. We won't spam you, but we love you to encounter the God who is love. We think it's the best news in the world. Why don't you give this video a like, share it around the place, subscribe to the channel, and we'd love to see you on the next one. God bless.