The Death of God and the Euthyphro Dilemma

Back in August there was an article in The New Yorker by James Wood entitled "Is That All There Is? Secularism and its discontents." It was a review of a recent book called "The Joy of Secularism: 11 Essays for How We Live Now" edited by George Levine.

Many writers have spoken about secularization and the loss of religion as a grim if not catastrophic event. "The fate of our times," writes Max Weber, "is characterised by rationalisation and intellectualisation and, above all, by the 'disenchantment [entzauberung] of the world.'" Nietzsche is even more sobering. For him the death of God is announced by a madman who also sees the dire consequences:

"Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him – you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him."

Levine's collection of essays take a more positive view and argues generally that secularism is a good thing. The essays don't criticize religion but contend that life without God is not so bad. I didn't think that the Wood article contained all that many revelations and I was slightly disappointed. But its discussion of secularism and morality is worth noting.

And this brings us to Euthyphro. Euthyphro is one of Plato's early dialogues. Socrates engages Euthyphro, a man known for claiming to be a religious expert, in a discussion over the definition of piety. In the course of the dialogue, Euthyphro claims that piety is what is pleasing to the gods. At this point, Socrates asks the question: "Is piety loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" Put in more contemporary prose, the question is: is the moral law loved by the gods because it is moral or is it moral simply because it is loved by the gods?

It is this second alternative that leads religious people to say, if there is no God, then everything is permitted – as if it is by God's decree that something is made good or bad. Under this notion, morality just becomes a test of fidelity to God and is essentially arbitrary. However, even in ancient times, people recognized that God's wanting something alone did not make it good. Xenophanes of Colophon saw that the gods were not perfect and, more to the point, were terrible role models, getting away with stuff for which ordinary humans would be punished: "Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the gods all things that are a shame and blameworthy among men, stealing and committing adultery and deceiving each other."

And in the Bible, when God wants to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham appeals to a higher sense of justice: "Far be it from you to do such a thing, to put the righteous to death with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?" Gen. 18.25. Moses later talks God out destroying the Israelites for having worshipped a golden calf, mostly arguing that, if He does this, He'll look bad: "Why should the Egyptians say, 'With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth'?" Moses also reminds God of His promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, suggesting that even God should keep his word. Ex. 32:7 -14.

Can we even trust Jesus? He curses a fig tree and causes it to whither simply because he was hungry and the tree bore no figs. Mark even says that figs were out of season at the time. Matt. 21:18-22; Mark 11:12-14, 19-25. Jesus also quite casually sends unclean spirits into a herd of pigs numbering about two thousand causing a local farmer to lose his entire stock as they all rush into the sea and are drowned. Mark 5:1-17. In the first instance, Jesus seems petty; in the second, inconsiderate.

So, it seems that, even for the religious fellow, the law of God (or religion) must take a back seat. Thomas Aquinas himself says: "It is better to perish in excommunication than to violate one's conscience." Religion never removed the need to judge morality ourselves. So, as Wood rightly recognizes, one thing secularization and the death of God will not do is cast us out into the wilderness of moral uncertainty. We are already there.