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Originally posted by johnnymysto
If you're eating an ice cream cone, and I knock it out of your hand and onto the ground, that would be considered an immoral action, but at the same time it isn't bad for the group. It's bad for YOU, but the group doesn't feel the consequences of that.
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1. wasted resources = bad for group
2. conflict (if the other person reacts and fights with you) = instability = bad for the group
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So, if the Golden Rule tells us what we should and shouldn't do to each other, what defines the sense of good actions and bad actions? It has to be something, some being that has the authority to do so. And that being is God.
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Whoa whoa whoa. That's a bit of a logical leap.
What defines the sense of good and bad actions - even in a theocracy - is always some kind of social agreement on good and bad. That social agreement might take the form of authority given to a group of mullahs or it might be interpretation of religious texts as in the case of sharia (look at Egypt vs. Saudi Arabia vs. Iran), or it might be a gradual evolution of mores in a secular society. Look at miscegenation. Interracial marriage used to be against the law in the U.S. As our society's ideas about race have evolved, so have the mores and laws about interracial marriage. It didn't take an appeal to religion to reverse those laws (which were themselves based in religion or at least backed up by selective appeal to scripture), all it took was some science, a lot of protesting, and a basic appeal to peoples' common sense and common decency. Eventually it has become more and more accepted.
The "being" that has the authority to define good vs. bad actions doesn't have to be god. It can just as easily be The People, and in fact usually IS the people. Sometimes they may make an appeal to religion to back up their ideas, but it's always the people defining things.