Eddie Hood (0:00)

If you're watching this video, you are one of four people, or I guess maybe even listening to the podcast because they go both live on all of the podcast channels and on YouTube. But you are one of four people. If you're here learning about Euthyphro1, you are a student who is taking some sort of general intro to philosophy course, and your teacher has given you homework to figure out who this Plato guy is and what this euthyphro thing is that he wrote. So you're here because you're trying to figure that out. So don't worry. I will walk you through the important parts of the dialogue today, give you some background text, and you'll be able to walk away knowing everything you need to know about the euthyphro and why. It's incredible. The second kind of person is a, you know, a philosophy nerd like myself, who just loves Play DOH and wants to think about interesting things. And you're coming back because you really enjoy these kinds of conversations. So to you, I say, welcome, my weird friend. The third person is probably somebody who was served this video on YouTube. You know, you were just kind of scrolling along, or you were going through your podcast channel and you found this thing, and now you're listening to it because you want to figure out what this is all about. Don't leave. I think you'll enjoy this conversation. Just because maybe you're new to Plato does not mean you won't understand it. We're going to have a lot of fun today. Oh, and the fourth kind of person, you might be somebody who left the Mormon Church like myself, and you're trying to figure out why I'm comparing Plato to an incredible cup of coffee. All right, let's get into it. Welcome to this week's episode of the Read well podcast. My name is Eddie Hood, and I'm your host, where I believe it's more important to read well than to be well read. So grab your favorite book, open up your notes, and let's get ready to learn something fascinating. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Read well podcast. My name is Eddie Hood, and I'm very excited to be with you today because we are talking about one of my favorite writers of all time. His name's Plato. You've probably heard of him. He is a philosopher who wrote about really big, important questions, and he did so using a format called a dialogue. Now, a dialogue is just a conversation between two or more people, right? It's. You have dialogues all day long. So when you read Plato, it's a lot like reading Shakespeare where you've got characters who kind of go back and forth. And this is important because Plato is using the form of conversation to show us how to sort of communicate with each other to get down to what's really important and critical in our thinking. Now, Euthyphro is one of his earlier dialogues, and it's only 20 pages or so. It's really short. It's not this whole book. This whole book is actually the Penguins classic that I'm holding in my hands, and it is titled Plato the Last Days of Socrates. We'll talk about what that means in just a minute. But yeah, it's roughly 20 pages of this book, and you can get it online. I'll put a link in the show notes down below so that you can read the uses row for yourself for free. You're welcome. Thank you very much. All right, so what is Plato or not? What is Plato? He's a guy, right? But why. Why was he writing in dialogue form and who were in these dialogues? Well, there's always one consistent character, this really great old guy with a crazy, you know, sort of attitude about life. His name was Socrates. Now, Socrates is interesting because he didn't want to write anything down. He felt like if you're smart, you should be able to keep it up here in your noggin. Plato thought, that's a little crazy, teacher. I'm going to write this stuff down. And it's good that he did, because we wouldn't know about Socrates had it not been for all of Plato's hard work. So, yes, Plato was actually a student of Socrates. He would follow him around, he would learn from him. And that's sort of where the lines get a little blurry here, because with him being the author of these conversations, we're not really sure which of these ideas are Socrates's ideas and which ones are Plato's. Some even debate whether Socrates was a real guy. Right? Some. Some are going that far. I think he was a real guy. We know Plato was a real guy for sure. So the. The big thing here is, as you're reading Plato, you're always trying to figure out whose idea is this really? I don't know. That's important. What's more important is the idea itself. So with that nice segue, let's get into the main idea of the Euthyphro. And I want to start there before I give you background, because it will help us to structure the argument. And we're going to bring that back to why Mormons can't drink coffee. And why, for the majority of my life, I thought this brown liquid was a devilish, horrible, sinful thing. It's not. Okay, right here in the conversation, Socrates turns to this guy named Euthyphro. He says, what is holiness and what is unholiness? So why is he asking this? Well, the story starts off with the two standing in front of the king's porch, which is really just the courthouse. You go to the court in Athens. That's where this is taking place. This is ancient Greece. And you're at the king's porch because you're a part of a trial of some kind. Either you're going after somebody for having done you harm, or somebody's coming after you and you're there to defend yourself. Now, Athens was an interesting place because they were really proud of the fact that they had laws. They were sort of a governing body. One of the first to actually say, we've got some organization around here. Were not a bunch of Neanderthals. What they didn't have, though, is an apparatus to sort of bring those problems to the court and sort of process them efficiently and quickly. They didn't have the lawyer system we have today and the, you know, the. The jail systems as we have them. So what that means is that if somebody did harm, let's say they committed murder, which is what Euthyphro is about, then that. That would not be tried at the state level. Right. It wouldn't be like the state of Utah versus bad guy. Right. What happens is the. The family of the victim would be the one that would be going after and prosecuting the bad guys. So it's more of like a. Everything's happening sort of on a civil level. Right. At a family level, Families suing families. And that's how we got things done. It's a start. And it's important that you know that, because that plays into why the Euthyphro is a moral dilemma. Okay, two characters in this story, Socrates and Euthyphro. Now, who are they? Again, I mentioned Socrates. He's this old guy. He would walk around and he's famous for sort of bothering people and asking really great questions. He wanted to know the truth of all things, but he was mostly fascinated by political ideas and the concept of justice. So he would seek out experts on these really big, sort of meaty, amorphous topics, and then he would ask them what those things actually meant. And through the course of these dialogues, it becomes very apparent that these quote unquote experts have no idea what they're talking about. And Socrates is left sort of trying to figure out the answers to the universe, right? This is why it's kind of fun. And Socrates actually had a nickname. He was called the Gad fly. I don't know if you've ever been at a picnic where you're trying to eat your sandwich and a fly keeps like landing on your sandwich and on your face and you swat it away, it flies away and it comes back again and again and again. That's what Socrates is. He just constantly pesters you with these questions you don't really want to answer because you really don't have the answer themselves. Okay. Euthyphro is, quote unquote, the expert of this conversation. He is a very righteous, pious, religious, I've got God figured out kind of guy. He is seen in the community as the man who knows what piety is or holds holiness. So it's a perfect setup for this conversation. Now, why are they at the king's porch? Socrates is there because he's being accused of corrupting the youth. There's this guy named Meletus, he's, he's out in the community and he's been watching things and he thinks Socrates is just screwing up all of the young guys, right? He's making them think improper things because they're, they're out philosophizing instead of actually doing good work, Whatever, I don't know, whatever. And he's actually accusing Socrates of creating new gods, which some people see Socrates as an atheist, which isn't true. He just didn't necessarily accept the gods of the city. Right? He thought that the gods that they worshiped were a little strange. Now, to set the stage, this is happening in a polytheistic culture, which means that they believed in many gods, right? Many religions today that you're probably familiar with are monotheistic. They believe in one God, an all powerful God. But back then it was polytheistic. Lots and lots of gods. You had a God of war, God of love, a God of wine, a God of mirth. I think those are separate gods. I don't know. That's Dionyses, I think. I'm not good at this stuff. All I know is that there were lots of gods for lots of things. And they got up to all sorts of craziness. It was like a spiritual reality TV show where they slept with each other and killed each other and took each other's babies and stole each other's sandwiches and all sorts of crazy things, right? They were not God good to each other. A lot of this was sort of immortalized in Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey, which is probably the most formal place that those concepts were written down. Most of that, though, that mythology is sort of verbal tales that have changed over time, they become more grand. Okay, these are the gods we're dealing with in Plato's Euthyphro. Now, apparently this guy Euthyphro, he's a young, upcoming religious guy, he's got it all figured out. He knows what the gods love, apparently. Okay, now he's there. And while Socrates says, why are you here? You know, yeah, I'm being tried for corrupting the youth, but why are you here? You're. You're supposedly this righteous guy. And Euthyphro says, well, I'm. I'm actually prosecuting somebody for a crime. And Socrates is like, oh, okay, what, what's the crime? He leans in and says, homicide. So now Socrates is like, whoa, hold up. That's a big one. Who. Who did the. The homiciding set. I don't think that's a word either. Who did the killing, right? And Eusephrose says, actually, that's the interesting part of this. Socrates, the person who did the killing is my father. Now, why does that matter? It matters because Euthyphro's father is this wealthy guy. He's got a big estate, he's got lots of servants on the estate, and Euthyphro is going after his own parent. Now, start there first. Many people, when they are confronted with, do I turn in my loved one to the police or do I protect them? Most people feel an immediate sense of protecting their child, protecting their parent, because there's like that bond of blood, right? So we're traversing that already. We're throwing the bond of blood out the door, and we're just taking dad to court. But what's more interesting here and gets even more sort of morally muddled is the fact of why the murder happened. So Socrates says, well, what happened? And here's what goes on. They have this big estate with all these servants, like I mentioned. And one night, one of the servants gets really, really drunk, like crazy drunk, and slits the throat of another servant. The dad finds out about this and is just like, not happy about it. So he chains the murderer up and doesn't know what to do. He's like, I got this really bad guy. So he leaves him in a ditch. Probably not the best move, right? You don't leave a chained up guy in a ditch. That's what he did. And then he went off to town to speak with some intelligent person, called the interpreter to figure out how to handle the situation. Well, while he's off conversing, the guy in the ditch dies, probably of hunger or coldness or whatever. And so there's an involuntary murder here. Euthyphro is outraged that his father would do such a thing as to let a murderer die in a ditch. And so now he's prosecuting dear old dad. Now, this is bad, because dear old dad, if he loses this trial, will probably lose his life or be excommunicated or not excommunicated. I'm already jumping into the Mormon thing with coffee. We'll get there. Hang on. He will be. What's the word? He'll be sent away. Exiled. That's the word. And, you know, this happened a lot in Athens, where you would sort of be sent to another island and you couldn't really come back for a long time because you were an enemy of the state or the religion or whatever. Nothing good is going to come for dear old dad because of this. So Socrates is just flushed with questions. He's like, okay, now remember that I said that when bad things happen, the state doesn't prosecute the criminal. It's family versus family. The guy that did the original killing, the servant, didn't have any family. Like, he was raised in servitude. So there would have been nobody to come to his rescue to prosecute his murder. Right. His murder would have gone unnoticed. Dad would have gone on with life. It wouldn't have been a big deal. And of course, this isn't ethical. I get that. I'm not saying it is. Every human life has value. I'm trying to share with you the background of what would have happened in Athens at the time, but they would have the mentality of, well, we lost a slave, but he died for murder. I guess it's not that bad. Let's buy some more slaves and let's get back to work. That's what would have happened. Again, not good. Not at all good. But for Euthyphro to prosecute his dad, we're going like a hundred miles up in notches, guys. Like, we're. We're really making a moral stance here of righteousness. Okay, so stages set. And Socrates is fascinated because he's being prosecuted for talking about God in a different way. He could lose his life for this. And in fact, if you read the footnotes or you read to the end, you. You know that Socrates does in fact die for his beliefs. He's found guilty. That's what the Last Days of Socrates is all about. These are four of the major dialogues that sort of detail what happens to him as he goes through his court experience and is forced to commit suicide for the things that he teaches now. So, yeah, big deal, right? Big, big consequences here. All right, so now we're back, and Socrates really wants to sort of pick Euthyphro's brain, because apparently Euthyphro's got God figured out. He's got morality figured out. So much so that he's comfortable in his own skin prosecuting dad. Okay, so that's the background. Let's walk you through the dialogue. These are the most important sentences you need to know in order to get your head wrapped around this. And then we're going to bring this full circle to a personal story I have about drinking coffee and why that will. Apparently, I'm going to hell for drinking coffee. This is a big problem in the church that I used to be a part of. I used to be a part of the Mormon Church. I no longer am, But I have a lot of PTSD from drinking coffee, or at least the concept of it. I love it now, absolutely love it, but it took me a lot of sort of time to mentally get comfortable with even being in the same room as coffee. So, yeah, that will be a fun part of today's video. So stick around for that. All right, so Socrates leans in and he says, hey, user for, since you got it all figured out, please do me a favor. Tell me what you say holiness is and what is unholiness? That's the question of this dialogue. That's the main overarching question. And we have to state that because as we're about to see, Euthyphro is going to wander in trying to figure out what the heck holiness is and unholiness is. Every time he wanders into the weeds, Socrates, as an intelligent conversationalist, has to bring him back to the question and say, nope, that's not what I said. I need you to tell me this instead. So, case in point, Usophro says, oh, that's easy, Socrates. He goes on to say, well, I say that holiness is what I'm doing now, prosecuting a criminal either for murder or for sacrilegious theft or for some other such thing, regardless of whether that person happens to be one's father or one's mother or anyone else. Whereas to not prosecute is unholy. Okay? Euthyphro says, hey, I am an example of what is holy. You go out and you do what is right. Irregardless of the fallout. You don't consider who you're prosecuting. You don't consider the circumstances or the context. If it's black, it's black. If it's white, it's white. That's what we're doing. It's a rule book kind of system. Socrates scratches his chin and he's like, that's kind of extreme, don't you think? I mean, let's. Let's walk through this and let's consider what's happening here. And then Euthyphro continues to give examples of other actions that would be holy. He doesn't do this, for example, but he might say, well, serving at a homeless shelter is good and baking cookies for grandma is good, but taking a life is bad, right? This is the difference, holy versus unholy. This is not what Socrates asked for, you guys. So Socrates says, oh, hey, I asked you for that special feature through which all holy things are holy. For you were in agreement, surely that it was by virtue of a single standard that all unholy things are unholy and all holy things holy. So Socrates points out that we don't. We're not looking for a list of behaviors. And this is the first. First place we go wrong when we're discussing religion, because religion will bring a list of actions that you should do, such as don't drink coffee. That define you as a holy person or an unholy person, right? If you follow these actions and do these things, you got it all figured out. You're going to go to heaven, get patted on the head and be rewarded. But if you do these other actions, often ambiguous actions, then no, you are not going to heaven. You're going to be punished for doing so. And of course, these actions have different levels of intensity, don't they? In the Mormon Church, for example, drinking coffee, although not good, is not nearly as severe as committing murder. Right? Both of them are sins. One, I understand. It makes sense to me that there's something in the act of murder that is a big no, no, right? Don't do that thing. It makes perfect sense to me, without having to consult God or a church, that I probably shouldn't do that thing. That's bad. It feels icky to even think about, right? But drinking coffee doesn't have that same impact on me. When I make coffee in the morning, it makes me feel good, right? I think, wow, this is great. I'm going to sit down and have a nice cup of coffee and Read a book. Nothing about the process of making or drinking coffee feels like witchcraft at all. Now, I've got my Mormon scriptures here, which we're going to open up in just a minute. This is a cute little tote that we carry our scriptures in, and we're going to go to what's called doctrine and Covenants 89, which is a bit of scripture in the Mormon Church that talks about why coffee will send you to the netherworlds if you apparently drink it. Now, I'm not trying to be disrespectful. I want to point that out. But I also need you to understand that I have a little bit of tension built up in me for 25 years, 27 years of being a member of the church, where it was just all of these little things were sort of hammered into my head, and it made me anxious and worried and stressed that I was not going to go to heaven because I wasn't like, the perfect human being. Right? I don't think that's the outcome of the goal. But when you're given a list of actions, you're constantly waking up each morning going, oh, my gosh, okay, I gotta. I gotta do this, this, this, and this, or else if I don't, I'm going to hell. I better get my crap in order. Right? So it's a stressful thing. It can be really, really stressful. This is not what Socrates wants. Doesn't want a list of actions. So he points us out to Euthyphro, says, bro, that's not what I asked for. Euthyphro. Then he brings him back to the question. Hey, I asked you, what is holy? What is unholy? What's that thing that makes murder bad? Let's identify the thing, right? So Euthyphro says, okay, all right, Socrates, I hear you. Here's the real answer, since I am the expert. So Socrates kind of, you know, rubs his hands together, gets all excited, and euthyphro says, in 7A, right? Then what is agreeable to the gods is holy, and what is not agreeable is unholy. Ah, okay. Now we're getting to the meat of all sort of morality discussion, religious discussion, what is just, what is unjust? All those things. This is where it gets really fun. Euthyphro tells us that what is good, what is holy, what is just what makes a person amazing, Those are the actions that the gods love, right? And I'm going to use gods. We're sticking in a polytheistic sort of world for the moment. And what is unholy. Those are all of the actions that the gods don't love. So now you have to imagine in ancient Greece or Athens that all of these gods are sitting up in their godlike heaven and they sort of part the clouds and they look down. We will apply this to modern Christianity in just a moment. And they look at the buffet in front of them, the buffet of all of the human actions. There's, there's good, I'm not going to say good or bad yet, but there are things, things you could do. You know, you could have clearly bad things like murder, or you could have other things like saving a kitten from a tree, right? Who, who. Or from a burning building. You could run in and do that. And then you've got all these actions in the middle that are like walking across the street. That is an action that you can do as a human. You can, you can pick up a cup of coffee, don't drink it or you'll go to hell. But if you pick it up, that's just an action. Those actions in the middle are what Socrates and Euthyphro agree are considered neither, or actions. They're not good, they're not bad, they're just a bunch of stuff in the middle, okay? So the gods look at all these things and they say, h I, I really like these ones, so those are going to be the holy ones. And I really don't like those ones, so those are going to be the unholy ones. And that seems like a reasonable answer, right? The things God picks are what are holy. Socrates puts the brakes on this argument, as I'm sure you're already getting used to. And he says, yes, of our. We got a problem. We got a big problem. We have lots of gods. Have you ever known them to agree on anything? Some of them like murder, some of them like war, some of them despise it, Some of them, you know, want you to. To do. I think you get the point, right? They fight, they do all of the stuff because they can't agree on anything. That means looking at all of these actions on the buffet table, none of them will be selected as good or bad. They'll all just remain as actions. So your argument doesn't work. Uthero like, throws his hands in the air. He's like, ah, you're right, the gods can't agree on anything. Now bring this forward to today because this is like sort of pre Christianity era, right, where we're dealing with all this. It really hasn't hit the stage yet. So people who are in a monotheistic religion who say, we've got this, figure it out, right? We don't have all those strange, weird gods out there. We just have the God, the one God, the only God, who is all powerful, all knowing, unchanging, and so on. This probably sounds familiar if you're a part of Western religion in any way, shape or form, or were raised in it. Again, this is not an argument to persuade you for or against God or so on. All I'm doing is explaining what Euthyphro is and how it applies to thought today. And I think it's a good thought exercise. So many philosophers today would say that it still applies to monotheism. And here's how. If you look at Christianity, for example, but this works in any religion. The God of the Old Testament is very different from the God of the New Testament. The God of the Old Testament was all about sort of punishment and war and. And I mean, you can sleep with many women, your handmaidens, your servants. You do what you got to do to have a baby, right? There are concubines, there's slavery, all sorts of things. And then the God in the New Testament is different. He kind of changes his mind and says some of those things are bad. But even then, there are moments in New Testament scripture where things are not okay, right? Like, so the God sort of changes his, her or its mind about really important ethical things throughout all of scripture, right? And again, like I said, even in the New Testament, there are moments where it's like, wait a minute, you said don't do that, and now we're doing that, okay? Because there is a conflict of ideas because it's not always bad or always good. And it seems to depend on the situation. That means that the God of Western religion also can't seem to agree with himself or herself or itself, whatever you want to call God. Okay? Now that's a problem. Because that means that the one God would have parted the skies and looked down at the buffet of actions and said, okay, these are the actions I like. These are the actions I don't like, therefore those are holy. These are unholy. That doesn't work, because the next day that God says, actually, I don't like that one. Now let's do it over here. Occasionally getting out my Book of Mormon. Hey, okay, I gotta find this. This is really interesting passage in the Book of Mormon. This is what a Book of Mormon looks like, by the way. It's got a Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of great price. These are all scriptures that are important to the church, and I do respect them, and I respect members of the church. There are so many people in the church that I love and I honor and I respect. This is not a disrespectful thing. But I do want to point out that sometimes things don't necessarily make sense. I'm gonna tell you a little story, story from the Book of Mormon. The concept here is that there's a family being led by a father named Lehi and a son named Nephi, and they're out and they're trying to go to the promised land. This is the concept which is for them to leave Jerusalem, get in a boat and go across the ocean to the. The New Americas, right? What we would call Central America. Now, this is sort of the beginning of the Book of Mormon. And it's the concept that this family is supposed to be very religious. The dad has been called as a prophet of God. The son is a very faithful person. And they're. They're just trying to be faithful, right? But there's this interesting part in the story where they realize that they don't have a history of their people, but there's this guy who's a bad guy. His name's Laban. He's got the history of the people in his tent, right? And so the dad sends his son back to go get the book. Well, the son walks over to the camp and says, hey, I really need that historical book. Laban says, yeah, you're not going to have it. It's mine. Right? They try back and forth a few times, and it's clear that Laban is not going to give up this book. And so what happens? Nephi cuts his head off. He literally commits murder. Now, there's a point in the scriptures where it actually says, and I'll find it here for you, just a minute. But God seems to make a moment in time where murder is now. Okay. Because it justifies us getting this book, which we need. I gotta find the scripture. It's really good. All right, so in the Book of Mormon, it's laid out like most scriptures. So this book of the Book of Mormon is called the Book of Nephi. We're in Nephi 1, chapter 4. Nephi is kind of sneaking around in the camp, right? He's trying to figure out what to do, how to get this book while everybody's asleep, essentially. Actually, I don't think people are asleep, but Laban is in his tent and he's, like, dead drunk. He's like, just blasted drunk, okay? And it's. And here. So in verse 6, it says, Nephi speaking. And he says, I was led by the spirit, Spirit not knowing beforehand the things which I should do. So he's being led by God, right? He's being led by the Spirit. And he's being told because he's sort of like a prophet as well. And it says, I beheld Laban's sword because the dude's, like, laying there drunk in an alley or something. I can't remember. Anyway, it says, I drew it forth from the sheath thereof, and the hilt thereof was made of pure gold. Blah, blah, blah. It's a beautiful sword. And it came to pass that I was constrained by the Spirit, that I should kill Laban. Okay? He doesn't want to do it, but the Spirit says, do it. He says, no. God says, yes. He says, no. There's a big fight. Eventually he cuts Laban's head off. And the end, we get the book. And this is just such a great example. And there are many examples like this in the actual Bible as well. So if you're not a Mormon or come from that faith, don't worry. There are many examples of people being killed for just purposes as well. But the point is this. Why is murder one of the ten Commandments? That is, like, not okay. Even when we think about it in our heart, we're like, bro, that's bad. Like, you shouldn't do that. But there are times where God's like, it's okay, do it. We need the book or we need the thing, or we need to get over there. So. And this guy's bad anyway, right? You can kill him because he's bad. And if you don't, a disease will get him or something. So this is why in the Euthyphro, we can't say that what God chooses is what's holy, right? It's the act of him, her, or it. Choosing actions cannot be the thing that makes them holy because the choice keeps flipping or flopping. So let's move on now and let's see what happens to our discussion next. So they decide. Now, here's where something called Euthyphro's dilemma comes in, right? Because if the actions are not holy because God chose them, then they must be holy on their own accord without God, right? Things are good or bad without God's input. They just are, right? So it says in Euthyphro, is the holy approved by the gods because it's holy in and of itself, or is it holy because it's approved or because it was chosen? So here's the big question. Socrates is asking Euthyphro out in front of the courthouse or the king's porch or whatever you want to call it. Euthyphro, his head is now spinning and, and he's just like, he doesn't know how to deal with this. Okay, so Euthyphro says, well, I guess good actions are good just because they're good irregardless of what God chooses. And bad things are bad. Irregardless of what God chooses. Socrates is like, okay, cool, we're getting somewhere now. Now, the, the reason why this matters is because we're trying to show the relationship of morality to God. Is there a connection? Is there a bridge? Did God create morality? Was he the person or she the person that defined it? Or is it just what it is? Okay, now let's keep going into some Mormon scripture. I want to share with you a personal story for just a minute, and then we'll see what happens to Euthyphro. So there are several bits of scripture in the Mormon world, and one of the books is called Doctrine and Covenants. The Doctrine and Covenants is, if you're not familiar with the church, essentially what happens here is that Joseph Smith, who was the, the guy that started the church, he went out and he, he wrote the Book of Mormon. It's not said that he wrote it, it's more said that he, he received some sort of magic. It's not magic. I shouldn't, I'm not trying to be disrespectful. He got golden plates from an angel from heaven and he, he sort of, they were in a different language and he had to sort of transcribe them and then give the plates back. And that's what the Book of Mormon is. Okay. But then he goes on to, like, deal with church life. People start joining the church, they have questions and they, they don't know how things work. So it's said that he continues to get revelation directly from God, and as he does so, he writes those commandments down in what's the Doctrine and Covenants? So Doctrine and Covenants are kind of like modern day scripture is the concept here. Now if we go to Doctrine and covenants, section 89, they're in sections. This is the section that talks about why Mormons can't drink coffee. It's called the Word of Wisdom in the Church. And I'm not going to read this whole thing, although it is short to you, but I will read a couple verses. Verse 4 says, Behold, verily, thus saith the Lord unto you in consequence of the evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men. In the last days, I have warned you and forewarn you by giving unto you this word of wisdom by revelation. So there's this big declaration at the beginning where God is saying, look, there's a lot of bad stuff out there, and I'm about to lay down the law. Consider yourself warned. If you don't follow this, there will be a big, big slap upon your hand. Right? Not okay. It goes on to talk about why alcohol is bad and other things. There can be a case made for that, of course. Like, if you drink too much alcohol, you can really screw things up, right? I mean, that. That sort of makes sense internally. But if you have a glass of wine, are you going to hell? No, I don't think so. But this says that that's not okay, right? Now here's the fun part. There is a verse, it's very short. It's verse nine. It says, hot drinks are not for the body or belly. That's. It doesn't say coffee. Doesn't identify coffee. It just says hot drinks. Well, when I pick up my cup of coffee, I. I don't know about you, but I despise cold coffee. Some of you weirdos put ice in your coffee and have ice lattes and stuff. You're disgusting. Coffee should be hot. Hot is good. Now because it's hot, Apparently, I'm going to hell for drinking this thing, as says verse nine. Now, what that means is that somewhere along the lines, somebody came along and made up a list of actions that were good or bad, and they just tagged coffee as a bad thing, right? That is, assuming you believe that this scripture comes directly from God, which I do not, but I did at one point. And that's the thing you guys like. I cannot convey to you the amount of emotional stress and weight that rules like that added to my life where it was just every day, it was like, oh, my gosh, why can't I even have a cup of coffee? Like, what is the deal? Very stressful. All right, so we still have not identified the thing that makes something holy or unholy, right? If coffee really is unholy, why. Why is it such a bad thing? Why are we lumping it in the category of murder and other things that just feel bad? Right? What is it about that? And if you think I'm trying to be. If you think about how many religions have Lots of random things that you can or can't do. Look at your own personal belief system. Look at the handbook that probably was written for you. Go through the rules and ask yourself why? What. What makes that thing good or bad? So then Euthyphro is sort of floundering around. He has no idea how to respond to Socrates. Now, because we have dismantled the fact that a list of actions is not sufficient to describe what is holy, we've then dismantled the fact that what God chooses does not define what is holy. And we're left with the fact that holy things or good things are simply good because they are. Now, this is important because that means that there's something outside of God, right? There's something external to him, her, or it, assuming you even believe in God. If that's the case, then some might argue or ask the question of, like, where is the necessity of a religion or a church, right? Because I know in my heart murder is bad. I shouldn't do that. I don't need necessarily an organization to tell me that. And I also don't need an organization to make up a bunch of extra rules like coffee being bad, just to give me anxiety in my life. I can just go on being a good human without the organization and not commit murder. It's funny, I actually read an essay yesterday written by Thomas Aquinas. He was a big sort of philosopher for the Catholic Church way back when. And he's making this argument about why, why it's necessary that the churches are needed in order to communicate God's commands to you, the common folk. I know, I'm digressing, but this is fun. Hang on for just a second. His argument is this. There's really three kinds of knowledge out there. There is the knowledge that we all just know. It just makes sense to us out the get go. Like murder is bad, right? We know that we don't need God for that. Then there are other bits of knowledge where we need experts to educate us, you know, sciency things and technological things that we need somebody who really knows what they're doing to come and explain it to us because we just aren't aware of them. And then the fun category is there are spiritual things that cannot be known by the common folk, right? There are things that you're just not educated enough to know. Therefore, you need a church to God, splain it to you to God, explain it to you as a thing. So this could be anything from coffee is bad to you have to wear. I wrote an essay about how I was sort of admonished for wearing a blue shirt at church. And I needed my bishop in the Mormon church to tell me that that was not okay and that I had to wear a white shirt because that's what God expected of me. Guys, I was just excited. I was wearing a nice blue shirt. It was the nicest blue shirt I owned at the time. But that's a good example of what Thomas Aquinas was talking about. Apparently there's this whole field of knowledge that I am too dumb to know, and I need our church to sort of educate me on those things. Can you feel like I got a little chip on my shoulder? I'm trying not to let it show, but it's hard. It's hard at times. All right, now, because we haven't been able to identify what holiness is. Socrates pivots and he says, euthyphro, why do the gods ask us to do specific things anyway, right? Like, what's this all about? And Euthyphro says, well, the gods want us to just pray and make sacrifices. That's what it means to be a holy person. You need to live your life in such a way that you're always praying and you're always making sacrifices. Socrates does what he always does best, which is to sort of boil words down to their actual etymological meaning kind of thing. And he says, so you're telling me that relationship with God is just transactionally based. In other words, to pray is me asking for things, right? Dear God, or gods give me things and then I make sacrifices because I'm giving them things, right? They apparently need things from me. I could be sacrificing an animal if this is Old Testament time. If it's New Testament, I could be sacrificing money or time or whatever. But the sacrifices must be made, right? And Euthyphro says, yes, that is holiness. To pray and to sacrifice. And Socrates again boils this down and says, well, why do the gods need things from us? Don't they have everything? Aren't they perfect? Aren't they all powerful? And in the monotheistic religion, if God is all powerful and all knowing and all everything, what does he get out of people making sacrifices? It's a fair question, right? Why is this being asked of us? And Euthyphro obviously is not able to answer this. And then we get to the end of the dialogue, which you should be aware is left very open, right? We don't come to a conclusion of what holiness and unholiness is. We don't really find out what that thing is that actually defines them as such. Why I. You really kind of. I don't know if you can. There have been philosophers since who have tried to define what goodness is and they've come up with good answers, some of them sort of utilitarian. You know, what serves the most people, what brings you joy, if you're pragmatic. Well, you know, what, what works versus what doesn't work. But you kind of have to take all of these arguments with a grain of salt because they all have flaws in them. It is hard to define what is good versus what is bad, especially when you bring context into play. If somebody you truly loved, truly, truly loved, stole a loaf of bread to feed her starving child, right? Does that person need to go to jail for life or whatever it is? I mean, we're having a Les Mis conversation now, right? Should that person go to jail forever because they were feeding their child? Stealing is bad, right? According to the actions of God and religion and church and people like Euthyphro were very self righteous and God minded. That person should be punished. Their hands should be cut off. They should do their time. They should, whatever. And then there's the human side of us that goes, geez, I don't know, there's some context here. So Euthyphro essentially says, gee, Socrates, I'm out of time, I gotta go, sorry, I can't finish the conversation. And he sort of bells leaving Socrates on the steps of the king's porch going, oh wait, Euthyphro, darn it, please come back and tell me the meaning of religious life. Tell me what is good versus what is bad so that I can properly defend myself against these people who are accusing me of something stupid. And that's where it ends. It's this interesting thing. I love that it ends there though, because it leaves space for us to have a conversation, which I would love to do. Leave me a comment down below or in the show notes, let me know what you think of Euthyphro and whether you agree or not. Now again, going full circle, have you ever been unfairly judged by someone or something? Have people made snap judgments about you, especially religious ones that make you feel like you don't fit in the community, you're not good enough, whatever, blah, blah, blah. The Euthyphro rocks because it is a conversation that shows that we are not really solid in our knowledge of righteousness and it is not fair, fair to make snap judgments about other people, their background, their situation, their family, how they're doing things, because just because you think you have it figured out. Just because you're a member of a church that says it knows everything, that does not mean you actually know everything. And in fact, when you point your finger at somebody and take action against them for not being the right religion or faith or belief system, you might actually be wrong. And in fact, you probably are wrong in something. Look, we have had wars upon wars upon wars, mainly because one group of people thought their God was right and the other group of people think their God is right. This still happens today, and it's a shame. That is why the Euthyphro is so important. It points out the fact that you actually have no idea who God is. You have no idea whether you're right or wrong. You just want to be right. You just want to be in power, and you're using that as justification to hurt another human being. So I love Plato. I love the Euthyphro. I hope you click on the Show Notes down below to find the link I've left for you to go read it for yourself again. It's roughly 20 pages. It is not a long read. It is not a full book. But read it several times. Read it slowly, take notes and apply the ideas of Euthyphro so that you can walk out into your life and have critical conversations with people about important things like belief systems without letting them attack you and being able to sort of think through something critically and reasonably. Thank you for watching, thank you for listening, and until next week, as always, remember to read slowly, take notes and apply the ideas. Thanks everybody. If you'd like to take your reading to the next level, then head on over to thereadwellpodcast.com there you'll find daily posts on how to read well. You'll also get access to all of my book notes and tools for becoming a better reader. And as always, don't forget to read slowly, take notes and apply the ideas. Thank you for listening to the Read well podcast.