Is it possible to define good and evil without religion?
>>359794
No
>>359794
Yeah, but it helps
Yes.
>>359814
How would you define it?
Good is anything that encourages unity or movement towards a singularity.
Evil is anything that separates or drives apart.
You can understand good and evil through entropy.
>>359861
So life is inherently evil because it's the result of increased entropy? It all makes sense now!
[spoiler]Not really.[/spoiler]
>>359794
Personal opinion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9We2XsVZfc
It's obvious, morality is our mental judgement of what we actions we are willing to perform by weighing the emotional or practical consequences. Someone who isn't raised learning morality would still refuse to kill or steal because it would harm their own emotional well-being.
>>360699
>Someone who isn't raised learning morality would still refuse to kill or steal because it would harm their own emotional well-being.
[Citation needed]
>>360713
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-biology/
>>359794
In the simplest sense, a value is a latent, ever-present desire, to be distinguished from the fleeting, momentary, or incidental desires. When anyone harbors, in their character an enduring desire for something, that is a value, as the term is understood in the social sciences. The object of this desire is then said to 'have value'. So when _everyone_ ought to hold such a desire for something, that desire produces a normative value, a value that everyone _ought_ to have.
On close analysis, I believe there is only one core value: in agreement with many great philosophers in history (Aristotle, Richard Taylor, Stoicism, Epicureanism, etc.), I find this to be the desire for happiness. I believe that all other values are derived from this, in conjunction with other facts of the universe, and that all normative values are what they are because they must be held and acted upon in order for any human being to have the best chance of achieving a genuine, enduring happiness. When we say “you ought to value X” we mean that, if you do, you will improve your chances of enduring happiness, and if you do not, you will decrease those chances.
By happiness I do not mean mere momentary pleasure or joy, but an abiding contentment, a persistent, underlying sense of reverie that makes life itself worth living, in the absence of which life becomes shallow, unsatisfying, and ultimately meaningless. As David Myers puts it, real happiness means “fulfillment, well-being, and enduring personal joy”. This happiness is rarely possible, and certainly impeded, amidst loneliness, fear, purposelessness, destruction, misery, insanity, or chronic anxiety or stress, among other things. In contrast, happiness is found, secured, and improved amidst love, good friendships, security, purposefulness, creation, joy sanity, and peace.
