I don't understand the point of Euthyphro

that basing morality on religion is ilogical. it isn't as useful now because abrahamic religions generally define god partially by what is good and the greek gods we're more humanlike, with flaws and individuality from each other. if you have gods that were created after everything started, you run into the paradox, but if God is eternal you can both bypass that and the issue with God's who have different morals.

i think that one part might be that people believe too much and act on their beliefs too much

This is not what it's about.

The point is that some reasons for action, e.g. conforming to the will of the gods, are confused in terms of their logical justification. Is something holy because the gods say so, or do the gods say so because it's holy? Basically Euthyphro is suing his dad for no good reason, and Plato (through Socrates) is showing that he has no idea why he's actually doing it.

If God decides that murder is now good then he has differed from his omnipotent truth. This means that God does not truly know all, and that his commandments are meaningless as God is as flawed as any man.

>If God decides that murder is now good then he has differed from his omnipotent truth. This means that God does not truly know all
This makes no sense

The post doesn't make sense, but what he means is that an all-knowing God wouldn't change his opinions on a subject, since the only reason to change an opinion is new information

>since the only reason to change an opinion is new information
Or a redesign of the world. God hasn’t changed the fact that murder and adultery are wrong. If we were simpler or more complex beings with different aptitudes and flaws, in a different environment, then God would provide us whatever morals will benefit us the most. Because morality is just what benefits you the most. God is telling us how to live perfectly given the conditions of the world He has created.

but God himself is good, and can only do good, since what is not good is called evil, but evil does not exist, only the lack of good does, which God purposely allowed in order for good to be a choice

Right, but assuming that God isn't recreating the world without telling us, his moral opinions wouldn't change. Interesting point though.

>but evil does not exist, only the lack of good does
When does the Bible ever say that? What is an absolute lack of good? What is indifference? Is it not also a lack good? Are there not things that are more than just not good, but also harmful? Is this not why the Bible constantly uses the word “evil” to describe something?

Not him, but evil is the deprivation of goodness

And what is goodness?

Was that the one where he meets his friend who is reporting his Father for throwing a slave onto his bed trying to be sexy but hit his head instead and so died while waiting at the court?

Then what's it about gay faggot?

It is not limited to religion at all. The same problem rises if we define Good as the outcome of utilitarian computations, or the working of Invisible Hand, or whatever. The point is to show that Good is good because there is universal Goodness that does not depend on anything.

On a bigger picture, the Ancient philosophy is about finding universal sources of cognition (by demonstrating that they are different from the process of usual human logic and computations), and arguing how they are structured in the Universe.

Piety and justice, forms and oneness. I'll post more later if I get a chance.

And wtf defines benefit you cretin

That's what Plato does

Never understood why people apply this to christianity. Argument from prime reality wrecks it.

This probably needs a few edits and clarifications, but in the interests of effortposting and potential discussion I thought I'd share it. I'll try to answer any questions:

"One should only watch whether the killer acted justly or not."
"What kind of thing do you say that godliness and godliness are, both as regards murder and other things?"

In any discussion of essence, of defining qualities, it is necessary to clarify the shifting of territory, the line upon which all new laws come into being, where we must grapple with the character of an unknown sovereignty. Here, as an entire landscape opens before us, we recognise that values, such as Piety and the Good, are not equitable, each attracts its own rays of light and passages of migrant species. The world of essence and values is not an impenetrable grey territory, a problem presented in the Euthyphro which is often evaded by its readers and interpreters. They would like to keep to the stone arteries of mechanised streets.

Understanding the living and breathing territory upon which we walk, even if only in our minds, changes the entire discussion, for if natural law loses the force of nature it becomes something else entirely. Plato's dialogue concerns piety and man's legal service beneath the justice of heaven, the cultivation of a territory worthy of the vision of gods. It is not a Christian or secular interpretation of Good, and one must attempt to set aside such preconceptions to understand what Socrates is attempting to grasp. This is not a certain territory, there are no topographic maps available, we are instead entering a clearing just beyond a young and thick forest growth—to which we will be asked incisive, even confounding, questions. This is our judgement before powerful beings, and confused silence seems a natural response.

The question of polytheism is important in this, as the problem Socrates and Euthyphro are discussing echoes that of an apparent contradiction in justice: should one follow the laws of the family or the potentially greater laws surrounding murder? Or perhaps there is an even greater form of justice that is revealed in the conflict of the laws themselves. One may even rephrase the question, is the law in keeping with justice because it appeases the gods? Or is the law in keeping with the gods because it appeases justice? The dilemma is not itself a law, but a fulcrum upon which law rests. There is not one law just as there is not one god.

Here it becomes necessary to consider the Athenian and Greek relation to justice and law. As is clarified in the dialogue, even murder is not necessarily unjust—or at least the relation of the city to justice is not to be decided by common men or relatives of the involved parties. Laws must always be recognised as a force, a coming into being to which dominion must reconcile, live up to as its own sustaining strength. Socrates implies this when he says that there is a godliness and ungodliness in relation to murder. There are no fixed laws, no hardened reactions of technicity to contain human actions—even murder can be justified within a given territory. Justice is a matter of balancing all things within the essence of the city, and, in the particular case of Athens, this meant the law of divine wisdom. In the end, a blood offering must be made to return the sovereign land to its essence, to cleanse that which pollutes its beauty; the law performs this rite, and so reveals itself in opposition to other laws.

What Euthyphro may have witnessed was a betrayal of blood offering, that rather than simply a murder of a murderer his father had prevented vindication, both for the people involved and the city itself. Rather than a cleansing of the earth, and appeasement to the laws of gods, there was twice as much blood spilled—the earth had been doubly polluted, and so the city would remain even further removed from justice if the father was not prosecuted. Within this fate it was the duty of Euthyphro's father to care for the accused man while the law was balanced against the needs of justice. A polluted territory had been laid out before him, and it was necessary to retain humility before it if justice was to receive its due. This event changed his being, in its rising he was no longer a simple employer, but a guardian caring for a man awaiting judgement. And in this one should not assume a dead territory, but a living one to which senses and values are sacrificed. Nature must be maintained in its living essence, the laws seen as elements of its territory. And in betraying this Euthyphro's father potentially conjured up something worse than murder.

rest is here if you are interested:
mandalietmandaliet.blogspot.com/2019/06/on-euthyphro.html

That which tends to your existence.