Socrates asks Euthyphro whether actions are good because God commands them or does God command them because they are good? While Euthyphro attempts to define piety, he stumbles upon another great philosophical question. Throughout Plato's Euthyphro, they try to discover what it is that makes actions right or wrong.
             To say that good and bad are defined by God's commands means one of two things:
             1) Actions are good because God commands them OR
             2) God commands actions because they are good.
             How do we know which is right? It cannot be both, but at the same time, it has to be one. If actions are good merely because God commands them, then goodness becomes something that is arbitrary. Whatever God commands would then be good. If God had ordered us to murder, rather than to refrain from such an action, then murder would be good. If God had ordered us to steal, commit adultery or be dishonest, such actions would be good such as it is good now to do the opposite of each of those. It is hard for me to believe that something is good just because God says it is so. What if God had ordered murder, would that truly be good?
             If we take the second view, namely that God commands actions because they are good, then we look at it this way. We feel that God's commands are made in our best interests. To say that God commands us to be truthful because, in his omniscience, he knows that truthfulness is good is much different from saying that truthfulness is good because God commands it. And if there are independent standards of right and wrong, perhaps we can figure them out and obey them without God.
             Figuring out whether something is good because God commands it, or if God commands it because it is good it also a question of what causes what. Do God's commands cause something to be good? Or, does the fact that something is good cause God to command it? If the former, then whatever commands come from God ar...