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Euthyphro’s dilemma – a difficult choice first posed by Plato, between morality being based on divine command (good because God says so, which makes morality seem arbitrary) and morality being independent of God (which makes God irrelevant to morality). |
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Objective truth - truth that is independent of our beliefs; moral truth derives from natural features of the world which are empirically measurable or derived from shared characteristics of human beings, such as desires, experiences or a common nature. |
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Omnipotence - God’s characteristic as all-powerful. |
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Omni benevolence – God’s characteristic as all-loving. |
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Meta-ethics – literally ‘beyond ethics’, hence a study of the meaning of moral language such as ‘good’ and ‘right’. |
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Metaphysics – the study of what lies beyond physics – the unmeasurable, the non-empirical as in the first principles of things, or abstract ideas, or beliefs about being, nature and existence. |
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Pluralism – the view that there are many sources of value, with the problem of how to choose between them (linked with ethical relativism). |
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Divine command theory - moral goodness derives from God’s commands or from the divine will. |
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Modified Divine Command Theory - moral goodness derives from the character of God, and particularly his love. |
