What IS good, and how do we determine it?

[The Valkyrie]

I've always held that our morals evolved with us as a species.

As social animals, who developed from small family groups, we would have discovered fairly quickly that anything that hurt individuals hurt our community as a whole.

[dyresand]

Good is objective.
The civilized world we treat woman equally - That is good
They think we are immoral and bad because we don't follow
any sort of biblical law.

Middle east woman treated as objects - That is good (i don't think that)
We think the treatment of woman in the middle is horrible and
inhumane and even barbaric.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

This is kind of a spinoff of the WHY BE GOOD thread.

The question I have for atheists, isn't "why by good." I think it's simplistic and deeply flawed to think that the only reason to "be good" is to avoid Hell. And of course, I believe that anyone can be a good person regardless of beliefs.

The question I have for atheists is how do we know what IS good?

Religious or not, we all somehow know that certain things are intrinsically, universally immoral. Let's use murder as an obvious example. So if murder is wrong, where did this law come from? If this is a universal truth, where did this truth come from and who/what determined it to be what it is?

If an act causes you pain, suffering, and loss chances are you will consider it to be "bad".  Why do you get upset when someone smacks you upside your head?  If it's not "bad" why get upset?  Do you get angry when someone takes your stuff?  Why?  You got it before so chances are you can replace what the person took from you.  You will then have new stuff and he will have your old worn out stuff.  Isn't that a good deal?

[Wyrd of Gawd]

Good is objective.
The civilized world we treat woman equally - That is good
They think we are immoral and bad because we don't follow
any sort of biblical law.  

Middle east  woman treated as objects - That is good (i don't think that)
We think the treatment of woman in the middle is horrible and
inhumane and even barbaric.

If the women didn't like being treated like dirt they would change the system.   So they like it.

[Randy Carson]

I determine good by way of how it makes me feel.  

If someone treats me kindly and respectfully, I am going to understand the good and reciprocate it.  No god needed.

If someone does something that hurts me, obviously that is not good.

What if hurting someone else makes you feel good?

You determine that it is good for you, but have you done "good" objectively?

[Randy Carson]

Or perhaps, by extension, how does god know what is good?

By godly fiat or because things are intrinsically good?

Or perhaps, by extension, how does god know what is good?

By godly fiat or because things are intrinsically good?

Sounds like a hell of a dilemma.  I'm surprised no one's thought of that one.  

God doesn't "know" good. God IS good.

[Randy Carson]

So you're in the godly fiat camp: things are good a cuz god sez so.

For which follows: things could just as easily have been otherwise. Hardly a rock-solid foundation then is it? "Just because I said so" seems a bit weak around the ethical gills.

And if your god establishes morality, for all time and all people, why was he a-ok with a Moses slaughtering little children in Numbers way back when? Doesn't sound like it was "established" at all.

The question can be answered...but is that the purpose of this thread?

[Foxaèr]

I hate this site and it's quoting system sometimes.....retry in next post.

[Esquilax]

To further clear it up for you, I think we instinctively know that treating others well is the moral thing to do. For me though, Christianity has taken it deeper and taught me *why* this is the moral path and why it is important. Also, treating others well is very general and broad. It has also helped me with the finer issues that are more specific.

Thank you for your well thought out answer. This has definitely helped me understand your perspective on the origins of morality.

I can work with that: so, why is it the moral path? If it's just because it happens to be the one god highlighted then I don't much care, because I don't recognize fiat assertions of authority as cogent argumentation. "Because I said so," is never a good reason to do something, least of all if the only reason why you might want to do so is just a second claim to having absolute authority. If you're following god's morals because they come from god then the actual content of the morality is immaterial and irrelevant, since you're following the person and not the moral.

If there are actual reasons why the moral path god has laid out is important, then god isn't required in the least; those reasons are discoverable by any person, christian or not, and they stand whether one is religious or atheist. You shouldn't need to ask "why be good?" if you have in mind the reasons why god has ordered morality the way it is; you already know. If your god is as correct as you believe, then we should naturally come to the same conclusions eventually.

There is, of course, a larger issue at play here too, which is this: how did you determine that god was good? If you're using god's morality as your epistemological road map, what criteria did you use to come to the conclusion that it was the correct map to follow? There had to have been some; you've clearly concluded that god is good, so how did you get to that point? You can't have used god's morality to determine god's morality, because the evaluation that it is good had to have happened before you had concluded that evaluation. I don't even need to point out the circular reasoning involved there, as a simple matter of chronology, you could not have come to the conclusion before you came to it.

[Randy Carson]

But don't you believe there are some things that ARE immoral regardless of how someone might "feel?"

For example, a jealous husband can feel that murdering his cheating wife is not immoral. But he is wrong. It IS immoral regardless of how he feels or what he thinks. The question is, where does the universal truth "murder is wrong" come from?

It would obviously be wrong via the wife's feelings at being murdered by the man whom she thought loved her above all else.  

Not to mention that killing of one's own clan in primitive times was considered wrong due to the fact that survival was of the up-most importance; thus morality was born.

But if the man thought that it was GOOD to kill her so that he could marry someone else that he was interested in, would THAT be good from his perspective?