Bingo.
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It might have been a culture norm for the Aztecâs to kill and ate their enemyâs children. Over time, each society develops their own cultural and societal norms. Todayâs society is far different from biblical culture and norm for these to have any credence or authority in todayâs world.
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Going a little crazy with the moving topics around, arenât we?
Yes, trying to get it back in order 
This is a little better, but Patrickâs one post is still off
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I am not always sure that terms like âwickednessâ are very useful except as describing our emotional reaction to something, and our reactions are by nature subjective. But itâs fair to say that we generally respond to bad actions at different levels. Broadly, these are (1) mere subjective disapproval and (2) objective, active response (e.g., by way of criminal statutes and enforcement mechanisms).
Moral philosophy is always âungroundedâ in that no âultimateâ reason for it can be given, and as Harshman has pointed out, this is so whether there are any gods or not, and whether those gods have moral opinions or not. But I agree with him that it is âobjective-ishâ in that core components of human moral systems seem to be not just a pure social construct but seem instead to be driven by our neural make-up. We find sociopaths frightening precisely because this is what we see missing â Hannibal Lecter makes such a good villain because, among other things, itâs plain that he simply doesnât have any interest in how his actions affect others (or, indeed, does, but enjoys it).
If you want to âexplainâ morality it inevitably has to be asked: what kind of explanation do you want? The explanation for âwhy is there such a thing as moralityâ is liable to lie in biology and neuroscience, while the explanation for âwhy do you think I shouldnât steal this carâ lies in moral reasoning. The source of it all is some mix of basic human universals, mediated and modified through human cognitive processes (which allow the insertion of such things as the relative weighings of harm, where harm is inevitable), and further mediated and modified by social interaction.
And the social interaction part of it â well, thatâs where it gets particularly weird. Thatâs where you can wind up with âmoralâ standards like âwomen shouldnât braid their hair.â I sometimes think that the key reason why some people so desperately want there to be a basis for some sort of âobjectiveâ morality lies in these types of propositions. Itâs not hard to convince others that wild killing sprees are generally a bad thing, but when the job is to convince others that hair-braiding is evil, the only sort of system that will work is not one based in actual moral philosophy, but one based on command.
As for âdancing to our DNA,â I donât see the problem there. We are indeed responding to internal and external causes when we act in the world. I donât know anyone who thinks this negates moral responsibility; the difference is more often between those who think that it is irrelevant and those who think of it as mitigating moral blame (e.g., if someone has a propensity to violence because of a serious trauma to the brain, or some neural abnormality, do we respond differently than we do to someone whose violence does not appear to have such contributing causes?).
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Many naturalist (and Christian philosophers) hold to a view of moral realism that posits there are brute basic moral facts, that donât depend on God for their existence, that all other moral facts are built off of. Christians like Swinburne and atheists like Wielenberg hold to something like this. So you donât have to call someone wicked in the context of evolution.
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Why canât I be judgmental on those who perpetrated evils in the past?
First of all itâs atheism, no reason to capitalize the A. Second, itâs not just about atheism, itâs about morality.
Cool story bro. Oh by the way, this is âwickedâ in your opinion? Why should anyone believe you?
Why is that good? What is it that makes that be what is good?
Same goes for Godâs opinion. Itâs still just an opinion.
And yours too. All you can offer, no different than anyone else despite your pretensions otherwise, is assertions. You can just SAY what you think is good and what isnât good, and from nothing does the truth of that follow.
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I brought of the term âwickednessâ because it is the term most used in the bible to describe people and groups of people. For example, all people including children were wicked except Noah and his family.
Wickedness is used in the bible without much definition. So is sin. Contrast this with 21 century law and crime. With is illegal has to be codified before a successful prosecution and punishment can happen if places where the rule of law is in place. Contrast this with the bible, we all you had to say a group of people and their animals were wicked, all you just wipe them out in a genocide. The bible isnât a good law book either.
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I could ask you the very same question. Your answer would not be any better than mine.
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Not to be presumptuous, but I suspect a theist might condemn this behaviour on the grounds that the Aztecâs religion did not worship a real God.
If so, then why could someone not object to your moral code on the very same grounds?
And if not, then on what grounds would a theist who subscribes to the form of Divine Command Theory you seem to be advocating here object to this behaviour
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Divine Command Theory really doesnât even get out of the gate, from my point of view. Importantly, we donât find it taught in the Bible. In fact we have several very clear cases in the Bible of humans challenging God even to His face, insisting that God Himself must do what is right, which obviously assumes thereâs a standard of goodness to which even God must adhere.
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I thought Iâd share this paper by Erik Wielenberg. Heâs been pretty influential
on me and how I think about morality. This papers lays out a position of objective morality that doesnât require a theistic foundation. Now itâs fully compatible with Theism, and some Christians do hold to it. Enjoy.
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Indeed not. Itâs utterly nonsenscial.
But, you know, itâs interesting to see how some people see sense in it anyhow, and some just donât. There does seem to be a pretty wide spectrum of attitudes toward authority, and these attitudes are so hard to alter that I have to wonder if there isnât some hard-wired basis for them. One sees this in judges â some are very warm to authority, some rather cold. A person whose philosophy is democratic (small-d here) may be a constitutional democrat (âthe people have the right to self-govern, but there are some things they may not do to othersâ) or a true majoritarian (âwhat the people vote for is rightâ). Some like extraconstitutional notions like âemergency executive powersâ and some do not. Some focus on the rights of individuals, others on ârightsâ of agencies, collectives and groups of one kind or another.
But what is interesting about those classifications, when it comes to judges, is that they do not reliably track politics. There are hard-core authoritarians of almost any political stripe.
I found Thackerâs suggestions, earlier in this thread, that secular ethics inherently must consist of âmight makes rightâ quite bizarre. In reality, some bullies are religious, and some are godless, and belief (and disbelief) in the virtue of mere authority crosses all kinds of political, social and religious boundaries.
Among creationists, one encounters an awful lot of majoritarianism â even a sort of epistemic majoritarianism which says that if a very large number of people believe something, it must therefore be true. One certainly encounters the idea that if a majority of people in a community wish creationism to be taught to children, it should be taught, without regard to its truth or falsity.
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