RE: Why be good?
May 27, 2015 at 8:39 pm
(This post was last modified: May 27, 2015 at 8:40 pm by Simon Moon.)
(May 27, 2015 at 7:53 pm)Randy Carson Wrote: You have a point.
Terms such as "good" and "evil" would be essentially meaningless in any absolute sense because, if God does not exist and there is no transcendent moral law revealed by God which prescribes how we should act, one cannot say that a given action is good or evil. It just is what it is.
One may not like or approve of a particular action, such as murder or theft, but it would be impossible to deem it "evil" in any sense beyond one’s own subjective, personal preferences.
I disagree.
Reality (the physical laws that effect all humanity in an extremely similar manner) is a pretty good basis for determining whether something is good or evil.
Murder is an evil act because it ends the life of another human, who has the desire to continue living.
Ask yourself if you would consider it evil for another person to murder, enslave, torture, steal from you? If so, how hard is it to put yourself in another persons place to determine that it would be an evil act for you to do the same?
If you are unable to put yourself in another persons place, you may not have a well developed sense of empathy.
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You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
