Today’s Jesus and Mo, called, “strong,” is a reference to this bit of the hadith:Volume 4, Book 52, Number 261:
Narrated Anas bin Malik:
A group of eight men from the tribe of ‘Ukil came to the Prophet and then they found the climate of Medina unsuitable for them. So, they said, “O Allah’s Apostle! Provide us with some milk.” Allah’s Apostle said, “I recommend that you should join the herd of camels.” So they went and drank the urine and the milk of the camels (as a medicine) till they became healthy and fat. Then they killed the shepherd and drove away the camels, and they became unbelievers after they were Muslims. When the Prophet was informed by a shouter for help, he sent some men in their pursuit, and before the sun rose high, they were brought, and he had their hands and feet cut off. Then he ordered for nails which were heated and passed over their eyes, and whey were left in the Harra (i.e. rocky land in Medina). They asked for water, and nobody provided them with water till they died (Abu Qilaba, a sub-narrator said, “They committed murder and theft and fought against Allah and His Apostle, and spread evil in the land.”)
This is absolutely identical with the Christian practice of ignoring those verses of the Bible (or orders of God) that they don’t like, casting them as metaphors, while taking the stuff they do like as true—the “essence of Christianity.” And it shows, as did Plato in his Euthyphro dialogue, that morality does not derive from god, but from other sources, and can only be supported by religious dicta. I consider that ancient dialogue to remain one of the best contributions of philosophy to practical discourse. Pity religious people pay no attention to it.
Religion is so strange.
I like the one a little further on
Volume 4, Book 52, Number 263:
Narrated Ibn ‘Umar:
“The Prophet burnt the date-palms of Bani An-Nadir.”
How true that is even today…
>Pity religious people pay no attention to it.
Not all of them. Confronted with Euthyphro, Wm Lane Craig chooses ‘neither’. He says God is necessarily good, no matter what he does, because he can only do good.
By human standards, this renders ‘good’ meaningless, but that’s no problem for authoritarians who say Good is simply what is ordered by God. That’s just to say ‘God is God’, but it satisfies them.
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/euthyphro-dilemma
From that site:
(1) God is, by definition, a maximally great being.
(2) This entails His being metaphysically necessary and morally perfect.
How on earth does the second part of proposition 2 follow from proposition 1? Couldn’t a maximally great being be maximally evil and perfectly immoral?
Proposition 1 and the first part of 2 appear to be a very condensed form of the Ontological Argument. Such arguments always seem to me to be just preaching to the choir: convincing to those who already believe, but not to anyone else.
The best refutation of the Ontological argument I have seen (apologies to The Dixie Flatline):
1) Our understanding of a God is a being than which no greater can be conceived.
2) The idea of a God exists in the mind.
3) A being which exists both in the mind and in reality is greater than a being that exists only in the mind.
4) If a God only exists in the mind, then we can conceive of a greater God — that which exists in reality.
5) We cannot be imagining a being that is greater than a God.
6) Therefore, a God exists.
Now take that text and apply the substitutions
s/God/raspberry-flavoured marshmallow asteroid/g
s/being/marshmallow/g
🙂
You say that as if raspberry-flavoured marshmallow asteroids do not exist…
I’m thinking of the film ‘Armageddon’, and Bruce Willis radioing back to Earth:
“Houston, we’ve found something kinda odd here!”
I think the greatest God is a God that does not exist. Because God is usually a terrible person.
I like Aristotle’s idea of god’s activity being endlessly thinking about himself, since he (no pronoun panic) should be thinking of the best things, and there is nothing higher than himself
This is not a “refutation”.
God is defined as the greatest being imaginable. This “being” would be unique.
If you buy Anselm’s contention that it is greater to exist in reality than it is simply existing in the mind, then the greatest being imaginable must exist, because it would not be the greatest being imaginable. This would be a unique property, what is often called necessary existence, belonging only to the Being matching the unique description.
But the greatest marshmellow asteroid is not the greatest being imaginable (although pretty great), so whether it exists or not, a greater being would be imaginable, i.e. God, ergo nothing necessitates that it exist beyond the mind.
Of course, Godel came up with an interesting version of the ontological argument using modal logic.
And here is the mandatory Spiegel article on how computers “proved” it:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/scientists-use-computer-to-mathematically-prove-goedel-god-theorem-a-928668.html
Of course we know that there can be no satisfactory proof of God, because any logically valid argument rests upon assumptions, and so the assumptions can always be rejected. If necessary existence is impossible, then a greatest being is not imaginable, ergo no God.
This is why in the Augustinian tradition, the slogan is “faith seeking understanding”, and the point of natural theology is not to provide a logical justification for faith, but to provide a conceptual exploration of the meaning of faith. To the extent faith has a “justification” that justification would be found existentially, in wrestling with the trials and tribulations of life, like Augustine in the Confessions or Solzhenitsyn in his Gulag.
“But the greatest marshmellow asteroid is not the greatest being imaginable”
If you care to look at my original post again, you will see that the second substitution is
s/being/marshmallow/g
(I expressed the substitutions in the form of ‘sed’ commands to make it easy to apply them to the text of the “argument”).
So I am not saying that an asteroid is a being.
—-
The point of the refutation is to show that the “argument” allows *anything* to be proved to exist, simply by substituting in the appropriate terms – and so, by reductio ad absurdum, that it is the argument itself that is invalid. One can not simply define, or imagine, something into existence; otherwise I could imagine myself into being the richest man in the world (*).
As for the computer “proof”, that automated checking of Godel’s argument simply shows that he made no mathematical errors in that argument – not that the argument is itself a correct description of reality. Also, the proof rests on a number of axioms, none of which have formally been proved true, as well as on an informal definition of “positive”.
(*) Let’s have a go at that:
1) My understanding of the richest man in the world is a man whom which no-one richer in the world can be conceived (after all, there is only a finite amount of wealth in the world).
2) The idea of myself as the richest man in the world exists in my mind.
3) A richest man who exists both in my mind and in reality is richer than a richest man who exists only in my mind (since life itself is a form of riches).
4) If the richest man in the world only exists in my mind, then I can conceive of a richer man — he who exists in reality.
5) I cannot be imagining a rich man who is richer than the richest man in the world.
6) Therefore, I am the richest man in the world.
Simples! Bill Gates, move over!
I’ve found that if you keep pressing the Euthyphro dilemma on most Protestant apologists eventually it is virtually guaranteed they will end up hanging by their fingernails for dear life to the Ontological Argument. They try to bob and weave around the arbitrariness problem and the only “solution”
is to argue God is necessarily good (part of the Ontological argument).
Of course the arbitrariness problem remains. Is God
“Necessarily” of X character because it is good, or
or is X good because it is God’s nature?”
In the first case it means morality is still a standard outside
of God that his character must meet to be “good.”
In the second case “good” is “whatever God happens
to be.” No “reason” makes a command good, hence they
are still in that sense arbitrary. And “good” tells you
nothing about Gods character – he could love injustice,
suffering and lies – so there is no criteria on which to
trust even revelation – which could be lies, or all reversed
tomorrow.
Taking the authoritarian route is taking one hand of the dilemma, not “neither”. (Of course, I don’t expect WLC to be honest here – or anywhere.)
It’s always struck me that the “God’s nature is good” answer is weak because it removes the possibility of conscious reasoning from the supposed deity.
Imagine God debating with himself over two actions, A or B (where we mere mortals would consider A to be good and B to be evil). Given that he is omnipotent, there is nothing to stop him choosing either A or B. How does he decide which action to take? Whether he chooses A or B, that action is then by definition part of his nature, as that is how he has acted.
If he chooses A because it is good, well, that’s back to one horn of Euthyphro again; if he chooses A arbitrarily, for no reason – back to the other horn; if he acts without choosing, simply according to his nature, then he is an automaton.
Craig would carry more weight if he didn’t subscribe to “divine command” theory thus justifying the genocides of the Old Testament.
Aquinas and William James have also wrestled with Euthyphro.
James in essence argues that religious morality has more motivation/inspiration behind it than secular morality in his essay “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life”.
Since James has a more palatable actual system of ethics that WLCraig, I am willing to take him more seriously.
Aquinas discusses Euthyphro in his Commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics.
Well parts of the Old Testament say god is responsible for evil as well as good. Qur’an is the same. Go figure
I’ve always found the Euthyphro argument difficult to understand. Reading in Wikipedia, it seems Socrates argument was somewhat opaque because he lacked more modern concepts and language to express his idea. The idea of genus and species in logic, for example. His examples use examples when general concepts would be more appropriate.
Professor Addresses Misconceptions of Islam
“Islam comes from the Arabic word ‘aslama.’ It means being at peace with oneself,” she said. “It does not come from the root ‘sallama,’ meaning submission.”
Leaderboard 1
Barazangi also highlighted the differences between Shari’ah and shari’a law…
Tell it to the dictionaries.
Ive read that several places about Islam meaning “submission” as in submission to god’s will.
Speaking of god’s zealous nature
and what about
A blind man had a slave-mother who used to abuse the Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) and disparage him. He forbade her but she did not stop. He rebuked her but she did not give up her habit. One night she began to slander the Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) and abuse him. So he took a dagger, placed it on her belly, pressed it, and killed her. A child who came between her legs was smeared with the blood that was there. When the morning came, the Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) was informed about it .……..
Thereupon the Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) said: Oh be witness, no retaliation is payable for her blood.
(this means there is no penalty)
Prescribed Punishments (Kitab Al-Hudud)
Sunan Abu-Dawud Book 38, Number 4348:
Narrated Abdullah Ibn Abbas:
this used to be in a set of salafist writings and hadiths on a site run off a University of Southern California (usc.edu)stem – the program has long since left
Reblogged this on Atheos.
Did Plato really show that? My reading is that he raised problems with the idea, but some of them depended on the premise that there were multiple gods.
It’s a dilemma. If you insist that morality comes from God, then it is arbitrary. Take your pick.
Well, yes, it’s arbitrary as far as the universe is concerned.
But your comment, I think, supports my point. Euthyphro didn’t show that morality doesn’t derive from god, it just shows you some uncomfortable truths you have to accept if you do believe that.
These unconfortable truths include the result that *ethics is arbitrary*, which is to say that ethics is not ethics at all.
Cannot think where else dictators get their inspiration but from g*ds of one sort or the other. If the morality shoe fits – wear it.
This is an accurate description of the practice of some modern Muslim apologists who pick and choose in the Hadith whatever falls in line with their values. But this is not what the traditionists do. There is a science of the hadith. Ahadith are graded as Sahih (sound), Hasan (fair) and Da’if (weak) according to their Isnad (the chain of narrators) among other things. And this gruesome hadith meets all the conditions of being Sahih (sound) unfortunately.
In fact, a cursory look tells me that it may even be Mutawatir – which basically means its authority is as definitive (Qati al thaboot) as the Quran itself. But I need to research this further.
I wouldn’t mind if there were an universal Muslim consensus that the violents parts of the Hadiths and the Koran are weak and should be disregarded. This would reduce the entire Sunna to a softcover pocket edition and would bring much needed peace in the world. Unfortunately, it is just Muslim apologists that declare such verses “weak”, based on historical circumstances etc. and tell us that citing these verses is more informative of the person citing them than of the source book; at the same time, Islamists, with much more justification, regard these verses as “strong” and act based on them.
True. In fact, there are simply too many ahadith that recommend Taqteel (i.e. killing someone in a cruel, grisly and theatrical way) as a punishment for causing “disorder (Fasad) on Allah’s land”. The recommended punishment is not simply Qatl (murder) but Taqteel (killing in an exaggerated way). And there are just too many ahadith that prescribe this.
I’ve had discussions similar to this with Christians before (talking about the horrible things God does in the Bible).
The main answer I got was that everything God does or allows to happen is good, but we can’t see its goodness because we are not omniscient.
Since God is omniscient he knows that suffering is necessary to achieve the greater good.
Therefore child rape by priests for instance still shows that God is good because those rapes are necessary in gods eyes to achieve some greater goal.
(Yes,I am sickened even writing this).
They can’t explain why it is that humans have decreased suffering recently, like with vaccines for instance. Usually the answer is that God had to allow the suffering of humans and other animals so that we could live today.
That of course means that God isn’t omnipotent, but somehow that doesn’t seem to bother those religious folks.
That is an interesting interpretation of the Euthyphro, but to be strictly literal, the question presented was whether the Good was good because it was enjoined by the gods, or whether because the good was good it was enjoined by the gods.
The Greek gods themselves emerged from the primal chaos, and so would not be truly transcendent like the form of the Good. Obviously, in Classical Theism, God was the transcendental, simple in the sense that “Goodness = Beauty = Truth = Being”, Platonism for the masses if you will. [Because this is a stipulative definition made by Classical Theists, while its coherence can be questioned, it can’t be false.]
It does pain me to read atheists misreading the Euthyphro, which argues for a transcendental notion of the Good, as some kind of argument against Classical Theism, which identifies God with the Good, ergo, if you accept Plato’s transcendental conception of the Good, you are 9/10th of the way to Classical Theism, and you see the silliness (like Plato) of claims of the ultimacy of polytheism.
Of course, being good positivists, and rejecting transcendentalism, we know that the law is just because it is passed by a duly constituted parliament that possesses apparent legitimacy. Likewise, a custom is moral because it is promulgated by some person or body that possesses apparent moral authority. But where does this legitimacy or authority or charism come from? We must reject this mysticism, in favor of the principle that only might can make right.
As you can see, the positive law trumps the good, because the law is not only by definition just, it is de facto backed by might. Claims of morality must fail in the face of the machine gun and the concentration camp.
As a corollary, the one who defines the positive law and directs might defines the law and the good and even reality itself, as we can see from Stalin’s Five Year Plan, where he asked for the impossible, and his subordinates reported achieving the impossible. In a world without God, it falls upon man to become a God in his stead.
The Euthyphro is not being misread. It concerns the nature
of morality if morality were to derive from a God. (Or Gods).
Every version of Christianity insists “The Euthyphro doesn’t apply
to the God of my theology” but it always turns out it does, and it
chases them all the way down.
Here is a quote from Wikipedia on the Transcendentals:
St. Thomas Aquinas posited five transcendentals: res, unum, aliquid, bonum, verum; or “thing”, “one”, “something”, “good”, and “true”.[3] St. Thomas derives the five explicitly as transcendentals,[4] though in some cases he follows the typical list of the transcendentals consisting of the One, the Good, and the True.
The transcendentals are ontologically one and thus they are convertible: e.g., where there is truth, there is beauty and goodness also.
In Christian theology the transcendentals are treated in relation to Theology Proper, the doctrine of God. The transcendentals, according to Christian doctrine, can be described as the ultimate desires of man. Man ultimately strives for perfection, which takes form through the desire for perfect attainment of the transcendentals. The Catholic Church teaches that God is Himself Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.[5]
Since this definition of God is a definition, we can’t attack the definition as false, we can either deny the existence of the transcendentals (a right independent of might) or we can attack the coherence of the traditional notion of God. But insofar as the Euthyphro postulates the existence of a transcendental good, beyond a contingent Greek god (emerging from chaos as part of the cosmos), it is, as I suggest, 9/10th of the way to Classical Theism.
KD,
Not sure what you are getting at. Though the Euthyphro arose in the
context of questioning a type of Divine Command Theory, many answers tended to appeal to God’s inherent nature, which just pushes a form of Euthyphro question on to God’s nauture, so whatever account a Christian has of God’s nature, a Euthyphro question
arises and one horn or other will have to be taken.
Aquinas and later classicist tend to fall into the first horn – that in terms of God’s commands being moral, God would be restricted essentially by reason – that there are actions that are “good” in light of the types of beings we are and God couldn’t order otherwise.
So we can appeal to the type of beings we are to derive reasons for good actions, without appeal to God.
But of course Christians aren’t really comfortable with that, so teven those who accept that actions a necessarily moral based on the reasons they are moral still try to attempt to fit God in there making Him necessary – and none work that I’ve seen, including Thomism.