It's been a while since I blogged on religion, but this is one where I feel that even the best atheist debaters are missing the point.


A common apologist canard with regard to theism versus atheism is the concept of what they call morality.  "How can you be moral without God?" or some variant therein.  Now, of course there is the method of simply answering that question directly.  How atheist make moral decisions, what the origin of morality in humans and society, objective versus subjective morality, etc.  This has been done to varying degrees of effectiveness, and while it can get the point across, it's ignoring that there's an equivocation fallacy in the premise.


The question "How can you be moral without God?" is based on the apologist suggesting that the rules put for by a god in a holy book (for example, the commandments in the Bible), establish morality.  The problem is to call that morality is to conflate that with the traditional meaning of the word.


The philosophical concept of morality and in any other context is reliant on the action being a personal choice to do an action that is perceived beneficial to others regardless of the effect on oneself.  Any useful definition of morality includes in some part empathy.  Following rules in order to not be punished by a god is the opposite of the general definition of morality, not the basis of it.


So we've established two general definitions for morality

a) Following the rules of a god

b) Acting in accordance to empathy and assessment of positive effects of an action, without concern for one's own wellbeing


A question that could be asked of you is, "Is it more moral not to kill someone because you understand that person likely values his life, or because you're afraid of going to jail?"  Under definition a) the question doesn't even make sense.


So it leads me to wonder, do the Christians who pose this question believe we should "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" because it's in accordance with empathy, or because Jesus said so?

Yeah, the way you phrased it, it doesn't quite work.  Euryphro dilemma pertains to a theist stating all that is by God is good, leading to the question of which is the case and which is the effect.

If your question, a theist can believe godliness is the best path to peacefulness, regardless of omnibenevolence.

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The question is meant to tease out the reason for obeying a deity's commandments, whether it's actually being good to people and making the world a better place or just blindly worshipping power. If the former, then we're assuming a definition of "good" that doesn't mean "whatever god x wants", whereas the latter case has a definition of "good" that aligns with your definition (a) here (which makes omnibenevolence a trivial property of the deity instead of a substantial one).

If we look at the former case, then we see that the desire to live in a peaceful, harmonious world trumps the desire to follow commandments qua commandments, and we thus have a chance to convince someone that following their deity's commandments might not, in fact, lead to the goal. The way is clear to bring in empirical evidence.

The reason I tied this to the Euthyphro dilemma is that the two different definitions of "good" (the meaningful one and the one that makes a deity's goodness trivial and meaningless), represented by your (a) and (b), are the same two types of definitions you get within the dilemma, one on each horn.

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Good explanation here.

What I'm getting at, though, is that in the case where the theist believes that obeying his/her deity is the best path to peace and contentment (and/or whatever else), the ultimate goal is that state of peace, etc. The ultimate goal in that case is not obeying for the sake of obeying.

It's in part to distinguish between the theists who think that following a deity will result in real-world good versus the ones who say "He made you, so you should obey".