Is it good because God wills it or is it willed because it’s good? Frank & Charlie explain why the Euthyphro “dilemma” isn’t really a dilemma at all. #DivineCommandTheory #EuthyphroDilemma #God pic.twitter.com/hAJ6mQF4tL
— Frank Turek (@DrFrankTurek) September 10, 2025
The argument is designed to give people the dilemma of agreeing that in a particular circumstance it is okay to end the life of a person and that it's no different than when it comes to abortion. It's a clever argument designed to make you scratch your head and at first blush agree to it. However with a little bit of thought it is plain to see that the violinist metaphor fails on several levels. Follow the link to see Greg Koukl's answer.
But now let me ask you to imagine this. You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, "Look, we're sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you—we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist now is plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.
Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation? No doubt it would be very nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the hospital says, "Tough luck, I agree, but you've now got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person's right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him." I imagine you would regard this as outrageous,[2] which suggests that something really is wrong with that plausible-sounding argument I mentioned a moment ago.
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| Jesus in the Gospels (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
The poster boy for deontology in the Marvel universe (and arguably one of the many icons for deontology and conventional morality in our own universe) is Captain America. As I said, most of the time there doesn’t have to be a conflict between the two schools of thought. The Crimson Dynamo is attacking New York? Stop him. Apartment building on fire? Rescue the inhabitants. The hard cases arise in situations like… Oh I dunno, you predict America’s ruin at the hands of a burgeoning super-hero population, unless you can regulate them in some way. Or perhaps universe after universe is cascading into one another, threatening your planet, your dimension, and even the entire multiverse.
Whatever the case may be, Tony will do what he has to do to achieve the outcome that’s most beneficial. Captain America will do the right thing. Tony has to destroy a world to save the universe? He probably will, because the universe is something worth defending. Captain America on the other hand, well, destroy a world? How can you even consider that? It’s just plain wrong. It’s Cap’s view that tends to be the more conventional one as well, for the most part. He’s considered a paragon of virtue for a reason. Superman is much the same as a DC equivalent. These are both heroes who are for the most part, deontological in their reasoning.The article makes some valid points. I think that somethings are truly wrong and good consequences is not enough to justify doing something wrong in the first place. Sometimes choices are tough. The article does not discuss the World War Hulk storyline, but in it the Hulk return to take vengeance on Iron Man and some other heroes who tried to exile the Hulk into space.
The atheist is claiming that anything that ends in survival of a sentient creature or its species is "good". While the theist is claiming that "good" is independent of survival of sentient creatures (though the two often run parallel). The atheist is making a claim that is teleological (purpose-based) while the theist is making a claim that is metaphysical (morally-based). When the two make the claim that their worldviews can support "objective" morality, understand that they do mean two totally different things. A consequence of this is that when a theist shows that atheism does not allow for a metaphysically moral good, the atheist is not really disagreeing with them, because atheism, by definition does not have a standard to base a metaphysically moral "good" on. However the atheist will still maintain that they can accommodate "objective good" because they maintain that certain actions are objectively good and bad for reaching a certain goal (survival, in this case), but again, they are talking about a different kind of "good".
Hank gets into the dirty details behind our lying ways - how such behavior evolved, how pathological liars are different from the rest of us, and how scientists are getting better at spotting lies in many situations.
