a bad person

[Sappho]

If there is no god, then there is no universal moral law, which means morality can be reduced to a social construct coming from an evolutionary goal to protect the species, but nonetheless adapted to our modern society.

False, if there is a god, it doesn't care about humans. Theism being true or false has nothing to do with the nature of morality. The world can be absurd with a god. This is coming from me of all people, a moral skeptic who has very low opinion of morality.

Why then do we call people bad when they break such a rule, other than they do something which is arbitrary forbidden by previous generation. 
(for instance look at: cultural differences)

Assume I have no opinion here.

Expression of approval and disapproval aiming to motivate other people to not do something or to stop something. Also most people are moral realists. I'm not but most people seem to be.

I think it does. Once and only if there is a god, a universal moral law can exist. That does not mean he has to interfere with humans or even the universe. It is highly unlikely, but nonetheless is it an option.


Sorry for not being clear about that, but I meant : on what ground can we judge and sentence people, what is the motivation for the punishment (to paid for what is done or just to remove from society) and what can such a punishment be?

[Whateverist]

Once and only if there is a god, a universal moral law can exist.

It is pretty naive to think there is some objective, eternal rule book for being an outstanding human being. The conditions for such a spurious thing to exist provide no impetus whatsoever to believe a god exists.

[bennyboy]

My sense of it is that whatever we say, we view morality and immorality as a matter of social function. People who "get" the values of group consensus, and who are willing to abide by a social contract which enforces them, are moral. The particular values don't matter so much as the ability of the human organism to function in that social context.

[Sappho]

Once and only if there is a god, a universal moral law can exist.

It is pretty naive to think there is some objective, eternal rule book for being an outstanding human being.  The conditions for such a spurious thing to exist provide no impetus whatsoever to believe a god exists.

Maybe that's whyI wrote it as an if-statement.
By the way you mixed up the direction of the stream of thought. If god, then maybe universal moral. Not the other way.
And I don't believe that either mate.

[bennyboy]

Sorry for not being clear about that, but I meant : on what ground can we judge and sentence people, what is the motivation for the punishment (to paid for what is done or just to remove from society) and what can such a punishment be?

This is easy, and it's a process, not a rule. If someone is behaving in a way you dislike, you look around. If other people also dislike the behavior, you agree to a rule. If someone breaks the rule, whether they agreed to it or not, you collectively exert your power to make him stop, or to punish him for his transgression. And then you sit someone at a big desk with a curly wig, and he reads a big fat book of these rules, and decides what happens to the people in front of him.

No Sky Daddy was involved, or at least needed to be involved, in any part of this.

[Heat]

My question is what the fuck people are so concerned with there being a "universal moral law" for if people apparently break it all the damn time.

If this is the result of a "Universal moral law", i'd like to see the result without one, couldn't get much worse.


Also if there is a universal moral law, and people disagree on what it is without consequence, then there is no more law. You can't have a moral law with the traits being that it's; Unidentifiable, Inconsequential, and Undefinable. That's just bullshit, man.

[TheRealJoeFish]

Essentially, it's like what god says in futurama: "Right and wrong are just words. What matters is what you do."

When I call a person "bad" that's shorthand for "a person who has done bad things in the past and/or seems likely to do bad things in the future." Same with "good." On a formal level, it's really something of an acceptable category error or, more charitably, a figurative description.

It's all part of the (disheartening) tendency of people to label each other with descriptors that describe each person's actions and beliefs and then bootstrap that descriptor into a content claim about some essential quality of the person.

[Sappho]

Sorry for not being clear about that, but I meant : on what ground can we judge and sentence people, what is the motivation for the punishment (to paid for what is done or just to remove from society) and what can such a punishment be?

This is easy, and it's a process, not a rule.  If someone is behaving in a way you dislike, you look around.  If other people also dislike the behavior, you agree to a rule.  If someone breaks the rule, whether they agreed to it or not, you collectively exert your power to make him stop, or to punish him for his transgression.  And then you sit someone at a big desk with a curly wig, and he reads a big fat book of these rules, and decides what happens to the people in front of him.

No Sky Daddy was involved, or at least needed to be involved, in any part of this.

It's a good answer but to the wrong question I believe. I asked for what ground of motivation, and not the process. Of course I know how that works.
How, to be specific, can you justify/explain(/on what ground) that, for exemple how it goes in america, someone can be executed just for not fitting in the big picture made up by some people called the law; just a bunch of rules.
We can look at it in another way too: why do we find the laws of ISIS wrong and ours not, since when no 'sky daddy' is around every rule is subjective. So the only difference should be a 'slight' other opinion on what the rules are.

Do you agree?

[Sappho]

Essentially, it's like what god says in futurama: "Right and wrong are just words. What matters is what you do."

When I call a person "bad" that's shorthand for "a person who has done bad things in the past and/or seems likely to do bad things in the future."  Same with "good."  On a formal level, it's really something of an acceptable category error or, more charitably, a figurative description.

It's all part of the (disheartening) tendency of people to label each other with descriptors that describe each person's actions and beliefs and then bootstrap that descriptor into a content claim about some essential quality of the person.

I see what you mean.

But what I meant was on what we base our judgement to call a person bad? His actions probably. But for actions to be bad, there has to be a rule against it first, which brings us to the law. However the law is subjective and can be completly different in other society's.
For instance look at the US and Belgium: in the US, execution is permitted as a punishment but in Belgium it is not. An executionor in the US could be called a good person, since his job is within the law, but in Belgium he would be called a bad person, if he executed someone, since it is not. We now see good and bad is bound to a certain society which makes it useless on a global scale and makes it ridiculous to call someone 'bad inside', since even though his crime is not permitted now it might have been somewhere in history.
This all now also questions our system of punishing.

What are your thoughts on that?

[bennyboy]

It's a good answer but to the wrong question I believe. I asked for what ground of motivation, and not the process. Of course I know how that works.
How, to be specific, can you justify/explain(/on what ground) that, for exemple how it goes in america, someone can be executed just for not fitting in the big picture made up by some people called the law; just a bunch of rules.
We can look at it in another way too: why do we find the laws of ISIS wrong and ours not, since when no 'sky daddy' is around every rule is subjective. So the only difference should be a 'slight' other opinion on what the rules are.

Do you agree?

The ground is that people don't like something. Essentially, it is immoral to go against the views of the group.