People have spent millenia thinking about rational answers to those questions. It's easy enough to find answers, but much like with religion there is no consensus. The answers follow a much more rigorous logic then "god said so" though. I'm not a moral nihillist because that's not a thing, but I am a moral anti-realist because it's clear that there are no intrinsic moral laws. It's all preference based.

It is not all preference based, as very few moral systems lead to thriving societies that are stable and able to self-reproduce rather than collapsing back into chaos. In fact, almost none do.

Take a look at the ten commandments. "Honor thy father and mother so that it may be well with you and you may live long in the land". What happens when generation n+1 thinks they are morally superior to generation n? The same also holds for n+2, and so you do not have a stable society, you have a disintegrating society. Or half the commandments banning envy. Why ban envy and wanting what your neighbor has? Because envy-based moral systems lead to less successful societies than charity based moral systems, where the rich are told they should be generous to the poor versus telling the poor that they have a right to something possessed by the rich. It is not arbitrary -- some ethical codes lead to stable, successful societies and others do not.

One of the problems with modernism is that we have thrown away this notion of reverence and replaced it with a belief in moral progress, which has only led to an ocean of murders and social disintegration. In 10 generations, there will be no modernism left, it will be re-absorbed into more traditional societies, because modernist societies aren't able to reproduce themselves. Not biologically, not ethically, not economically. Yes, there are a few Gene Roddenberry holdouts that believe in generic liberalism as a system on which a society can be based. But the voice of LaFayette is always drowned out by the voice of Robespierre. Lafayette was a fool, thinking that whatever seemed right to him could be the basis of a society.

So it's not so much that I believe I can win an argument with someone who believes moral systems are preference based, but that those who do believe that will simply be outcompeted. Societies in which large numbers hold to such views will be unable to reproduce themselves and they will be eclipsed by societies that adopt ethical codes that form specific templates. A painter can paint a picture of any creature, but actual living, successful organisms are under strict constraints. A philosopher can imagine any moral code, but living, successful societies have to stick to what actually works.

There is such a wide gulf between what religious folk (well, American religious folk at least) think they represent, and how they actually act. E.g. my brother-in-law is a devout Christian and is extremely fond of saying 'What would Jesus do' and then proceeding to do the opposite.

What is tearing apart America right now? Politics? No. Evangelical politics. It does not bring stability.

I think you're arguing against something the grandparent didn't claim? They didn't say that various moral systems wouldn't have different outcomes, just that none of them would be intrinsically correct.

We can note, for instance, that "produces a thriving society" is a thing for which you're imposing a preference. There's no inherent reason why that's the true system, just that we think it'd be nifty if that was an outcome.

We have countries today that treat women as second class citizens and still practice slavery and they can be considered "thriving" societies which are completely different from the Western world which can also be considered to be made up of "thriving" societies.

So if the requirement for a moral system to be "true" is for it to result in a thriving society we have a problem because we still have competing moral systems.

And even if we somehow whittled down to one global system, just because people believe in it doesn't make it true (do you need me to provide examples of nearly universal beliefs that were proven untrue later?)

> Why is murder evil? Why is stealing evil? Why is anything evil or good for that matter?

These are covered by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Evil in this context is any violation of rights as defined by the UDHR

https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...

Why resort to a religion when you can have empathy for your fellow human, seems like a waste of time :)

The UN does not decide what is _evil_ or not, and empathy is not some self-evident trait from which all objective morality comes from. You could possibly argue that empathy is evolutionary and aids society and in that way has some objective merit, but the GP is right, we have to accept that our moral systems are rooted in some assumptions.

It's actually very simple. There is no such thing as objective morality. However, social norms are explained by people acting in their own rational self-interest. For example, I want to live in a society where I don't get murdered. Therefore, I want to live in a society that criminalizes murder. That's all there is to it. That is your "Why?" answered.

To go one step further, the why of questions like "Why don't you want to get murdered?" are because I come from a long line of organisms that didn't get murdered because of a high drive to not get murdered. The ones without that drive got weeded out. There's still no morality involved, I just axiomatically don't want to get murdered.

> Why is murder evil? Why is stealing evil? Why is anything evil or good for that matter? At least religious people have answers to these questions.

Hard to answer without first defining evil (ideally avoiding Godwin's law).

When I think of religion in the context of Hacker News I think of things like Michael O. Church evangelizing functional programming or the people who challenged the epistemological paradigm of the cladistics journal which must be parsimony. So I feel confused when I see the other kind of religion here. One way you could make us feel even more uncomfortable is by sharing information we haven't considered, like a weakness in a computer system or a contradiction in a generally accepted practice.

There is an entire branch of Philosophy called Ethics that gives us better answers to these questions and a better framework for grappling with them then religion ever has. It is quite arrogant to assume that atheists have no answers at all to these questions.

Ah yeah, good argument, a field of study exists. Given you are a well educated atheist you can explain the underpinnings of your morality right?

Yes. A set of ab initio values and the golden rule as a base, and societal consensus to work out the finer details.

Yeah, I wasn't asking what your beliefs were. I was asking why your beliefs are the "true" beliefs.