(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?
this is a good question as it often comes up in such debates as to why man needs or does not need a deity. Christopher Hitchens i think said it best by explaining that we as humans live in a society and therefore must get along for the most part to survive. Such "badness" as murder, theft, rape (at least of ones own people) is not conducive to such a society. In war of course all "goodness" is off or at least in the old tribal days. As realetivly normal people (as opposed to a sociopath) we have empathy to understand "would i want to be treated in the way I am treating this person now?" If the answer is yes then it is good if the answer is no then not good.
