15. The ancient problem of morality solved: Euthyphro's dilemma
There is a dilemma in philosophy about morality coming from God known as Euthyphro's dilemma in which the philosopher Socrates asks if the good is good because God commands it or if the good was good regardless of the command of God? Now these two possible horns of this dilemma (as if you are trying to grab a bull by the horns) throw back more problems: First horn: that rightness is grounded in God's commands (divine command theory). The supposed problem here is that by accepting this horn, then you have abandoned the notion that morality is based on reasons. This means that morality must issue purely from God's whims, and they have to be whimsical. (If God has reason(s) determining his dictates, then it's those reasons that actually ground morality.)–This wouldn't say much about God: what kind of God determines something as important as rightness on the basis of whims?–This also wouldn't say much about our moral code: we would only have the rules we do because ...