(June 15, 2015 at 7:03 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: 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?
Good can be determined using a combination of rationality, empathy and our evolutionary past.
The reason why murder is wrong, from an evolutionary standpoint, is because it would have hindered our ancestor's ability to survive as a species.
We are a social species. We evolved in small groups (50-150) where altruism, cooperation, reciprocity were, along with our intelligence, were our survival strategy.
Social species are unable to survive if they did not utilize altruism, cooperation, reciprocity. Wolves do not murder members of their groups (even if food is in short supply) because they, like us, need altruism, cooperation, reciprocity to survive.
From the point of empathy and rationality, I can determine that, what I need for my well being and ability to thrive, is what the vast majority of other humans also needs. In other words, for me, life is preferable to death, health is preferable to disease, freedom is preferable to slavery, etc. How much does it take for me to figure out, that since I don't want to be murdered or a slave, chances are very good that no one else does either?
You know how you can tell if murder is wrong? Ask the (potential) victim.
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.
