In Plato’s dialogue, Eutyphro, Socrates asks the crucial question: what is the relationship between divinity and morality? As Socrates puts it, either the good is independent of God’s will or the good is defined by God’s will.
This has become known as Eutyphro's Dilemma.

The two horns are either that God does (or Gods do) good, in which case goodness is a charachteristic separate from God and is something greater than God that It cannot control.
If you choose the other way, that God determines what is good or not and goodness becomes an arbitrary and confusing - and often contradictory - set of rules.
In the first case, then we don’t need God in order to be moral (we might need Him for something else, but not for ethics). In the second case, then morality becomes arbitrary, which is not what theists maintain.

Divine Commadn Theory hold God’s will to be the foundation of ethics. According to divine command theory, things are morally good or bad, or morally obligatory, permissible, or prohibited, solely because of God’s will or  commands.

Euthyphro & Divine Command Theory (DCT): Euthyphro’s Dilemma provides the pious with a choice of mutually exclusive options surrounding what makes an action pious (or moral). The essential problem is that either there is an external justification of morality, or the will of the gods or God are capricious, erratic, or unreliable for morality.

The choice is either that: an act is moral because God/gods (for sake of brevity “God”) wills it, or God wills it because it is moral. Given the first choice, the next question is why God wills it so. The explanation for why God would approve of it is an external justification for its morality independent of the fact that God likes it. If there is no explanation other than God’s will, his will is whimsical and unjustified.

If you chose the latter option, then God becomes a moral agent like us who calls certain things moral because of an independent moral system. If God is not necessary DCT is false. If God wills it because it is moral then it being moral explains why God wills it. Again, if morality is not dependent on God we reject DCT because we have rejected the dependency thesis – that God’s will is the source for morality.

Korith,
I'm sorry, that really didn't have much to do at all with the topic other than the fact that it was, in general, about morality. It was simply an essay copied from a website not targeted to the question posed. Your own ruminations on the source of morals would, however, be appreciated.

But god told Samson to kill all the Philistines, as a sacrifice...that did not seem pretty "good" to me. It seems that god is twisted, evil, and vile, if he orders the senseless execution off the young and the old, the meek and the bold, the lowly farmer and the proud king.

My head is spinning...interesting stuff, guys. But I feel too incompetent to have an opinion...or to even be reading these posts.

Good and Evil

To know what is good or bad, we need to know the purpose for each object. The purpose of the radio for example is to give music. If it does, then it is good. If it doesn't, then it is bad.
The purpose of life is to be good and happy. If this were not the case, then we would not try to be good and happy. We would not do such a thing if there were no such thing as Perfect Goodness and Love.

As I have mentioned, there is no such thing as fraction if there were no whole. We are all predestined to be with Who is Perfect Love, Truth, and Life, meaning to say that we ought to be with Him.

Good therefore is a conformity of which is Perfect. If I said 1+1=2, or 1 yard equals 3 feet, it is because I am affirming that there is a standard to which I must conform. Anything moral or good is a conformity of the Law. Anything that is not moral or bad is not a conformity of the Law. Just as a pen is good if it writes, and it would be a bad pen if it doesn't. It is because a pen is meant to write.

How do we know?

To have faith, we must have reason. To have faith is to follow what is Perfect. By reason, we get to know what is Good and what is not. We have reason because we have a conscience. Just as Fulton Sheen once wrote,

"The practical reason that enables a human being to fit particular cases under the general principles touching his final destiny is conscience."

We should then know how conscience works. Fulton Sheen compared the conscience to the U.S. government. Conscience, like the government, is legislative, executive, and judicial. It is legislative because there is an interior voice that gives us a sense of responsibility that we ought to do certain things. It tells us what is good and bad. It is basically the Law that God scripted in our minds.

Conscience is also executive in a sense that it witnesses the fidelity of our actions to the Law. As Sheen has said,

"...it tells us the value of our actions; tells us if we were total masters of ourselves; whether our consequences were foreseen or unforeseen; shows us, as in a mirror, the footsteps of all our actions; points its fingers at the vestiges of our decisions; comes to us as a true witness and says: 'I was there; I saw you do it. You had such an intention' -- it summons me who know myself."

It is also judicial in a sense that it judges me accordingly. It tells me what I did right and what I did wrong. This is why we have a sense of guilt if we do something wrong.

Why is there evil?

When God made the world, He gave man free will. Our conscience directs us to conform to the Law. We however, have the free will to either obey it or not. Once we disobey the Law over and over, we become tired and we ignore the guilt. This is why we would hear the argument of "no moral absolutes." These people believe that right and wrong is a conformity to a person's feelings instead. Let us examine why they say this.

As I have written before, people ask "why be moral?" because they cannot keep up with the Law. So instead of adjusting themselves to the Law, they adjust the Law. For example, a person would say, "I don't have to study the multiplication table because I don't feel like it." They would not feel this if they can do what they ought to do.

All they are doing is picking and choosing from the objective standard what they want to keep. There can only be morality and ethics when there are ones who cannot keep it. The reason why there is bravery is because there are cowards. Sacrifice is possible when there is such a thing as selfishness.

I would love to hear the reason why skeptics "feel" what is right because this is an excuse for not being able to follow the Law. I have not heard a good reason why people believe in subjective standards. For example: the purpose of food is to fill one's body so he won't be hungry. If a person says an apple pie is not good because it "tastes bad," is it bad? Well, an apple pie is still food and it makes a person full.

The subjective standard therefore is derived from the objective standard. Anything beyond the Law is wrong and anything less is wrong. Just as less food would make a person still be hungry, and too much food would make the person sick. Just as less rain would not help the crops, and too much rain will destroy the crops as well. Everything needs to be perfect just as He is Perfect (Matt 5:48).

God is good

As we have discussed, God is perfect goodness. One might ask, "Why did God make this world?" It is because God, who is perfect goodness, wanted to bring forth His goodness. Just as the sun is good and gives off its light and heat. In Genesis, we read that when God was making the Earth, He "saw how good it was." It is not because He felt goodness, but because he brought forth part of Himself, which is goodness. It is something of the object which makes it good, not just the feeling.

While God was making the Earth, He also made each object very distinct from one another. For example, a tree is a tree because it is different from a monkey. The idea of a tree is true if it conforms to the material thing before me that my senses represents to be a tree. A tree is different because of its internal participation or reflection of the Archetypal Idea that makes it a tree. What makes a painting different from the others is the idea behind who made it.

We see that not every created thing reveals the depth and variety of His wisdom, but what one cannot reveal, the other does. Just as one man cannot sing a bass and a tenor at the same time, but a whole choir can make a harmony and make one great music. As we see the harmony of each created being, we see more of the fullness of God. We don't invent, but we discover. As Fulton Sheen said,

"Every material thing in the universe is made up of matter and form. Matter makes it individual; the form, which is the architect within, is the reflection of the divine idea."

Then we see that God also made something in His image. This is what we call man. He made man so that man could love God. How can man love God? Simply by giving him free will. One cannot say that he loves another if he cannot choose to love him. He wanted man to love Him with his whole will and above all things. And to do this, God made the forbidden tree. We all know if man ate the forbidden fruit or not. And we know he did. Everything man has done, we did. We always have the choice to eat the fruit or not and when we see this tree, we know that this is a symbol of the moral limit God made to prove our obedience and love.

God who is still Perfect Goodness, like the first creation, cannot keep His goodness. He cannot see man eat the fruit over and over. He cannot watch man be tested alone. He wanted to bring forth Perfect Goodness Himself to help man overcome the temptation. To do this, He would have to kill the forbidden tree. And so, He gave the world His only begotten Son, One who would die upon a tree to kill the tree. The tree is gone, but the fruits of the tree still exist.

We know for sure that there is a supreme Goodness that has overcome this tree and will help us to crush the fruit.

Apolonio