What IS good, and how do we determine it?

[Randy Carson]

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?

CL-

Now that your thread has been completely de-railed by the Catholic bashers, perhaps we could move back in the general direction of your OP and consider another related question: WHERE does objective moral truth come from? What is its source?

It seems to me there are a number of possibilities including:

1. Evolution
2. Oneself
3. Our society or culture
4. Reason
5. God

Evolution is often suggested as the source for our morality, but I don't think this really works. The evolutionary explanation claims that as our species evolved, human beings who acted in moral ways (such as those who cooperated and did not kill or steal) lived longer than those who didn't. As a result, we now have the instinct to be moral that has developed over millions of years.

While evolution may explain why we act in a certain way, it doesn't explain why we should or shouldn't act in those ways. At best, moral truths which are products of evolution are not commandments which we are bound to obey but suggestions that assist our "herd" in it survival. But if our community decided to kill handicapped children after birth, if would be moral, since weeding out genetically inferior or defective individuals would improve the overall health of the herd.

This is precisely what was behind the thinking of Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, who sought to eliminate those members of society whom she deemed to be "defective". And who can forget that Hitler sought a final solution for the "Jewish problem" in the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau?

And if rape were indeed an effective way to reproduce with a human community, and morality came from evolution, the rape would not be immoral, would it?

So, these are a few objections to the idea that evolution is the source of our moral behavior.

Thoughts on this before I move to the next source, the self?