Atheists and/or agnostics: If there were such a thing as suffering and injustice anywhere in the universe....?

Question

Do you think that would be considered a "bad" or a "good" thing?

Is there anywhere according to any value system, where raping, torturing and murdering everyone, is considered "nice" and acceptable?
If there were anywhere that had such a thing as kindness and generosity, would that be considered a "bad" thing, unacceptable?

Do you think that there are any absolutes at all, any set of values at all which can be agreed upon?
Or is it truly "no right and wrong, only difference in opinion?",

And if this were true, how would any intelligent species be able to preserve itself?

Tuila: I'm sure your opinion would change if you had any first hand experience with "bad".

icarus: So if we are successful, and it works, that has to be considered a provable absolute.
That means we are RIGHT to be that way....

Pangel, though some good can come from bad, it not always does. This is not a rule.
I can't see any good at all coming from murdering children, torturing any innocent people, any kind of cruel injustice bad enough to where there is no recovery, and no real "good" could ever come from....none that ever makes up for the damage done.

Yoda Green: Yeah, and I'm sure that those children were happy to die.

I'm sure there were no tears, and there was no pain in their deaths and they were not afraid at all.

They did that because they were IGNORANT and DUMB, You would HAVE to be in order to think that that were any kind of 'good' thing.
THe only reason we don't accept that now is because we are SMARTER than that and can recognize that the rights and feelings of children to be considered is an ABSOLUTE>

Answer 1

there is no "good" or "bad", just our perceptions.

and i have experience with what you would call bad, i just choose not to label it and get stuck thinking in those terms.

Answer 2

Of course 'right' and 'wrong' are part of our perception. There is no 'universal truth' as to what is right or wrong. I believe this is what makes humanity great; its reasoning and logic. Otherwise, how would we have ever come to have an advanced civilization if we allowed murder, rape, theft, etc.

I don't need religion to give me morals. I know how I wish to be treated, and this is how I treat others. You'll find that it is a fairly common atheist/agnostic belief that Christians, Muslims, etc only do "right" because if they don't theres always that threat of eternal damnation. I'm not sure where I stand on that.

Although I said there was no universal truth to morality, I do believe that society can and has agreed on a predefined set of values: norms. There are three different types of norms; folkways, morals, and laws. These govern almost every aspect of human social interaction.

So, yes, there is no right or wrong other than what man make for itself. And I believe this is an amazingly wonderful thing.

Answer 3

The root of your question has to do with the source and utility of a moral code. Such a code derives from evolution, which applies to society as well as to species: a society which lives by a sound moral code will survive preferably to one that does not. Murder and robbery are clearly inimical to most any society, so these are properly condemned. The moral test to apply to a proposed action must be: would doing this plausibly have a beneficial, or a detrimental, effect on society as a whole? Such prognostications can't be perfect, but at least there is a standard to which to aspire. Religions claim to be the origin of moral codes, but such claims are clearly bogus.

Answer 4

Morality arises as a code that keeps a population stable. Any imbalance in "right" to "wrong" disturbs that balance and threatens the survival of the group. We could say the raping, torturing, etc. is bad because it destroys, while kindness, generosity, etc. is good because it builds and creates cohesiveness. I do not foresee there being a reality wherein destruction is "good," unless the ultimate goal is total chaos or annihilation. Perhaps if one were a nihilist, this reversal would be feasible; but in any organized society, destruction and organization do not mix. Once destruction ensues to a certain extent, organization breaks down; therefore the "good" values are necessary glue to allow civilization to progress.

Answer 5

Suffering and injustice is a bad thing. Rape, torture, and murder isn't nice nor is it acceptable and should be punished accordingly. Kindness and generosity are good things not bad things. Listen just because Atheists, Agnostics, FreeThinkers, and Humanists don't get our values and morals from some book such as the bible doesn't mean that we are all corrupt people. It's quite the contrary. There's always the legal system which our goverment and laws are Secular if i must say so myself.

Answer 6

There is no value system (apart from someone psychopathic maybe) that would consider raping and torturing correct.

The human species preserves itself because each individual knows "I wouldn't like to get raped, tortured or killed" and so with this being the general opinion, we all try and make sure it happens as little as possible.

I'm not sure if you are trying to touch on the 'all atheists have no morals and are evil and approve of rape, torture etc.' frame of mind, but if you are, you're wrong.

Atheists don't believe in God. That's all.

An intelligent species preserves itself by knowing we're better protected in groups and as a result we live in colonies and eventually towns and cities to ensure those above things don't happen.

Answer 7

i think it would be natural, whatever happens happens. Manny religions of the past were all about human sacrifice, the spanish inqusition was all about toture. Do i personally as an atheist think that this was wrong, yes!! i am a very moral person and do not want to see any harm done to innocent people. It seems that religion is the main reason things like this happen. female circumcisions, beheadings, suicide bombings, communal rape, genocide... last i heard these all have a religious reason to make the people commiting them feel right by doing it.

Answer 8

Moral values are entirely subjective but human nature is such that we tend to agree on what is 'nice' and what is 'nasty' - Evolution has equipped us with traits which tend to encourage close-knit, co-operative societies, which is largely why we're such an enormously successful species today.

ADDENDUM: No it doesn't mean we're 'right' to be this way, it just means this is the way we are. Right and wrong are subjective value judgments, so you might very well be of the opinion that treating people decently is the 'right' thing to do (and as it happens I would agree) but that describes your response to human behaviour rather than being a property of the behaviour itself. Hume disproved objectivity in morals and ethics decades ago.

Answer 9

There is one thing that makes morality important...compassion. When a person is compelled to "feel" for another, morality matters. Bad and good are almost meaningless, and happen as mere categories down the road from compassion. We barely muster compassion for other humans. Less when they speak a different language, or have a different color. I don't think human compassion could reach outside the solar system.

Answer 10

Morals are created and settled upon by society. So could you find some society that readily accepted murder as a 'good' moral? Sure. Cannibalistic societies have no problem killing and eating their enemies....it is an acceptable moral for their society. So to ask if there some set of universally accepted morals, I'd say no.

Answer 11

i dont think that negative things such as rape can ever be a good thing ... that isnt to say that good cannot come from it
i hear many amazing stories of people who have come through horrible things , only to go on and inspire others
in this way ... yes we can see good

and if kindness and generosity is feeding a bad habit or bad life , then sometimes being cruel to be kind is more beneficial ...
for instance is giving money to a drug user a bad thing ?
is telling someone they look good in something when they will go out and be laughed at a bad thing ?