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    If God's essential nature constitutes goodness, we must a... — Carmelics
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    Challenges→The Euthyphro dilemma does not defeat Adams' Divine Command Theory

    If God's essential nature constitutes goodness, we must ask whether God's nature is good because it instantiates goodness, or whether goodness just is whatever God's nature happens to be.

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    1 reason for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Goodness cannot be independent of God without implying an external standard that constrains or judges God's nature.
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    • 2.If God is the ultimate reality, goodness as a separate metaphysical entity would be equally ultimate, creating uncomfortable dualism.
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    • 3.God's necessary existence and aseity (self-sufficiency) are better preserved if goodness is constitutive of His nature rather than external.
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    Reasons Against

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    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.If goodness just IS God's nature, the claim 'God is good' becomes tautological and conveys no meaningful information about God.
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    • 2.This view makes morality arbitrary: we cannot coherently say God could have been cruel and it would still be good if that were His nature.
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    • 3.Identifying goodness with God's contingent choices undermines the objectivity needed for moral realism and divine moral perfection.
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    Key Terms

    Essential nature(Aristotelian essentialism)
    What a subject fundamentally is, as opposed to its accidental properties; e.g., Socrates being a human being rather than being pale or musical
    Euthyphro Dilemma(Originally posed by Socrates in Plato's Euthyphro regarding piety; applied here to the grounding of moral knowledge in divine will)
    The dilemma of whether something is morally good because God wills/loves/commands it, or whether God wills/loves/commands it because it is morally good
    goodness(Russell's 1897 definition, where 'we' may refer to the community at large or to the speaker)
    That which we desire to desire
    instantiates(as used in metaphysics)
    To instantiate means to be a specific example or instance of something more general. For example, a red apple instantiates the property 'redness.'

    Connections

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    All sources support it1 linkedDivine Attributes1 linked

    Related

    God's necessary existence and aseity (self-sufficiency) are better preserved if ...Goodness cannot be independent of God without implying an external standard that...Identifying goodness with God's contingent choices undermines the objectivity ne...If God is the ultimate reality, goodness as a separate metaphysical entity would...
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    If goodness just IS God's nature, the claim 'God is good' becomes tautological a...The Euthyphro dilemma does not defeat Adams' Divine Command Theory

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    2 (1 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit
    This view makes morality arbitrary: we cannot coherently say God could have been...