Lots of bashing for the belief of God....

[trestres]

The_vagabond7 said:

I really don't want to get involved, but I did want to make one point, and then run, which I will do in that order.

It has to do with "why shouldn't you just let people go around murdering if murdering isn't wrong? How can you tell somebody that it's wrong to kill people if you don't believe in god or absolute morality?"

This is a naive and old view of justice and morals. You can see justice as being either immovable, or pragmatic. If somebody goes around murdering people, he must be caught and appropriate punishment meded out (whatever that punishment may be.).

Now you can take the view that he must be punished because he did something "wrong", or you can take the view that action must be taken against him out of pragmatic regard for society.

In the former, it does not matter if punishing the murderer is of any benefit to anyone. He must be punished because he did something "wrong", end of story. The benefit to society is irrelevant, wrong doers must be punished on the basis of doing something wrong. One would assume however that weeding out wrong doers is beneficial, but this is an assumption, not based on any pragmatic results, but again the view that "wrong=bad" "right=good". This can be seen in the example of trying to punish gays. Punishing homosexuals does not have some net benefit to society, however there in times past (and still in times present) have been those that feel that homesexuality should be made illegal, and gays should be punished by means of jail (or in some instanced punished by violence), or at the very least stigmatized. But the important thing to remember is that in this view, wrongdoing befits retaliation and thereby prevention on the grounds that it was wrongdoing, regardless of whether or not it makes the members of society happier.

The second view is that actions that harm society should be reacted against, not because they are inherently wrong, but because taking action against something harmful increases the wellbeing of a society. In this view rehabilitation of the one acting against society is of greater importance than arbitrary punishment of the individual for commiting an act that is viewed as objectively wrong. However said rehabilitation should still be fairly ascetic in nature, and also carry a stigma to act as a deterent towards others that could potentially act in the same way. In this view "wrong" or "immoral" just become shorthand terms for that which is harmful to society (which of course includes individuals since they make up society), and action is never taken against them because what they have done is immoral, but because it behooves society to act against something that is destructive to itself.

The second view is considerably more empathetic towards human beings. As psychological tests have shown, we are essentially hardwired for amorality (the milgram experiments come to mind). Whatever it is we think is right and wrong, we will throw that view under the bus if some one we view as sufficiently authoritative tells us to.  You also have to keep in mind that even most nazi's were not raving lunatic murderers. They had families, jobs, went to church on sundays, visited their grandmother, and then killed millions of jews because an authority figure told them to. Under the right circumstances we are all monsters, so why punish people on the grounds of being a monster? The answer is you don't "punish them" you act pragmatically to attempt to rehabilitate them while detering the behavior of others by being authoritative.

That is how you tell somebody it is "wrong" to murder without believing in absolute morality.

Everyone knows deep inside them what really is wrong and what is right. That's what differs us from animals, you cannot place a human being at the same level of an animal. Animals look for their wellbeing in every action, us humans can for example go through suffering to avoid a major harm. Animals behave like you said.

Germans had the option to avoid killing those "millions of jews" (people still believe what the media says?) and some did, but most of those who didn't and killed the jews, didn't do it out of fear, but because they had been deceived. Much like the masses were deceived in the USA so that the country could join WW2. People mostly do things because of ignorance rather than fear, because they believe in, they have faith in the authority, and that's where us humans fail at being so naive.

But you said that we do things for our wellbeing, define that wellbeing? How is it definded then? Isn't it subjective as well?

Sorry, I would write a bigger response, perhaps later, but I don't have much time right now.