Redefining Good & Evil

[Gwathagor]

Originally Posted by Nogrod

But I do not agree with Hakon that good and evil are "just" perspectives. Not at all. I think good is good and bad is bad nonetheless of your religion or your world-view.

Thinking one should be good because of one's own self interest (a place in heaven) - or being good to obey a higher call anyway because some authority wants it - is bad. One should be good for it's own sake. To be a human is to be good (and bye-bye the primordial sin). That's what I try to say on the subject of good and evil between Tolkien and Eddings... or on it anyway.

The world I believe is immoral or a-moral. The religions bring the good in with the God but I think we must be braver than that. There's no God to judge you. You should be good without a God; make it a hypothesis for a while and think how it would affect your thought! Then you're good if you choose right without orders or rewards. It's not easy to grow up from childhood's "please and be rewarded" attitude but we have hope. That's what we need to count on,

I'm very glad to hear you disagree with Hakon regarding the existence of good and evil. But I don't understand where good can come from if it does not come from God? How could such a thing exist in an impersonal, arbitrary, random world unless we make it ourselves, in which case it cannot be held as any kind of monolithic measure at all, but is just as subject to whim as Hakon's socialized morality?