It isn't about winning. This isn't a debate or competition. Just a friendly exchange of views.

So why are you still here? — Fooloso4

Because people, including yourself, keep asking me questions. And as I am a polite kind of person, I waste my time answering ....

So, piety, goodness, and justice somehow exist, in their entirety, independently of the gods... — creativesoul

Lol Not at all. The fact that something is loved by the Gods does not mean that it is independent of the Gods.

The Gods may perfectly well love what is divine, i.e., themselves.

Unless you think they have reason to hate themselves ....

Plato speaks through his characters. — Apollodorus

Right. You seem to understand this. — Fooloso4

Of course I do. And since you agree with it, you can't deny it.

And yet, here you still are — Fooloso4

And yet, so are you.

The question/problem is - of course - do the gods love something because it has the attributes of goodness, justness, and divinity or iare such things just, good, and divine because the gods love them. — creativesoul

I think you haven't been following the thread.

Socrates believes (and Euthyphro agrees) that the pious/good/just is pious/good/just because it is loved (sanctioned/approved/commanded) by the Gods.

The only thing that remains to be established is what exactly is the pious/good/just and why the Gods love/sanction/approve/command it.

If you think that you have a better answer, feel free to tell us what it is.

The metaphysical concepts are created by the poetry, just as the gods were created by the poets. — Fooloso4

1. That is your opinion, that, incidentally, is unsupported by the text.

2. I don't believe there is anything to pursue further as you are not contributing anything new. I have stated many times that this "discussion" is going around in circles and is a total waste of time and space.

It's still an insurmountable problem. Believe what you like. — creativesoul

It isn't a problem that I created. And of course I believe what I like just as you do.

You never find Plato saying anything. — Fooloso4

Plato speaks through his characters. And he clearly spoke to his pupils like Aristotle. Unless you believe he was using sign language and even that is a form of speech.

Gods love themselves. — creativesoul

Why would the Gods hate themselves?

If those attributes are independent of the gods — creativesoul

They are not independent, just as sunlight is not independent of the Sun.

It is philosophical poetry, images of what Socrates thinks true knowledge must be. — Fooloso4

That is your opinion.

Of course philosophical poetry is used to convey metaphysical concepts and experience.

You keep confusing Socrates with Plato and vice versa.

What he wishes to do and what he able to do are two different things. He has no knowledge of the Forms and has never seen them. He says as much in the Republic. — Fooloso4

Again, you fail to see the fallacy of confusing Socrates with Plato. The theory of Forms was proposed by Plato.

Socrates is a character in Plato's dialogues, remember?

If the attributes/properties of just, good, and divine are divine, then they are part of the divine.

They have no separate existence from the divine, especially in the human soul which is essentially divine.

That's a style of enquiry more that a metaphysical message. — Olivier5

"Style of inquiry" that in association with the concept of "Forms" that it evokes in those familiar with Platonic thought, produces a metaphysical message.

Very simple. Though, possibly, too complex for the intellectually or metaphysically challenged to grasp.

He's talking of what we nowadays call concepts, and their definition — Olivier5

Please re-read my earlier posts. Terms like "idea" and "paradeigma" would evoke the concept of "Forms" in the mind of those familiar with Platonic thought. @Fooloso4 has already admitted this.

What is of particular interest is that Socrates (at 6e) says:

"Tell me then what this aspect [form] is, that I may keep my eye fixed upon it and employ it as a model and, if anything you or anyone else does agrees with it, may say that the act is holy, and if not, that it is unholy."

"ταύτην τοίνυν με αὐτὴν δίδαξον τὴν ἰδέαν τίς ποτέ ἐστιν, ἵνα εἰς ἐκείνην ἀποβλέπων καὶ χρώμενος αὐτῇ παραδείγματι, ὃ μὲν ἂν τοιοῦτον ᾖ ὧν ἂν ἢ σὺ ἢ ἄλλος τις πράττῃ φῶ ὅσιον εἶναι, ὃ δ᾽ ἂν μὴ τοιοῦτον, μὴ φῶ."

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0170%3Atext%3DEuthyph.%3Asection%3D6e

As may be clearly seen, Socrates uses the terms ἰδέα idea or "form" and παραδείγμα paradeigma or "pattern" and, significantly, says that he wishes to fix his eye upon it and use it as a standard of reference in deciding what is pious or impious.

The Form is "seen" by the inner eye of spirit (nous) in intuitive, supramental perception (noesis).

So, this is something a bit more than empty "hypothesis".

Certainly if we replaced religion with Marxism, for example, the hole-in-the-ground analogy would seem to hold. We are replacing something that is the product of humanity's collective effort over many millennia with the unexamined and untested ideas of a self-styled pseudo-philosopher who failed to even get a job at university and was forced to seek employment as a part-time journalist. But I could be wrong, of course.

You're getting closer. Plato replaces the mythology of the gods with the mythology of Forms. — Fooloso4

Socrates certainly describes the Forms as causes in the Phaedo. And he doesn't mean that they are mere hypotheses, what he does is to discuss them hypothetically.

And of course, as has been noted by many scholars, he mentions Forms at 6e in the Euthyphro. For Plato and his immediate disciples, terms like "idea", "form", and "pattern", meant Forms. They could mean other things in the everyday sense of the word, but on one level they indisputably meant Platonic Forms as you have already admitted. IMO it would be irrational to dispute this.

Socrates calls the Forms hypothesis in the Phaedo. — Fooloso4

He doesn't call them that in the Euthyphro though. The fact is that the Platonic Forms were simply a way of expressing abstract nouns in the same way Goddess Dike represented Justice before Plato.

Plato merely translates the older, more intuitive concept into philosophical language.

Kant was on to something when he essentially felt like dichotomizing reality was not the way to go, in the discovery of something novel. — 3017amen

And he probably was not wrong. But it does seem that when we deny the existence of something, the human mind has a tendency to fill the gap with a substitute that may be worse than the original.

By analogy, we may dig a hole in the ground only for it to fill with garbage instead of good soil. Or amputate a healthy limb only to replace it with some cheap contraption made in China.

A pattern is not an instrumental cause, — Fooloso4

The term "pattern" (paradeigma) refers to Platonic Forms which, as you yourself admitted, were known to Plato and his immediate disciples at the time he wrote the Euthyphro.

You can't deny established historical facts. Though you may, of course, try.

I think Plato is about to hatch some Forms which we know about from birth, but uncover through experience. — frank

Correct. It must be remembered that for Plato to learn was to remember. Therefore, Plato's dialogues are meant to stimulate the soul's innate memory leading to intuitive perception of metaphysical realities such as the Forms and, eventually, recognition of one's own essential divinity.

What suggestion is that? That the moral of the dialogue is "there are forms and ideas"? — Olivier5

Plato was upper-class and he wrote for the educated upper classes. He also believed in a tripartite soul reflecting the three classes of Athenian society, etc.

What if his dialogues have several layers of meaning intended for different social, intellectual, and spiritual classes, such as (1) the unawakened, (2) the awakened, and (3) the wide-awakened or enlightened?

According to this scheme, @Fooloso4's interpretation would seem to pertain to the lowest social/intellectual/spiritual class of readers. Obviously, this is just a hypothetical suggestion. But I believe it to be true.

If theism/a-theism is based on Omniscience (Omnipotence Paradox), descriptions of a deity or God, then the negation of same, is also based on that same illogical premise. In other words, a logically impossible God is certainly a concept that is used as evidence to counter theism. — 3017amen

The conclusion seems inescapable. Though it may still somehow escape the atheists.

But what is he talking about? Why is he saying that? — frank

That's a question that he himself seems unable or unwilling to answer. We are forced to draw our own conclusions.

This is what the Athenians did to Socrates. The sentenced him to death to cleanse their city of his influence. We know this had a profound effect on Plato. — frank

That's a very good point actually. And, of course, the Athenians believed that what they were doing was right. Moreover, to be fair, they offered to acquit him if he desisted from engaging in any further mischief, which he refused.

There's no need to villainize Euthyphro. You can if you want to, but the dialogue works fine if Euthyphro just isn't thinking things through. — frank

Of course it does work fine. It is a very short dialogue and it seems out of place to read too much into it and resort to pure speculation as a substitute for legitimate conclusions as @Fooloso4 apparently tends to do.

By contrast, my own suggestion is far more plausible. We know that Plato believed in Ideas or Forms and in intuition (noesis) as a faculty of the soul (nous) which philosophy aimed to awaken and develop.

The dialogue contains terms like "idea", "form", and "pattern" which, in anyone even remotely familiar with Plato, would lead to an intuition of coherence or associative memory. The time required for the association with Platonic Forms to be retrieved by the mind would depend on the reader's intelligence and training (some may have to re-read the text several times), but the association is clearly intended, it can hardly be accidental.

Of course other interpretations are theoretically possible, but they are to be regarded as necessarily of a lower order, value, and interest. They are more likely to occur among the lower social and intellectual strata or among the metaphysically untutored.

Yes. That's the dilemma. I was starting to think you might be suffering from dementia or something (I really did). — frank

Exactly. That's the dilemma that, allegedly, he "doesn't want to discuss", yet he keeps mentioning it.

Not only that, but it seems rather weird not to discuss it when Socrates and Euthyphro discuss it from one end of the dialogue to the other.

He is blindly convinced that he knows divine things and that what he is doing is right. In addition, he makes a public display of it. — Fooloso4

We already know that. What we don't know is what you think the point of this thread is.

You said the point is not to show that belief in God in not necessary for being good, even though the OP states this to be "the question that engendered this post":

I never intended for the discussion of the dialogue to be proof that belief in god is not necessary for being good. — Fooloso4

You said it is to "discuss the dialogue" and that the dilemma "is not part of the dialogue":

It is not part of the dialogue, which is what this thread was intended to be focused on. — Fooloso4

And yet, you keep mentioning it. So, I think people are entitled to ask what exactly it is you want to discuss.

We have already seen that obsessing about the alleged "five-year gap", cannot lead anywhere except to further unfounded speculation. Hence my suggestion to discuss something more constructive and, if possible, more interesting and more intellectually rewarding.

The Euthyphro dilemma isn't in Euthyphro? — frank

I think the matter is becoming more and more mysterious and I fear the answer can only be found in @Fooloso4's psychology. Could there be a reason why he calls himself a "fool"?

As I suspected, you have not proven me wrong. — Fooloso4

As a forum member, I have the same rights as other members to post comments.

The true point of the thread is to discuss the dialogue. — Fooloso4

I was under the impression that you wanted to discuss the dialogue to show that "belief in God is not necessary for being good", as stated in the OP and which, incidentally, you have failed to demonstrate.

Anyway, who said you can't discuss the dialogue? My only objection was that you should provide some evidence to back up your statements as is customary in normal discussions. You demand evidence from others whilst producing none yourself, which I find rather odd for someone with lots of "degrees".

I see. So can you state very briefly and as clearly as possible what the true point of the thread is?

If the New Testament was a first stab, why is it called "new" (as that would imply an old stab that it replaced) and it contradicts your prior statement where you called it revolutionary (as that would require a revolution from an old system). — Hanover

Good point.

I am glad that you mentioned the Koran as well, because I do believe in approaching religion from the various viewpoints. — Jack Cummins

I very much agree. And I believe it is also instructive to see how Christianity viewed Islam and, above all, how it viewed philosophy itself.

Most of Arabia's neighbors, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, were largely Christian and historical and archaeological evidence shows that there were several Christian (and Jewish) tribes in Arabia itself as well as missionaries and monks, some of whom are mentioned in the Koran.

Now, whilst the Jews traced their tradition to Abraham’s son Isaac, Muslim Arabs traced theirs to Isaac’s half-brother Ishmael. Therefore, the Muslims called themselves “Ishmaelites”.

The Christian Church Fathers were intrigued by this Ishmaelite movement which they regarded as a heresy. The main writer on Ishmaelism a.k.a. Islam was the scholar John of Damascus. He was born in 675 CE, not long after the Muslim conquest of his native city Damascus, so his account of early Islam and how it was viewed by Christian leaders is of particular interest.

Mohammad, the founder of Islam, was close to some of the Christians living in Arabia, e.g., Uthman ibn al-Huwayrith and Waraqah ibn Naufal, of Mecca. Muslim tradition says very clearly that Waraqah who was a cousin of Mohammad's first wife was a learned Christian (possibly a priest) who had translated the Bible into Arabic and used to read from it (Sahih Bukhari 4.55.605). Therefore, it seems that Mohammad got his knowledge of scripture from Christians (and Jews) as the Church scholars found after investigating the claims about Islam.

The point John of Damascus was making was (1) that since according to Muslims themselves Mohammad had acquainted himself with Jewish and Christian teachings, there was no need for those teachings to be revealed to him by some supernatural source, (2) nor was there any evidence to back that up.

Therefore, St John concluded that “A false prophet named Mohammed has appeared in their midst (among the Ishmaelites). This man, after having chanced upon the Old and New Testaments and likewise, it seems, having conversed with an Arian monk, devised his own heresy. Then, having insinuated himself into the good graces of the people by a show of seeming piety, he gave out that a certain book had been sent down to him from heaven. He had set down some ridiculous compositions in this book of his and he gave it to them as an object of veneration” […] Then, when we say: ‘How is it that this prophet of yours did not come in the same way, with others bearing witness to him? And how is it that God did not in your presence present this man with the book to which you refer, even as He gave the Law to Moses, with the people looking on and the mountain smoking, so that you, too, might have certainty?’— they answer that God does as He pleases. ‘This,’ we say, ‘We know, but we are asking how the book came down to your prophet.’ Then they reply that the book came down to him while he was asleep. Then we jokingly say to them that, as long as he received the book in his sleep and did not actually sense the operation, then the popular adage applies to him (which runs: You’re spinning me dreams)” (On Heresy, Ch. VII).

The Bible says very clearly: "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravening wolves …. And many false prophets shall rise and shall deceive many" (Matthew 7:15; 24:11).

"False prophet" - Greek ψευδοπροφήτης (pseudoprophetes), Latin pseudopropheta - is the phrase used by the Christian Church for the founder of Islam from that time into the 1900s.

But St John’s Fount of Knowledge also has a chapter on philosophy which I believe is a good starting point for the present discussion:

“Philosophy is knowledge of things which are in so far as they are; that is to say, a knowledge of their nature. Philosophy is a knowledge of divine and human things. Philosophy is a study of death, both that which is deliberate and that which is natural.

Philosophy is a becoming like God, in so far as this is possible for man. Now, it is in justice, sanctity, and goodness that we become like God.

And justice is that which is distributive of equity; it is not wronging and not being wronged, not prejudicing a person, but rendering to each his due in accordance with his works. Sanctity, on the other hand, is that which is over and above justice; that is to say, it is the good, the patience of the one wronged, the forgiving of them that do wrong, and, more than that, the doing of good to them. Philosophy is the art of arts and the science of sciences, for, since through philosophy every art is discovered, it is the principle underlying every art. Philosophy is love of wisdom. But, the true wisdom is God. Therefore, the love of God—this is the true philosophy" (On Philosophy, Ch. LXVII).

What I find particularly striking is that this is virtually identical to the views of Greek philosophers like Plato and Plotinus.

Does anybody want to focus further on the dilemma? — frank

I for one see no point, to be honest. The OP says:

"To answer the question that engendered this post, belief in god is not necessary for being good."

@Fooloso4 has failed to prove his case on the basis of the dialogue. The discussion can only move in circles from this point and IMHO is a waste of time and space.

It isn't about you either. You keep cluttering up the thread with irrelevant statements.

God is justice, not formalistic piety. — Olivier5

Of course. That's why justice was divine as in Goddess Dike. I never disputed that.

If you want to discuss the dialogue please do so — Fooloso4

That's exactly what we've been doing but you keep providing "evidence" that on closer examination turns up to be no such thing, take Ranasinghe, for example. I can understand @Amity’s exasperation but we are exasperated with your tactics too. It would seem more helpful to simply say "I have no evidence, it's just a working hypothesis" or something to that effect. Why can't you do that?

Anyway, the matter stands as follows:

Socrates believes that people should act piously or virtuously because this is good (a) for the soul (e.g. Crito) and (b) for the Gods or the divine (e.g. Euthyphro).

Socrates also believes (and Euthyphro agrees) that the pious is pious because it is loved (sanctioned/approved/commanded) by the Gods.

The only thing that remains to be established is what exactly is the pious (and why the Gods love or command it).

This may be a complex issue. However, it is evident from Plato’s dialogues that the telos of human life is to attain the highest degree of happiness. Happiness is attained by being pious, virtuous or righteous (dikaios), i.e., good and just.

There are several ways of knowing what is good and just:

1. Authoritative opinion (doxa) which may include religious beliefs.

2. Reason (episteme).

3. Innate sense of what is right and what is wrong which is an attribute of the soul which is divine (gnosis).

4. A combination of the above.

Euthyphro’s behavior can at the most show that religious belief (religion-based virtue) may lead to undesirable results when improperly understood and or applied. It doesn’t show that religion-based virtue in general is bad.

IMHO you have failed to demonstrate your case. If you think otherwise, feel free to show us how.

I mentioned Luke, not John, and the good Samaritan parable — Olivier5

As usual, you aren't paying attention. As I pointed out to @Frank, the narrative is in the third person and this applies to John, Luke, or any other Gospel text.

"In reply Jesus said ... " (Luke 10:30).

It's exactly like Plato writing, "Socrates said". No difference whatsoever. There is no need to bring the Bible into it and it is obviously off topic.

But now that I show that this is a real concern in the literature and that my suggestions are not without support, you want to just drop it and move on. — Fooloso4

Well, if Amity is going to delete any posts that are inconvenient to you, then we have no choice but to drop it and move on. People have better thing to do in life, you know.

Anyway, Ranasinghe does not provide any evidence in support of your theory. Even if we were to suppose, for the sake of argument, that "Euthyphro is resurrecting old grudges to support his ambitions and prospects. He is impiously digging up matters from the past for his selfish advantage", that doesn't prove or change anything.

You're saying that you now show "concern in the literature" but that means absolutely nothing without evidence. There are thousands of "concerns in the literature", so what? It's still all just theory, no matter who comes up with it.

And it must be said, not a particularly convincing or interesting theory either. Even you must have noticed by now that there is hardly anyone on this thread. The truth of the matter is that nobody cares about Euthyphro and his "dilemma" or whatever you choose to call it. You're only using him to attack religion which is definitely boring as Amity said and with which I fully agree.

But, by all means, do carry on if it makes you happy.