Euthyphro

Yet the divine trump card is not fully effective in the way religious parents may expect. This was shown a long time ago by Plato in his dialogue, Euthyphro. In that dialogue Socrates asks what the holy is. After several failed efforts to answer the question, Euthyphro offers the suggestion that the holy is doing what the gods love. Socrates then asks, “Is it holy because the gods love it, or do the gods love it because it is holy?” We can translate Socrates’s famous question into the ...