The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast · Jack Symes | Andrew Horton, Oliver Marley, Rose de Castellane, Gregory Mill

Episode 148, 'Divine Commands' with Paul Taylor (Part I - The Euthyphro Dilemma)

October 19, 2025·32 min·3 clips

Paul Taylor argues divine command theory keeps God's omnipotence and goodness intact, unlike natural law.

The opening problem sounds simple until it starts biting. If torturing and murdering innocent people is wrong in a way that goes beyond preference, then morality seems to need some footing. Nature does not make that footing easy to find. So the conversation turns toward God as source, judge, or witness of moral truth, and the dilemma gets awkward fast. Does God decide what is moral? Or does God point to a standard that would still be there without divine command? Paul Taylor joins as a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Liverpool, where he teaches and works on ethics, political philosophy, and philosophy of religion. He is after the live question: what are people obliged to do, why does obligation have force, and can divine command theory answer that without making goodness arbitrary? The puzzle stays sharp. If morality depends on command, then God can start to look good only because God says so. That risks turning goodness into a loop. Taylor does not dodge the problem. He sets divine command theory beside natural law theory and asks which one better protects the wider picture of God. Omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence all matter here. Taylor thinks divine command theory handles that package better. The panel tests that confidence by asking whether his thesis simply repeats what philosophers of religion already think. Apparently not. Taylor says he expected to be in the majority, then found that he was very much in the minority. Divine command theory, or theological voluntarism, may be getting some renewed attention, but many religiously minded philosophers he has spoken to reject it. The exchange works because the hosts keep pulling the abstraction back to earth: arbitrariness, divine goodness, popularity, and whether one theory can keep God's properties intact. The ending relaxes the room without closing the issue. A philosopher guessing game somehow becomes Obama, the panel owns the misdirection, and the serious question waits for Taylor's return.

As heard by us

A focused review of whether God decides morality or reports it.

This single-episode review frames moral obligation as a live dispute in philosophy of religion: does God decide what is moral, or does God report a morality that stands apart from him?

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Why you'd press play

Press play when God's authority over morality starts feeling less simple than a command from above.

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