Is flushing toilet paper down the toilet a good thing or a bad thing?

It depends.  In the good ole USA, toilet paper is light and fluffy, and designed to dissolve in water.  There are no toilet paper solids in a sewer line by the next flush or packed in a septic tank.  It turns into some of the sludge the same as your solid wastes.  All fluid and flowing.  Now, in some parts of the world the toilet paper is not designed to dissolve and the plumbing systems are poor/different and not design to handle the waste water effluent, i.e. they leak.  So to keep things from clogging up, they tell you to dispose of the toilet paper in a trash can.  These places are usually the same places that consider toilet paper as a somewhat nasty way of doing things and you clean yourself with a bucket of water, and pour the water down the commode, or have a bidet.  The water users think the toilet paper users have a dirty butt.

It disintegrates in water, so the tissue is not an issue. 

It decomposes with the ****, so it is not an issue.

flashing a reasonable amount of toilet paper is always fine with each flush. 

what really ruins the toilet is Kleenex, baby wipes and paper towels 

it is fine in reasonable quantities.  toilet paper is designed to dissolve in water after a while

In a bucket?  That's disgusting - where do you live?  Toilet paper is made to be flushed = when it's a possible problem you buy TP that is "safe for septic systems".

No, you must put it in a blender and serve smoothies