Is a song great because it sits at number one, or is it number one because it is already great? That everyday argument is a doorway into one of the oldest puzzles in philosophy. In Plato's dialogue, Socrates asks Euthyphro whether something is pious because the gods love it, or whether the gods love it because it is pious, and the question has haunted monotheistic theology ever since. This episode lays out both horns of the dilemma and the surprisingly high stakes attached to each.

We examine the first horn, the independent rulebook favored by Thomas Aquinas and natural law, and the sovereignty problem that led Hugo Grotius to say morality would hold even without God. Then we turn to the second horn, divine command theory, where William of Ockham and Rene Descartes push God's power so far that even mathematics becomes arbitrary, leading to  ...