Today I wish to answer an old problem, the Euthyphro Dilemma. The dilemma boils down to the question, "Is it morally good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is morally good?"
Now, the question itself is interesting, but the fact that it is framed as a dilemma and sometimes used as a "proof" of the nonexistence of God is... ridiculous. The fact is that whether God does what He does because it is good, or good is defined by what God says, either way one has not developed a contradiction to the idea of God. Just because you don't know which of the options is right doesn't mean that He isn't there.
Now, returning to the question itself, LDS Theology on the point seems quite clear: God commands it because it is morally good. LDS Theology considers there to be moral truth independent of any being, and God is in complete correspondence with this moral truth. He is perfect, and statements such as "God would cease to be God" give us a pretty clear sense that morality is independent of Him, that His perfection is according to external principles by which He may be evaluated, but always passes perfectly. Now, I used the fact that God's morality provides an objectively preferred morality as evidence for Moral Realism, but the argument is not weakened by supposing that God Himself is subject to morality, as the idea of God's activity being evaluated according to external principles is itself a manifestation of a moral reality. Furthermore, the idea of God's morality being a way to learn of moral reality is not weakened, as God is Himself perfect, so that it is a matter not of defining moral reality from God's commandments, but noting perfect correspondence with morality so that we may still trust His commands to give us a perfect sense of moral reality.
Title: Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith
No comments:
Post a Comment