What makes something good? What makes another thing bad? Are there such things? It depends on what you believe. If you believe in the existence of something outside of physical existence, there is a possibility there for some form of absolute “goodness.” If you don’t, it’s hard to make a case against complete relativism.
From my understanding, the apparent facts and evidence seem to say there is little to no indication that anything exists outside of existence. But, that is also kind of the nature of extra-existential forces; you can never prove they exist.
However, just because I believe that if we zoom way outside ourselves and our communities that good and evil is relative, still maintain my own beliefs as to what is good and evil. The source of that morality is my own feelings and emotions, which stem from a combination of my genetic/ human nature and my experiences. I admit that my morality is completely relative, but many aspects of it are shared by billions. Not to mention, from an economics perspective, it would be better to assume, and live as if there is heaven and hell.
All this being said I feel like there is a statistical objectivity to what societies determine to be good and evil. Many moral codes/ laws/ whatever they may be didn’t pop out of thin air. The undergo trial and error, and evolution of sorts in which they are subject to their own form of natural selection. The ideas that are conducive to self-propagation survived and are passed, on while others die off. And with that you can make all sorts of comparisons to biology and life and what is life etc. Everything that occurs in living things is the result of stochastic/ random processes, and yet those random molecule collisions somehow resulted in life and consciousness because of the inherent favorability of certain collisions, which is based on the nature of our reality. The comparison being — what makes something alive : what makes something good — both are based on arbitrary “foundations” but yet there is some force that drives things away from complete randomness/ relativity.
Anyways that what I have on this for now. Probably will revisit some of these ideas in the future. Hope some of that made sense.
nANIMOv 