Plato's Euthyphro

If anyone else has read Plato’s Euthyphro, I wonder if you, like me, were reminded of religious hypocrisy. In the dialogue, Socrates questions Euthyphro’s motive for prosecuting his father for murder. While Euthyphro claims to be an expert in the matters of piety, he seems to overlook the issue of right and wrong. First of all, I wonder if anyone can really be an expert on piety, since it seems impious to claim to know what is God’s will and further to claim that you live in a perfect light of holiness? Does piety not acknowledge human limit? I believe that is part of faith. I know that in Euthyphro’s case, we are discussing the Greek gods, not Christianity, but the argument could still apply. After all, don’t we see much religious persecution that seems immoral? In the dialogue, Euthyphro’s father had not actually committed murder, but had rather detained a worker of his who had killed another worker in a drunken fit. While the father went to seek for help on the matter, the worker died. For me, the automatic response is that the father is not guilty. He did the best he could with the given situation, and I for one am not all too concerned with the well-being of a murderer. People have used religion as a crutch for many atrocities. For instance, in the history of the United States, southern white slave-holders claimed that God had made them superior to African Americans and thus slavery was intended by God, and further, they claimed that they were acting for the well-being of the slaves because they were like saviors for them. While we see how ridiculous this is now, it’s horrifying to think that Christianity was ever used in such a way. After all, Christianity should not be “used” to begin with. It is a way of life, not a crutch, and it certainly did not aim at racism, only at good.