How do you define goodness? Badness?

I like this topic; I'm planning to write about it in a relationship self-help book for adolescents. Actually, I'm mainly going to discuss whether or not there are indisputable ways, besides consensus, to define good and bad in non god-given morality. Ultimately, I'm going to make the case that there aren't, and that religion was the historical answer to this problem but is now actually just outdated consensus. Not to say that it is or isn't beneficial to society, just that it's an outdated consensus. Any thoughts?

Justin K said:

I'm mainly going to discuss whether or not there are indisputable ways, besides consensus, to define good and bad in non god-given morality.

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Theists are often concerned that consensus replaces morality with something weaker -- expedience or custom, say. Their concern is that unless you anchor morality to something more consistent than transient opinion, it will erode to become meaningless.

I think they have a point, but as a secular humanist I draw a different conclusion. I distinguish morality (an understand of what is good and bad) from ethics (an understanding of what we owe one another) and custom (a consensus on how we should act).

To my mind, morality should evolve and not simply mutate or decay. Compassionate, rational enquiry allows us to share objective knowledge with one another about what people need. That objective knowledge then becomes the basis of morality... and from morality we can then formulate ethics and from our ethics we can if we wish develop custom.

I believe that this is superior to received morality because it adapts to growing knowledge. But it's stronger than simply consensus because it doesn't confuse custom (what is expected) with genuine need (those requirements that, if they're not met, cause prolonged or irreversible harm)

Ruv Draba said:

Theists are often concerned that consensus replaces morality with something weaker -- expedience or custom, say. Their concern is that unless you anchor morality to something more consistent than transient opinion, it will erode to become meaningless.

I think they have a point, but as a secular humanist I draw a different conclusion. I distinguish morality (an understand of what is good and bad) from ethics (an understanding of what we owe one another) and custom (a consensus on how we should act).

To my mind, morality should evolve and not simply mutate or decay. Compassionate, rational enquiry allows us to share objective knowledge with one another about what people need. That objective knowledge then becomes the basis of morality... and from morality we can then formulate ethics and from our ethics we can if we wish develop custom.

I believe that this is superior to received morality because it adapts to growing knowledge. But it's stronger than simply consensus because it doesn't confuse custom (what is expected) with genuine need (those requirements that, if they're not met, cause prolonged or irreversible harm)

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I do agree that consensus is not a reliable foundation for morality. It's unfortunate though that theists will never see their religious doctrines as a dated consensus; the wisdom in them is 'divine'. I think this is a significant reason why morality has had a hard time evolving. Our legislation has always been tied to religious values and so it's hard to change anything when we want to further develop our morality.

That being said, even when we do want to develop our morality, I still think there's no consistent framework by which to go about it. I have to point to this 'rational inquiry' now. It does bring objective knowledge as you say, but a lot of it deals with general concepts. Yes, we can determine systematically that murder and theft is bad with respect to what society needs, but morality is so circumstantial, and there are some things that are just so intrinsically ambiguous that there are in fact no indisputable ways, besides consensus, to determine morality for them. I'm not saying that consensus isn't or shouldn't be a function of our BEST efforts to pull together what would benefit society the most in the long run, but I am saying that consensus is inescapable.

Justin K said:

but morality is so circumstantial, and there are some things that are just so intrinsically ambiguous that there are in fact no indisputable ways, besides consensus, to determine morality for them.

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The point of morality isn't to have an absolute, perfect sense of what is good and not. The point of morality is to try and understand what people need, why they need it and the consequences of our actions so that we can make better decisions. Consensus has nothing to do with that understanding, but sympathy, empathy and observation do.

Morality can indeed be circumstantial. The same action in two different circumstances can have vastly different consequences.

Ethics though are a different matter. Ethics is the study of what we owe one another. Where morality (what people need and how my actions affect that) is circumstantial, ethics shouldn't be. If I owe people truth or dignity then I always owe it to them, regardless of whether I think they actually need it today. If I don't supply you with truth or dignity today then that's entirely a reflection on my ethical character, and not on your worth.

Reflection is a valuable ajdunct to developing a moral and ethical sense. What others see helps to add to our stock of knowledge. But I believe that consensus is useless, except in shaping custom. Consensus produces harm and inequity all the time -- all that's needed for consensus to be amoral is for a majority of people to be blind to their consequences or unconcerned for their impacts (which I think is often). All that's needed for consensus to be unethical is for a majority of people to reach agreement based on what's convenient for them (which I think is often).

What consensus produces is custom, and custom is frequently used as a substitute for morality and ethics. Custom doesn't necessarily produce good or equitable outcomes but it does at least operate predictably, which is perhaps why some prefer it. People tend not to criticise us if we conform to custom, even if what we do is harmful and inequitable.

It may sound from the above that I'm saying that morality and ethics are personal and subjective. I'm not. People who are sincere about making better decisions based on real evidence will tend to come to the same decisions because empathy, sympathy, sharing observations and mutual reflection will take them there. That direction may be a different direction to custom though, depending on whether we're observing and reflecting, or just bowing to social norms.

What troubles me most about religion is when it convinces people that good and evil are forces that exist independant of human thinking. This kind of thinking leads people to believe that you can overcome your less common sexual orientation or your major depressive episode or your poor financial situation or any number of things by allowing an external force of goodness to overcome the external force of evil that has apparently taken hold of you.

Personally I don't know how people can live their lives believing that everyone around them is plagued by demons. Mind=blown.

Regarding atheists defining good and bad, I would say it's exactly the same as religious people. The only difference is that sometimes (and by no means always) when a religious person is judging whether something is good or bad, they will remember to base that decision on biblical teachings. You could raise a child with a completely fabricated list of life lessons about what is good and what is bad, and they would function in much the same way.

I'd like to steer the derivation of good and bad into an area that overlaps religious and atheist thought. There should be a lot of common ground.

For example, atheists would do well to acknowledge that Biblical parables like that of the Prodigal Son are wonderful moral stories. The religious would do well to acknowledge that a story like the Great Flood, which is not only physically impossible but also okays global genocide, is horrific and only designed to scare people into submission.

When people recognize that holy texts were conceived with an agenda, then they can take the logical step of embracing the parts that have true moral value and pushing them forward into a moral code that can guide our futures with compassion.

Rhys Cordelle said:

Personally I don't know how people can live their lives believing that everyone around them is plagued by demons.

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To be honest, this is how I see religious people when I'm in one of my less-charitable moods: I see them as demon-ridden, for to me all gods are demons. It's not a sentiment I express often, because I know my wife would say "that's not nice".

fullbookjacket said:

For example, atheists would do well to acknowledge that Biblical parables like that of the Prodigal Son are wonderful moral stories.

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I prefer the parable of the talents, myself; I never quite grokked the Prodigal Son.

fullbookjacket said:

When people recognize that holy texts were conceived with an agenda, then they can take the logical step of embracing the parts that have true moral value and pushing them forward into a moral code that can guide our futures with compassion.

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But this can just as easily be achieved by discarding the entire text. My form of morality may have parallels with some of the parrables in the bible, but I don't need to depend on those parrables to reach those conclusions.

fullbookjacket said:

For example, atheists would do well to acknowledge that Biblical parables like that of the Prodigal Son are wonderful moral stories. The religious would do well to acknowledge that a story like the Great Flood, which is not only physically impossible but also okays global genocide, is horrific and only designed to scare people into submission.

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I don't think it's anyone's prerogative to dictate the terms under which thought should be appreciated, or morality be defined. If I were to pick and choose from the Bible, there are a few Old Testament stories that I like, and very few New Testament parables. But since many people I know prefer the NT, I suppose that says more about me than the stories. There are also some OT stories I find loathesome, and some NT stories I find vapid, and as I've complained elsewhere, I don't actually like the Biblical style of storytelling anyway, even in its more recent versions. On the other hand, the Mahabharata and the tales of Monkey say, have great apeal for me, even when I think that the moral messages are sometimes questionable.

What conclusion can we draw? Perhaps that people have different values and like different kinds of storytelling... While I think that there is a common sense of goodness to be found in human thought, and while I think it can be found in religious thought as well as other places, I don't think it can be found easily, or always where we expect to find it, and certainly not by dictating it to others.

I don't understand why the prodigal son is a wonderful moral story. What moral lessons can we draw from it?


Goodness is an icy cold coke on a hot summer day.

Badness is when shows like Dollhouse get cancelled

My protagonist is tasked with explaining exactly that to a little abused deafblind girl, now a powerful telepath. She compares her own atheism to how nobody is capable of punishing the girl for doing bad things. The protagonist chooses to do good anyways, despite not believing anyone will punish her.

What's giving me difficulty is explaining what makes things good or bad in terms a little kid could grasp.

Hypatia said:

My protagonist is tasked with explaining exactly that to a little abused deafblind girl, now a powerful telepath. She compares her own atheism to how nobody is capable of punishing the girl for doing bad things. The protagonist chooses to do good anyways, despite not believing anyone will punish her.

What's giving me difficulty is explaining what makes things good or bad in terms a little kid could grasp.

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I think that difficulty would make for a wonderful scene, whether the protagonist is ultimately successful or not.

Rhys Cordelle said:

I don't understand why the prodigal son is a wonderful moral story. What moral lessons can we draw from it?


Goodness is an icy cold coke on a hot summer day.

Badness is when shows like Dollhouse get cancelled

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I came to believe that the moral of the 'Prodigal Son' is that no matter how 'good', dutiful, reliable and hard-working a child you are, when the beloved child returns, nothing you've ever done will count for anything.

Well after many years of thinking bout it here goes.

Goodness = Existence

Badness = non-existence.



It's not 42, but it's something.