[split] Are Questions About God Important?

[Belacqua]

Yes.  'Ethically sound', 'good' etc just translate to 'I strongly approve'

There's an older way to approach ethics, which makes more sense to me. @SimpleCaveman summarized it earlier in this thread:

Because what is good and bad for human beings is determined by the ends set for us by nature. Any behavior that facilitates the achievement of our natural ends is considered good. If it frustrates those ends, then it is considered bad. For example, the way we were created/evolved says that drinking water is a good because it preserves our life. Procreation and rearing kittens are good for cats because they preserve the species. 

In this approach, what is ethical is what promotes human flourishing. To some extent, this is not a matter of preference -- we need breathable air and drinkable water. Certain things are common enough to all humans that we can probably agree on some other basic things. For example, people flourish better if they learn a language. 

So it's ethical to promote a society which allows us to be healthy and engage our natural human propensities for language, curiosity, etc. And it's unethical to work against these. This leaves lots of room for debate as to how deep human nature runs. Is it human nature to be greedy, as the capitalists claim, or could we all be more generous if society encouraged it? 

https://www.amazon.com/Dawn-Everything-N..._ap_sc_dsk

Obviously that leaves a lot of things undefined, and that's where ethical debate comes in. Earlier generations might well have said that everyone needs a traditional family unit to flourish, and this is under discussion today. We live in changing times. And of course there are questions about what "flourishing" consists of. Some will say this requires having lots of money. Others will focus on creativity.

But it gives us a kind of standard against which to judge: Given X situation, will it help people to flourish or not? 

I learned this approach from Dante, because it's the standard Catholic view. Sin, for Dante, is not the breaking of arbitrary laws, but a stubborn refusal to pursue our proper ends. His views translate easily into modern language, where instead of sin we would talk about unhealthy obsessions, addictions, or neuroses. But even if we differ from Dante considerably in what we consider the aims to be, the general framework still makes sense to me.