Judging morality

What are the criteria for judging a certain set of morals good?

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Why I call myself a „non-believer“ or „atheist“:
I can´t relate to any of the god concepts I´m familiar with so far.
Either I´m not convinced by the concept, or
– although not having a problem with the worldview itself -
I see no reason to call one of its elements „God“:
There are already more precise, more common, less loaded and less likely to be misunderstood terms for these elements.
E.g. I prefer to call nature „nature“, the universe „universe“ and everything „everything“.

Why, my personal set of morals, of course. :p

In all seriousness, the only thing I have to go on is my "subjective motivational set" - that is, all the things tucked away in my psyche that might motivate me one way or another, such as my empathy, my self-interest, my stubbornness, my desire to alleviate suffering, &c.

And I'll go along with Hume and say I don't think there's a lot anyone can do about their subjective motivational set. It is what it is.

So, in conclusion, we're all just atoms bumping into each other. Tadaaa.

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I could see this thread getting really interesting and heated....

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Personally, I think it all boils down to "Am I loving my neighbour as myself?"
Am I loving my neighbor by illegalling downloading his songs? Am I loving my neighbor by keeping change when I was given too much? Am I loving my neighbor in caring for my partner in sickness? Am I loving my neighbor when I am polite?

It's rather easy, actually. It's getting into the pettiness of law and legality that makes it complicated. You could say that to understand morality, one must become like a child.

Expediency?

Font size?

One criterion: How well they agree with my own.

Coming up with a universal moral standard is hard, but I had a debate as a final for my speech class last year, the topic being "Gays are not normal". I was the 2nd affirmative for the negative side of the debate (I crushed the other team btw), and I came up with an attack centering around the governments ability to take away rights. Normally the government takes away rights to ensure the stability and wellbeing of the nation. Slavery was one of these things, and since it was good for the nation's economy and racism, laws were made to uphold and protect it. However, it caused a portion of the nation to become unhappy, and through empathy and protest, it was changed, and the right to hold slaves was taken away. We see many other examples of this, and eventually the government's ability to take away the rights of others should go something like this:

The only right that exists with the power to take away the right of another sentient being exists under the control of the government, to be used only to take away the right to take the rights of others from those who are not the government.

Simplistically put, if I want to smoke weed, so long as I don't harm anyone else, I'm a-ok. If I hate gays and try to take away their right to marriage, I'm wrong because I'm trying to take away the rights of another person when I'm not the government, and the right I'm trying to take does not impede on the rights of others.

Now, after trudging through my thought process, I would have to say that the universal moral standard (or something really close to it) would have to be derived from that.

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I owe a debt to Jesus Christ, and I intend to pay it in full, in the hopes that one day I might be in the company of He for whom I have fought so hard.

Life is a test, and there is no cheating

Never give in, never give up, and always fight to the last, for this is the first, the greatest, the end, this is it.

You examine the consequences of following such morals. How else can you judge them?

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Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.

-- Bob Dylan

And where does "love my neighbor as myself" come from?

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