Philosophers apply life support.
Matt adds: I tend to think that many of the new secularists are simply being intellectually dishonest, so I'm not sure about Craig's discussion of postmodernism in this article. But this part certainly deserves a quote:
Properly understanding our culture is important because the gospel is never heard in isolation. It is always heard against the background of the current cultural milieu. A person raised in a cultural milieu in which Christianity is still seen as an intellectually viable option will display an openness to the gospel. But you may as well tell the secularist to believe in fairies or leprechauns as in Jesus Christ!
Christians who depreciate natural theology because "no one comes to faith through intellectual arguments" are therefore tragically shortsighted.
10 comments:
I'm shocked that you gentlemen could endorse an article written by a man who so grievously misunderstands the Euthyphro problem (page 3).
Welcome to the internet.
What's the misunderstanding?
Just saying that "the nature of God is good" dodges the question. What MAKES God good? If you claim that God is good because he is God and good is good because God is it is a tautology of the worst variety. Where does the good come from? Does God make decide it arbitrarily (the author seems to imply that he does not) or is it independent? The article claims that it isn't independent because it is merged with his nature, but that doesn't actually make sense. I am Adam, but Adam is a characteristic of me. If good is a quality (and you'd better hope that it is), it must be a quality for God, too. In which case, where does it come from?
It seems that your reasoning could be applied simply to the Form of the Good without any reference to God. What MAKES the Good good? If it is good because it is good, this is a tautology of the worst variety. For that matter, the same could be applied to any quality. What MAKES Red red? If it is red because it is red . . . etc.
Perhaps it is misleading to speak of good as a "quality" of God. It is at the core of who He is.
That said, there have been Christian philosophers who agree with you. Some of them chuck Craig's qualms about the arbitrary nature of the good and just embrace it. I think Ockham and Descartes may be among these. Others, I believe, have said there is a Good independent of God, although I can't recall which thinkers have done this. I however think that Craig's position is a plausible option.
Precisely. It is also the case that there is no good. Nor is there red, really. These are just terms that we apply to various collections of actions or sensations. We disagree on them, too. What I say is red you might say is fuschia, and what you say is good I might say is pathetic. You know this as well as I do.
You're talking as if the Euthyphro problem is somehow resolved within the dialogue. It isn't. We never get an answer. And it's fine to say that God is omnipotent/omnibelevolent/etc., but please please PLEASE don't try to bill this as a "logical argument" the way Craig does.
If logical arguments really leave me without red or the good, then I want no part in them. Oh why doesn't the nihilist abyss disturb you?
For one thing, tautologies are by definition true. I'm not sure how you get from "God is good" or "Good is good" to "there is no good."
On another note, to what collection of sensations do we apply the term "red"? --"Red ones."
Yes, tautologies are true, but my point is that they don't make logical explanations. If I ask you, "what is a bunny?" and you say, "that which is fluffy," and then I ask, "what is fluffy?" and you say "a bunny," this is a tautology, and it is indeed true, but it doesn't actually explain anything. I'm not really saying that there is no god, I'm saying that in order for you to say there's a good, or a red, it has to come from somewhere, and you (or, more specifically, Craig) have failed to explain where that is, except with tautologies.
Adam, a little charity would go a long way in helping you to understand the argument here.
The follow-up question to the answer "that which is fluffy" is not "What is fluffy?," but "What does it mean to be fluffy?" If the answer to this question were "To be a bunny," then, yes, you would have a problem, but the answer is more likely to be a description of the state of fluffiness involving softness, lightness, density, etc.
Similarly, if you ask a Christian "What is good?," they are unlikely to respond "God!"--but then again, I would say that a Christian would have been unlikely to answer the initial question "Who (or what, if you must) is God?" with "good." More likely answers are "the Creator of the Universe," "the Savior of Mankind," "the Almighty," etc. And the follow-ups to these questions all produce meaningful descriptions of what it means to create, save, be all-powerful, etc.
Yes, in response to "Who is the Creator of the Universe?" you will get the answer "God," creating, according to you, a hopeless tautology, but that's because of a problem with the question, not the answer* (which is the whole point I'm trying to make here: you don't get points just for asking questions, you have to ask the right ones).
The Christian answer that God wills the good freely because he is good does, as you protest, evade the Euthyphro argument, at least in the sense that you would like it to be addressed, but part of the Christian response here is that the question is nonsensical. This shouldn't be a hard concept for you to understand (you've stood for office in the Union, so I know you're familiar with dichotomies that allow you only false options or nonsensical choices), but consider the standard "Have you stopped beating your wife?" If you insist that I must answer either "Yes, I have stopped beating my wife" or "No, I have not stopped beating my wife" then you have already ruled out a priori either the possibility that I never started beating my wife or that I never had a wife to begin with. And just as anyone with some real world experience will recognize that the two options A (I have stopped beating my wife) and B (I have not stopped beating my wife) cannot possibly be expected to cover the cases of all men, the Christian recognizes a flaw in the dichotomy posed by the Euthyphro dilemma, which comes from its initial assumption that God and the good can be meaningful separated and talked about sensibly independently of each other.
* Compare: "Who is George W. Bush?" "The President of the United States." "Who is the President of the United States?" "George W. Bush." This exchange is just as hopelessly tautological and may not explain anything, but it doesn't mean that an actual explanation isn't possible, only that the questioner hasn't found a way to elicit the information he needs.
I used the bunny example because that's what it seemed that Craig was doing in his article. My relevant complaint isn't even that he sees God as inseperable from the good, it's that he sees that as a logical way out of the Euthyphro question. I really don't think Euthyphro IS a false dichotomy, and neither did Plato, so I'm miffed that this fellow thinks he can get around it by simply claiming that "well, God's just good in nature" and moving on.
I think we've just about exhausted this, unless somebody wants to defend what Craig is specifically saying.
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