How To Be An Agnostic
young man who feels his father must be brought to justice to
cleanse what he considers to be a stain on his family. And this
is what interests Socrates. Socrates thinks that for Euthyphro to
pursue such a headline-grabbing case, he must be very sure that
the moral benefi t he would gain from the prosecution would
not be outweighed by the offence of dishonouring his father.
In short, Euthyphro is acting dogmatically – as if he has very
certain knowledge of what it means to be pious.
Euthyphro argues that he is right to prosecute his father
because he believes that the gods denounce murderous acts.
This is what makes the crime so bad. Socrates is fascinated by
this assumption. In it, he sees a more general thesis: what is
good is what the gods love. And, conversely, what is wrong is
what the gods hate. Moreover, thinks Socrates, this thesis raises
a wider question still. Is what is good loved by the gods because
it is good, or is it good because it is loved by the gods?
Euthyphro is slightly confused by this point. So Socrates helps
him out. Consider, he says, whether saying something is good is
like saying something is seen. Something that is seen depends
on someone seeing it. So is something being good dependent
upon someone, like a god, saying it is good? Euthyphro thinks
this cannot be right, since the good is good because it is good,
not because of any feelings someone, even a god, might have
for it. Socrates tends to agree.
The reason this debate is remembered is that many modern
philosophers have taken it as profoundly undermining of theistic
belief. It suggests that what is good is prior to anything a deity
may say about it, which not only implies that the deity is subject
to something over which it has no options, but that morally
speaking we do not need theism to tell us what is good. The stan-
dard, theistic reply to this conclusion is that God is goodness
itself. The atheist’s argument is fl awed, theists say, because it sug-
gests that there is some kind of separation between the virtue and
the divinity which in the case of God there is not. But, replies
the atheist, you cannot escape the fact that you say God is good
because God has the properties of goodness. In which case, you