/lit/ - Literature

>Starts with the Greeks
>Read Plato’s very first dialogue
>Disproves God
This is why you start with the Greeks

I’ve just started reading philosophy (by starting with the Greeks) and have just finished Plato’s first dialogue. What is the theist retort to the Euthyphro dilemma—Is an action good because God dictates it, or does God dictate an action because it is good?

If what is good is independent from God then it is higher than God, and good can be independently determined because it is a universal truth, so at best God is merely an expert on morality who is not needed to determine what is good.

There is a common theist retort which rejects the question and ostensibly posits a third—“morality derives from God’s nature, which is inherently good”—but I don’t think this is sufficient.
>If God chooses his own nature and it is based on reason, then reason is higher than God, and secular morality based on reason is equal to that of God.
>If God chooses his own nature but it is not based on reason, then morality is entirely arbitrary and based on his whims.
As you can read, this is the same as saying an action is good because God dictates it, meaning morality is arbitrary.

So really then religion is based on doing what God commands because if you don’t you will be punished. Can any theists provide an answer to this and point to any resources that can be used to learn more because if not that is very disappointing as religion has literally fallen at the first hurdle.

Where do I start?

Let me guess, you "need" more?

And is there even a significant difference?

Wow, /lit/, you never told me how extremely gay the Platonic dialogues are. Yet I can't make sense of the anti-homosexuality in Laws after watching Socrates twink chase all the time. Did late Plato change his mind on homosexuality?

>things you think about when you're 12

>>18327710

>>15556573
If you want to read all of them then pic related. If you only want to do certain ones then I think Oxfords the best with like it being cheap but still a good translation. They're the ones that I'm using myself so yeh. Pretty sure you should avoid Penguin as although there are some exceptions, like having McDuffs Dostoevsky translation, most of their translations aren't meant to be very good.

I’d this better than buying his works individually, I wish to begin to understand philosophy and heard the Greeks are a good place to start