โ Scribed by Michael Losonsky
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
The claim that there are actions that are morally right only because God loves, wants or commands us to do those actions has been with us at least since Plato recorded Euthyphro's encounter with Socrates in the anteroom to the magistrate's offices. Although Socrates' reductio of this claim as presented by Euthyphro is successful, Euthyphro could have avoided it by merely being a little less obtuse? Ever since then more acute Euthyphros have attempted to defend some form of that claim which Socrates attacked. One of the most recent defenses argues that an action could be morally right only because God wants us to do it for the following reason: God owns us and the universe and that obligates us to obey God. We incur certain obligations to God because God is an immense proprietor? I want to examine this claim.
The claim that is to be examined is that one ought to do some action A only because God wants us to do A and God owns us and the universe. It should be noticed that the claim is a weak one. The stronger claim, namely, one ought to do any action A only because God wants us to do A and God owns us and the universe, is not being examined. This stronger claim immediately faces numerous difficulties, the most obvious one being that for most, if not all, obligatory actions one could cite reasons that are independent of God's wants why that action is obligatory. After all, atheists can also believe they have obligations for which they can give reasons that seem to sufficiently justify those apparent obligations. S. Marc Cohen, "Socrates on the Definition of Piety: Euthyphro IOA-11B," G. Vlastos (ed.) The Philosophy of Socrates, (New York, 1971), pp. 158-76. Baruch A. Brody, "Morality and Religion Reconsidered," Brody (ed.) Readings in the Philosophy of Religion, (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1974), pp. 592-603.
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