Good and evil can be matters of perspective. Everyone has a biological instinct to feel empathy for those around us and for our fellow humans, but these can be overwritten by culture, upbringing, religion etc.

Is it OK to torture a baby? The vast majority of people would say no because it's an instinctial and biological response to be disgusted at the torture of a child that requires our protection. However, as has happened and continues to happen, what if the parents believed the child to be possesed? They may torture the child in an attempt to "exorcise" the demon from the child. From the parents perspective they are morally correct to torture that child as they firmly believe they are doing so for good of the child and the good of humanity. In the past this would be the most common view so in this context it becomes morally "good".

Moral authority comes from the beliefs and the culture of the time. Acts that we would class as evil and go against most peoples biological and moral instincts are nearly always done under the belief of "good".

No actually, I spent the first twenty two years of my life studying all religions in depth before I decided they were all bunk. I've read the bible cover to cover multiple times in multiple translation, and it was definitely slavery. As for your point here....

Yes it says not to permanently injure them. You can beat them, just don't permanently injure them. That's not really something to be proud of. I mean did you read that chapter or any of the other sections on slavery? It only partially deals with slavery (will get to the slavery aspect in a second), but it's not flattering. If you give your slave a wife, and they have kids, they are born into slavery and you retain possession of the wife and children. You can hold his wife and children hostage as your property and he has to choose between being your servant forever with his family, or being free. You can sugar coat this, but any way you look at it, humans beings are being passed around bought and sold and treated as another human beings property, you can even sell your own daughter into slavery with the expectation that either the slave owner or one of his sons will marry her one day. But oh, don't worry, the daughter you just sold into slavery must continue to receive food and water if her male master decides to add more women to his harem, he can't just forget about you, and if he decides to give her to his son it's like she's family now! So I guess it's not so bad after all selling your daughter to another man. Also being a woman, she never gets to go free unless her master decides to free her, women don't get the six years and freed on the seventh or work til the next jubilee year that jewish men do (note there are some scholars that disagree with this point). You buy her for keeps. Also, if you are a foreign slave you do not get to go free on the seventh year, they own you until they decide they are done with you.

The whole manservant thing really only applied to jewish men. There was a distinct line between debt slaves and foreign slaves. If you were a woman or a foreigner you were being sold into slavery, and you only hope was that they either do irreperable harm to you, or decide to let you go, or somebody else bought you and gave you freedom.

from leviticus 25

39“‘If one of your countrymen becomes poor among you and sells himself to you, do not make him work as a slave. 40He is to be treated as a hired worker or a temporary resident among you; he is to work for you until the Year of Jubilee. 41Then he and his children are to be released, and he will go back to his own clan and to the property of his forefathers. 42Because the Israelites are my servants, whom I brought out of Egypt, they must not be sold as slaves. 43Do not rule over them ruthlessly, but fear your God.

note if one of your "countrymen". Gods people are not to be slaves, merely hired workers for a time. It goes on.

44“‘Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. 45You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. 46You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.

Notice to distinction between the two groups. Jewish men had it cushy (just like in everything else in their culture), it was women and foreigners that were actually slaves. The israelites got special care as "slaves" , they were even allowed to buy themselves if they happen to have sold themself into slavery to a non jew, they could also be bought by their family, or they had to be released on the jubilee year as the passage goes on. God gave special favor to jewish men, but everybody else was a slave. And the foreigners either got sold into slavery or taken forcibly into slavery during one of their brutal conquests. But don't worry, they got to take the sabbath off too, because god is kindly and just.

And this goes along way towards how the non abolitionist christians felt justified in slavery. The bible never condemns it, merely instructs one how to do it properly (make sure god's men get the sweet end of the deal). You like to point out that abolitionists were christians, but like I said, so was everybody else in america all the slave owners included. Both of whom were pointing to the bible and drawing the exact opposite conclusions from it. Which sounds more like they had their own sense of morality and were making an appeal to the authority of the day to justify their cause.

Humans

No no. No such bullshit. No other consequences. This act won't save the world (LOL! if that was the case the majority of humans would torture the baby without second thoughts) and it won't drive out any imaginary demons.

It's an easy scenario. You got three guys and a hammer or one guy with a hammer and a baby. No consequences for anyone else, no saving the world or such BS.

When is it okay to torture an innocent being when there's absolutely no gain (except for the pleasure to the torturer) ?

Don't know if this applies, but some cultures consider things like infant circumcision (without painkillers, of course) and ritual tattoos to be a good thing - and because both procedures tend to be quite painful, they could be considered physical torture by someone with a different point of view.

Otherwise, I pretty much agree with  The_vagabond7.

You know what. You are arguing that morals are completely subjective. I want you to be aware of that.

So I want to ask you, why do you even start to argue with me if I say "Go BNP!" or whatever?

1. So instinct is good. I can partly agree with that. But what if somebody doesnt have that same insticnt? There are a lot of people who instinctively get pleasure from torturing animals. You wouldnt even try to argue with them. It's like you deny the whole world or moral argument that is out there in 1000's of philosofy books??

I'd say instinctive morals work only to a degree.

2. Of course you can assume the aliens would be compassionate. They could be or they could not. Morals still play a part in their decision. The question is, would they kill us or spare us and on what grounds? Morals arent the same as feelings of sympathy. They're tied to feelings, but not the same. You are dodging the question by avoiding the aliens part. By calling it a strawman or whatever. You wouldnt even argue with the aliens. But I know our leaders would.

Blue

Im skipping this part, for many reasons.

Orange.

1. Your replies are all over the place, you're changing the topic. So I repeat:

But the three guys with a hammer, their genes maybe don't produce such a feeling. So how could I (or you) then condemn them?

Nearly every atheist will in fact, just like you, argue that it's wrong to torment the baby no matter if it was in pre-historic times, today or by an alien on an alien planet and yet in these discussions he will drop comments like we already seen in this thread "it's all relative" - that is, the atheist will attribute himself to absolute morals (damn, I dont think attribute is the proper word) and contradicts himself without knowing it.

Extra question:
Of course everyone claims to have the truth. What is your point?

Please put at least a little thought into this.

Your examples were horrible and don't apply here, because in your scenarios the procedure of cirumcising the child has a purpose, some kind of gain.

Instead think of a scenario where you have one guy in the woods alone with a baby. And he's got a hammer. There is no gain except for his own temporary pleasure.

Right or wrong? Good or evil?

Seems like I put in more thought than you ever did.

You asked for a scenario where inflicting torture on a child could be considered a good thing, you got a few. Doesn't mean that torturing a child could be considered good in all given situations, nor does it mean that it couldn't be considered wrong in others.

My point is that such scenarios rarely exist, except perhaps in the case of paedophiles and sociopaths and they're a niche of current society. But if a society was run by sociopaths or peadophiles, it would be seen as morally acceptable and correct because everyone would have these instincts or culturally dehumanised attitudes that overide our currently evolved instict of empathy. Fortunately, our society and ourselves have evolved so that such acts are seen as morally wrong.

As it turns out, such a society as I've painted above has never truly existed and if they have then they would self-destruct.

@ Slimebeast )

that's totally sick and disgusting (-> evil) and would only be "good" to religions fanatists, racists or people with extreme perversions, still..

(assuming the child dies at some point - babies are very fragile, so in most of these cases it's bound to happen or at least it's lifetime will be severely shortened) at this point we all profit from less humans living on this earth, because the planet already is helplessly overcrowded and if this goes on there is bound to be a disaster in the future (or better it already is an absolute disaster .. especially for animal species, which are dieing out faster than ever before, even during the most catastrophic mass extinctions), so in that sense it's "good"