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Some two and a half thousand years ago, a young man called Euthyphro was on his way to the law courts, convinced in his own mind that justice and the gods were on his side. On his way there, he fell into conversation with Socrates, who pressed on him the question that to this day bears the young man's name: the Euthyphro Dilemma. Essentially, the question Socrates posed was this: Is something good because God wills it or does God will it because it is good? This question poses a dilemma for those who believe in a God of the sort Jews, Christians, and Muslims worship (theists) as - at least initially - there seems to be no way of answering it that enables them to say everything that they characteristically wish to say about their God.
If theists say that God wills things because they are good, they appear to be saying that moral values are independent of God's will. But this seems to be to posit a standard of value prior to God's actions, one which may thus seem to threaten God's sovereignty, freedom and omnipotence. Don't these moral truths restrict God's choices? Isn't He powerful enough to change them? So saying that things are good independently of God's will seems to be not without difficulties for the theist. What about saying that things are good because God wills them?
If theists say that things are good because God wills them, they are saying that He creates moral values - perhaps by means of a command, as an absolute monarch might make laws. But this seems to make morality arbitrary and our knowledge of it extremely difficult. If the moral values that hold sway in our universe do so as a result of God's entirely unconstrained will, then it seems that God could not have had any reason for exercising that will one way rather than another. It seems then that on this model we should say that had God's whim been different, torture - for example - might well have been morally good. If this did indeed follow from the model, it would be very counterintuitive indeed; surely torturing people would be bad whatever anyone, even...