Because It Is Holy?

Beth has been reading Plato.  She's been taking the book with her every day to her "cloistered" school and when there is free time or during lunch she reads Plato.  She mentioned a few quotes from the book the other day while we were in the van.  One was something about the nature of an object carried...can't quite remember the gist of it...and can't really make sense of it from what I've read online. 

The other quote she mentioned stuck with me and is, in a way, a key factor in the consideration of the POE.

"Is what is holy holy because the gods approve it, or do they approve it because it is holy?"

Make gods singular and it is a question that can be easily transferred to Christianity and to our view of scripture and of God.  It is actually an age old question (as evidenced by Plato, an ancient Greek philosopher, including it in his writings) And it is a question that I have discussed on message boards..and in real life... more than once when the topic turned to the Old Testament and the God (supposedly) portrayed therein; the God who tortured Job, commanded jihad, demanded sacrificial blood sacrifices, and orchestrated penal substitutionary atonement. 

In the book Good Ideas from Questionable Christians and Outright Pagans, the chapter entitled, Why Ask Why?, deals with the Euthyphro and Theaetetus.  These compositions contain dialogues, recorded by Plato, between his teacher, Socrates, and the namesakes of both writings, Euthyphro and Theaetetus. 

In this post, we will deal with the Euthyphro, the book Beth is reading and the source of the "what is holy" quote above. 

In the"Good Ideas" book, there is an interesting discussion about the Socratic Method, defined by Wikipedia as:

....a form of philosophical inquiry in which the questioner explores the implications of others' positions, to stimulate rational thinking and illuminate ideas. This dialectical method often involves an oppositional discussion in which the defense of one point of view is pitted against another; one participant may lead another to contradict himself in some way, strengthening the inquirer's own point.

Hmmmm....sounds like a few conversations I've been involved in.  Anyway....the book goes on to say:

The dialogical method reminds Socrates that the quest for truth is an on-going process and that he should be open to any source—friend, stranger or opponent—who might bring him closer to the best possible answers.

Of the questions posed in the dialouges this book points out that:

Not only are these still open questions, many answers considered in these two dialogues twenty five hundred years ago still exist in some form today. Thus, we get a chance to see how ideas about these basic questions hold up under Socrates’ scrutiny and think through our own views on these topics.

And since this post that I thought would be a short little ditty, has turned into more of a thesis, I will continue these ponderings in another post.  In closing, a quote by Llyod Alexander:

   “We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.”  

Still looking.....