Upon being asked what is pious, the character Euthyphro in Plato's Euthyphro eventually responds with “what is loved by the gods” (10d–11c). Socrates does not dispute this, but neither does he find it satisfying. Socrates questions Euthyphro further: is a thing pious because the gods love it, or do the gods love it because it is pious? Even today, this is appreciated as a compelling argument against the notion of divine decree. It can't be the case that what is good or morally right is so only because God has decided that it is so. For, how did God choose and decide which actions to love and condone? Did God choose arbitrarily? Did it just so happen that murder ended up on the list of things that are morally wrong, when it could have, by God's whim, been condoned as right? Even if we choose our actions because we think that God approves of them, the argument in the Euthyphro suggests that God's love does not make these actions right – God came to love them because they were, somehow, already, morally correct. If this is the case, then there is a moral truth that is independent of God. This conclusion has often (I think, incorrectly) led philosophers to suggest that there are abstract and universally applicable moral truths or principles that antedated human existence, and that should govern our conduct – if we can only figure out what they are.