It is interesting that the Euthyphro dilemma as we know it arises first in Plato and in relation to a pantheon of gods. In that system it is not clear that what the gods demand is consistent across all the gods, all of whom are immortal and powerful in their own way. In that system ones action may have a godly inspiration, but not one which would have made all the gods equally happy. Morality itself seems less monolithic under that system.
It has always seemed to me that morality really is that complex. Each significant person in our life will inspire some actions and make others loathsome to us. The same is true of the communities of which we are a part whether local, regional, virtual or one based on some common cause. The same also applies to the way we conceive our personal identity whether that be as one more participant in the web of life or as a child of God or something else. The potential for conflicting obligations is real.
Monotheism doesn’t directly reflect the dynamism in our moral lives as closely as pantheism. If there is but one god and if this one god knew all and was infinitely powerful one might expect the morally best action in any circumstance would always be known to God. But how do we know that morality isn’t just as intrinsically complex and always context dependent for God? They say we are His image bearers. If so, then perhaps we are not the only one who finds moral questions difficult. Even with perfect knowledge of any action’s outcome, He might still be forced to choose between mutually exclusive good outcomes or the least of a number of poor ones.
Perhaps good and evil only exist because we recognize our inability to always please everyone and that some evils are unavoidable. And if that is true for us, then so might it be for the one whose image we are said to bear. Why is there evil in the world? Because there are sentient beings in it who recognize the consequences of their action. Good and evil aren’t what they are because God ordains it, and neither does he ordain it because good and evil are independent. Good and evil don’t await anybody’s ordination, they simply accompany the actions of sentient beings whether mortal or god.
From this you will know that I have what William James* would call an “easy going” moral mood, and I confess I do. Nor do I regret it and wish to see myself and all others pushed into a more “strenuous” moral mood. Morally good enough is good enough for me. I am a proponent of smelling roses and appreciating everything good in this world and expect nothing better in anything to follow. I hope I can give little enough offense and minimize what evil I may do even though I recognize I cannot avoid it all.
*From wiki on William James’ resolution of the Euthyphro dilemma:
[spoiler]William James, in his essay “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life”, dismisses the first horn of the Euthyphro dilemma and stays clear of the second. He writes: “Our ordinary attitude of regarding ourselves as subject to an overarching system of moral relations, true ‘in themselves,’ is … either an out-and-out superstition, or else it must be treated as a merely provisional abstraction from that real Thinker … to whom the existence of the universe is due.” Moral obligations are created by “personal demands,” whether these demands come from the weakest creatures, from the most insignificant persons, or from God. It follows that “ethics have as genuine a foothold in a universe where the highest consciousness is human, as in a universe where there is a God as well.” However, whether “the purely human system” works “as well as the other is a different question.”
For James, the deepest practical difference in the moral life is between what he calls “the easy-going and the strenuous mood.” In a purely human moral system, it is hard to rise above the easy-going mood, since the thinker’s “various ideals, known to him to be mere preferences of his own, are too nearly of the same denominational value; he can play fast and loose with them at will. This too is why, in a merely human world without a God, the appeal to our moral energy falls short of its maximum stimulating power.” Our attitude is “entirely different” in a world where there are none but “finite demanders” from that in a world where there is also “an infinite demander.” This is because “the stable and systematic moral universe for which the ethical philosopher asks is fully possible only in a world where there is a divine thinker with all-enveloping demands”, for in that case, “actualized in his thought already must be that ethical philosophy which we seek as the pattern which our own must evermore approach.” Even though “exactly what the thought of this infinite thinker may be is hidden from us”, our postulation of him serves “to let loose in us the strenuous mood” and confront us with an [existential] “challenge” in which "our total character and personal genius … are on trial[/spoiler]
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