Belindi
Even ethical goods and bads, such as deliberate torturing, are good or bad according to criteria.My criterion for sorting good from bad is the basically Christian and Humanist criterion which is universal good . "Universal" does not imply utilitarian ; although utiliarianism may be sufficient for politicians but even utiliarianism for politicians is unethical , e.g. Hitler, unless utilitarianism includes universal good, that the greatest number is a necessary qualification but is not sufficient. Your argument is that if it's inconceivable that torturing be good then it must be evil.
No, that's not the argument, though your last statement certainly bears some truth. The argument is outside your discussion. You have to dismiss a lot of moral thinking that often goes into a conversation about ethics. Here, we are in metaethics,the matter is about the nature of ethics as a presence, I would call it. It is the look at ethics qua ethics, not qua any of the extraneous things that are accidently associated with it. It is not unlike what Kant did with reason: sure, one can study the rational structures as they exist in various disciplines, fields of operation, and so on, but what is the essence of reason itself, that is, what do we get when we analyze the very structures of reason qua reason? Not what we do with it, but what it is. Not how incompetently it is applied here and there (though therehis discussion of dialectical reasoning), but what its inherent limits are as limits. So here, it is not about how intentions and good wills, or utility works out. It is not about practical ethics. It is about the question, what can be said about the nature of the ethical goodness and badness.
Certainly this is a failsafe stance for day to day ethical decisions. It's not explicit enough for philosophers whose job is to examine ethics. Ethics are the criteria resulting from comparative morality. True, intentions are now established as the base for ethical behaviour and civil laws are at least latterly catching up with intentions: I have read about judges commenting on whether or not the criminal feels remorse.
Intentions are insufficient without universality. Tribalism resists universality. Tribalism is represented by the old Adam who has not matured.True,the natural biological man feels sympathy for another who feels pain and more and more people are enlarging the scopes of their sympathies towards other men and towards other animals. We also need some codifiable ethics and ordinary human sympathetic gut feelings are necessary for any ethical reasoning but are not codifiable.
But universality begs the question: why bother to have universality in your moral decision making? That is, have you really gotten to the essence of ethics if you identify duty to do X and can universalize your maxim? The question begged is, why bother to be ethical at all. Many, even good liberals like John Rawls in his Justice as fairness, tie the will to behave properly to self interest, as if a moral society is a community of enlightened self interested citizens. But Is this really what happens when moral thinking seizes upon the mind?: I know helping others is in my self interest? This may be part of a way to rationalize duty, but its emphasis on self interest reduces morality to egoism, and it marginalizes genuine compassion, empathy, caring and so forth.
Though my point is not about this kind of thing at all, Rawls and the nature of good actions, I will say that one of Kant's major problems is that it dismisses motivation altogether in doing the right thing. Doing the right thing for duty as such? Why oh why would a person do this? No: a theory of practical ethics has give an an ethical motivation, that is, a motivation of the same nature as the ethical value in play. One caring can only do this, for caring, compassion and the like are commensurate with the at-risk nature of value. I offer this as a response to your comment about intentions being insufficient without universality, which is true for organizing a community, but does not get close to the essence of ethics, which is value.Kant doesn't see this, nor does Rawls (as i take what I have read).
As I explained from the physiological and evolutionary point of view pain is not absolutely bad. Whether or not the subject feels pain is absolutely bad is a matter of degree not a matter of kind. From the point of view of who inflicts the pain if his intention is universally good, not excluding the feelings of the subject and his own the torturers' feelings, if his intentions are universally good he cannot be absolutely evil. Macbeth was a bad man because he was weak and unbalanced by his mad wife and was unable to reason. M was not as bad as bad as Hitler because Hitler had not the excuse of the constant propinquity of a mad companion.Intentions goodness or badness is informed by the universal consciousness.
But the part you are responding to is not about this. It is about the nature of ethical good, not good actions or intentions. These latter have to do with ethical entanglements with the affairs of others. This is, of course, what ethics is about, but only when the discussion turns that way. this passage is about the 'good' and the 'bad': what makes them so? How are we to understand goodness qua goodness, which underlies, is assumed in all of our entangled affairs? I have settled on Moore's unnatural quality, and perhaps you might want to read some of his Principia Ethica ( I haven't read much of this long book. Just the good parts about the "good in itself), but this just begins the conversation. Non natural quality? It is not about the descriptive features of suffering and joy and the rest. It is about their goodness and badness. These are, hands down, the strangest things in all of existence. there is no argument here, for they are what I would call, as with all things, qualified absolutes. An absolute is something that steps out of interpretative concepts and into the world of God (without the God).
We two cannot discuss the topics of atheism and religion unless we define those terms which would require a lot of background reading. I'd say that your definitions of those terms are too narrow. PS, the Commandment not to covet your neighbour's wife and so forth is an early manifestation of the morally mature criterion that the intention of the moral agent matters.
i have no trouble defining and discussing atheism, for, for the most part, it has little to with serious thinking since it is grounded on a straw person premise: God has all of these anthropomorphized qualities, and these are absurd, therefore, God does not exist. This ends up making an argument about about assailable conceptions about God, not God. It is easy to do, but has no real meaning. My thoughts on the matter Begin with Kierkegaard and end with Levinas. Then there is everything else. I want to take some serious time Wittgenstein. I started reading his Notes and found things that reveal someone deeply struggling with the world of ethics and value.