This results in people believing in a certain God and only that God, for the other Gods don’t appeal real to them. The outcome of being loved is caused by someone loving it. If there are multiple Gods, which ones are truly real? “And do you not see what is loved of the Gods is the holy and this is the same as what is dear to them”(20).To Socrates, Gods are useless and only take fame for what good things happen, not the negatives. Primarily, the issue faced by Euthyphro is that certain actions and beliefs are good simply because God favor’s them.
He then leads up to his main objection of this definition by means of stating that even though men and gods love that which they think is noble and good, and hate that which is opposite to those things, not everyone thinks this way about all things (Plato, 7). This being in the nature of things that are considered to be good by a group of people, can be hated by others, and this would also apply to the gods, for not everyone thinks the same. Socrates then uses a good example concerning the gods to better prove his reasons. He states that even though Euthyphro's decision to proceed against his own father may seem agreeable to Zeus, but not to Cronos or Uranus, and that there may be other gods who have these differences of opinions (7). Concerning
Socrates uses a rather elaborate argument to show this definition is also insufficient. If the gods approve of something because it is holy, their approval cannot be what makes it holy, he says. If an act is holy because the gods approve of it, we still do not know what makes it holy or why the gods approve. It seems that any attempt to define holiness by the will or approval of the gods is bound to fail. Even in contemporary society, we tend to associate morality with some kind of divine will, but through the Euthyphro, Socrates seems to suggesting we think along another line altogether.
In the text of The Apology, Socrates outlines his actions in following this oracle. He questioned everyone with a reputation for wisdom—poets, craftsmen, and politicians—and after having a conversation with them, he determined they were not in fact wise at all. He concluded that he was the one with the most wisdom since he recognized that he actually wasn’t wise at all. The second charge of impiety placed against Socrates was that he believed in the supernatural things of
Creon views the gods differently. “Be sure, I would have done this had not I wished first of all to learn from the God the course of action I should follow.” (Sophocles, line 136-138). Creon has faith in the gods and refers to them before making any drastic decision, like when Oedipus begged to be killed when realizing about his major fault. He values their opinions and looks to them for solace. Throughout the play, Oedipus is shown to overreact when faced with opposition or disaster.
‘Is what is pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved?’ In Plato’s Euthyphro dilemma, Plato is asking ‘is x good because God loves it or does God love x because x is good?’ An example of this is murder; is murder wrong because God says it is or is murder wrong because it is wrong morally? If ‘x’ was already good before God commanded it then there would be no purpose to God whereas if God commanded ‘x’ because it’s good, then God would have a purpose as he would have to guide us with what is moral and what isn’t. The view that moral rules are true are good because they were commanded by God is called the divine command theory. ‘The Good consists in always doing what God wills at any particular moment.’ If moral actions are good or bad because they are commanded or forbidden by God, certain things follow such as; if they had not been commanded or forbidden by God then they wouldn’t have been good or bad. Furthermore, if God had said the opposite to what He did say then the things that would have been good is now bad.
|Socrates says, “Come then, let us examine our words. The thing and|Socrates has found a flaw in Euthyphro’s claim that whatever the gods like | |the person that are dear to the gods are holy, and the thing and |must be holy. Simply by stating that sometimes the gods disagree about what | |the person that are hateful to the gods are unholy; and the two |they like, Socrates has logically shown that this can’t be the way to judge
Comparing my religion to a fairy-tale is like insulting my race or intelligence; I am obviously not going to take it very well. I found certain thing about his “documentary” offensive. First of all I do not dislike Bill Maher, so it is only fair that I could have an opinion about his movie. I enjoyed his documentary like movie in which he was set out to question people about their religion. That being said anyone who is religious would feel uncomfortable while watching “Religulous”.
The wicked see punishment as a good thing because they have a chance to be corrected. Boethius finds this difficult, because he doesn’t understand how can God in his omnipotence allow this? Philosophy agrees that this is something that no one will be able
It would appear that Euthyphro might be an authority on piety. If he was to follow it so strictly that he would indict his own father. After the time of Socrates and his unapologetic apology, a different god carved into stone a model for all his subjects to use to live a pious life. It would be called the Ten Commandments. But Socrates would have called it incomplete and insufficient.