Atheists: What's objectively bad about murder?

It violates the categorical imperative. Religion is unnecessary for ethical theory.

Are you suggesting that murdering a toddler with a chainsaw would not be morally deplorable unless a MAGICAL BEING declared it to be morally deplorable? That it's only deplorable because MAGIC makes it so?

Murder is wrong because it HURTS people. This is really NOT that hard to figure out! I really do not understand why theists seem to have such an amazingly difficult time understanding that, because you know...they ask this sort of thing ALL THE TIME. It's not like it's one person asking this, it's an epidemic with the religious! What is wrong with you people?

Yes, WE decide what is right and what is wrong, and we decide what is right and wrong based on the effects of those actions on people and on our world. There are NO beneficial effects for anyone for murding a child with a chain saw. None. The effects are 100% devastating. And we can look at a chainsaw and think, "that would REALLY hurt for someone to kill me with a chainsaw. I wouldn't want someone to do that to ME." It doesn't take MAGIC to figure either of those things out.

There is NO reason whatsoever to believe that any sort of "God" or magical being is necessary to help us figure out what is right and what is wrong.

This type of argument is really nothing more than theists "playing dumb" as an argument on behalf of the existence of "God". If it isn't just playing dumb, are you going to be able to look us in the face and tell us in all SERIOUSNESS that you honestly would not be able to figure out all on your own that murdering children with a chainsaw is bad?

Edit: I apologize for apparently misunderstanding your intentions with this question, but this IS something we see from theists ALL THE TIME, and frankly, (as I'm sure you can tell) it just pisses me off when theists suggest or insinuate that some sort of "magic" is necessary for there to be a difference between right and wrong. I'll be honest...the fact that you are an atheist actually makes this question all that much more confusing, because I don't get why an atheist would want to give the impression that right and wrong are in any way difficult to figure out through simply natural means, using human logic.

I stand by what I said in the third paragraph as the answer to your question, though.

I suggest you read some David Hume (that guy is a beast).

He had a view referred to as "weak subjectivism" by philosophers.

He thought that for the most part every human is psychologically similar. It is a biological fact that humans have certain "moral" reactions and feelings to certain things (ei. almost anyone would find murder deplorable even if they were raised morally neutral...why? because that is how human psychology just happens to work).

So now we take those psychological similarities and we call it the "ideal" moral standard for human behavior. With this ideal standard we can then objectively judge a person's actions to be morally right or wrong. So a sociopath would still be obligated to be "good" because he is well aware of the biological and sort of democratic consensus of "goodness" that healthy humans have.

Now outside the human experience there is NO objective moral truth, the moral "truth" comes from within the human experience, it comes in our very psychological factors. Hence there is no objective morality, but there is a "weak subjective" morality.

Just read Hume's stuff on ethics, I did not do him justice with what I wrote. He is truly masterful.

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Besides the obvious connotation that murder is wrong, I also think that sociologically, murder would be ingrained in the human race that murder is not only depraved, but inefficient.How could a small hunter/gatherer society maintain itself if people constantly killed each other? Yes, people were violent, but of course if you killed a member of your own tribe, you were punished - the tribe had lost a hunter, a person with knowledge, labor. Most of our societal tendencies come from our survival techniques way back when. As for child murder, like you mentioned, children's faces - big eyes, round cheeks, etc - trigger protective tendencies in our brain that we can't control; it's our psychological code to protect them. So child murder isn't necessarily an issue of objective depravity but our own societal wiring - really, any murder, I think, comes down to our own wiring.

I don't know if this is answer you were looking for or if I directly addressed your question, but hope I helped!

You have to understand what morality is. Let's put it this way - If you want to make a sandwich, then putting two pieces of bread on the floor and singing the national anthem of Canada is wrong, and putting meat in between two pieces of bread is right. So if you have a clear intention, there are right ways and wrong ways of doing things. Following from this, if you want to be a member in society, there are right ways to become a member of society, and wrong ways. Right ways do not include killing toddlers with chainsaws. That is wrong. Members of society will object to it, and they will be justified in doing so. Being a member of society means showing respect and a degree of civility to other people, which you violate with chainsaw murder.

People expect things from you, and there are rational and irrational things for them to expect from you. This is morality in a nutshell. Of course it's a thousand times more complicated than what I've been able to express in a paragraph, but this is a start.

I'm an atheist, so I guess that I'm qualified to answer your question.

Yes, murdering toddlers is wrong, as is murdering* anyone.

Since, as an atheist, I believe that there is no life beyond this one, I also believe that this -- the only life -- is the greatest prize of which one can be deprived.

So, depriving one of life is a greater crime to an atheist that to a theist: you believers think that something greater follows, be we think that, when a murder is committed, a much greater theft has taken place.

* Where 'murder' means the killing of a victim who has not initiated violence. 'Self-defense' after an initial attack does not meet this criterion.

"Atheists: How do objectively define what's stable and evil?" -i do no longer. Neither does everyone else. everyone who thinks they have are fooling themselves. "Is it via own determination, widespread opinion, or something else?" -blend between organic impulses, own opinion in reaction to reason and/or emotion, and the enter of others. "As a Christian my ethical properly-known is in reaction to God's time-commemorated character." -No, you're basing it on your interpretation of God's character, as offered via others. God does no longer have a "time-commemorated character." "i will say that homicide or stealing is incorrect by using fact God's character and word says it particularly is incorrect." -different than that there are circumstances interior the Bible the place he condoned the two a sort of issues, so his morality won't be able to be suggested to be absolute or purpose, can it? "How does an Atheist convince yet another Atheist that something is stable or undesirable with none ethical properly-known?" -communicate to them appropriate to the capacity outcomes of the action and convince them the the result isn't proper. "who's to declare who's good?" -all and sundry. "Do you have faith one man or woman's opinion be in simple terms as valid as yet another's?" -relies upon on what we are conversing approximately. i visit very just about consistently evaluate the opinion of a longtime expert to be extra valid than the opinion of somebody with little or no expertise or know-how of the subject rely.

The ability to sympathize countered with intelligence is what causes ethics. A god solves nothing on the issues of morality.

It's bad for civilization and societies which will permit will become dead societies. Imagine if we had not reigned in nuclear war, our civlization would just become another stastitic in the universe of a failed speices which there are probably certainly many.