Everyday we use the word "good" and "bad" which are obvious calls to morality. Either understood as a traditionally religious concept (Christian, Islamic are most common) or determined by following the law of each country. Or by other moral means, whatever they could potentially be.

Let's take a look at a drastic example. Murder. My country has recently suffered a deep shock after a brutal murder took place with the murderer fleeing abroad. Such murder would be considered bad by more than 99% of the world. But yet, generals who give out orders for soldiers to kill and win battles and wars are heroes. Same with a policeman who would shoot down a terrorist, preventing an attack.

So sometimes murdering someone is morally praised and justified.

Moreover, there was a case of a man who bought rights to a HIV-curing pill and drastically rising the price for it. Would anyone really be enraged if someone did harm to him, or for instance robbed him? I think the vast majority of people would be happy and consider it karma or revenge.

So morality is very subjective. My question is, does even "good" or "bad" exist? Is something "good" or "bad" out of default? In my opinion, it doesn't. Something may be good for some and bad for some.

Let's say, a man shoots and kills a family in the US and robs their belongings.
It is, of course bad for the family, like no **** sherlock. But is it bad for the man? After all, he gained wealth due to this act. If he remains uncaught and lives his life with a fake identity in some remote country, it may be actually good, using his standards.

In my opinion, the concept of something being "good" or "bad" was invented by religion to stop the law of the jungle from happening. From a biological point of view, it is natural that the stronger kill weaker as they would later reproduce and improve the gene pool. My thesis is that the concept of morality was created to help humans of all sizes so that they could contribute to the general improvement of the live of the populace with their intelligence. What is your opinion on all of this? Keep it polite, please.

Morals are social agreements on what constitutes right or wrong. I don't see any religious basis behind this; the concept of "good" and "bad" has existed as long as civilisation itself, if not longer.

It often stems from religion.

Polygamy is forbidden and usually frowned upon in European countries. In Saudi Arabia, it is normal and acceptable. Christianity forbids polygamy and Islam allows it.

You may still counter this with saying it's an Arabic cultural thing but consider this: polygamy has been practiced in the Slavic lands before they accepted Christianity in the 10th century. The Quran clearly allows polygamy as the prophet Muhammad had four wives.

So "good", as in "beneficial for the society as a whole"?

Religion, as an organised institution, definitely influences moral principles, but morality itself did not originate from religion. I don't see how you are drawing this connection; it is a philosophical/sociological phenomenon rather than religious.

Not quite, Ethics is essentially the study of morality.

In most cases, I would agree.

But why, for instance walking on the streets naked is being messy and immoral for people? Myself, I would probably be shocked if saw someone naked in public, but thinking about it deeper, I can't really understand why. Our natural state is said to be nakedness, clothing is an invention of culture. The Bible claims that it's a sign of shame of Adam and Eve for what they did (at least from what I remember).

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What initially defined morality then? If not religion, then I can't really think what else defines morality. Every civilisation until the invention of Atheism had spiritual beliefs which largely determined their behavior. Even now, a large part of Western morality, though modified comes from Christianity.

Good and bad are concepts we build over the years as our intelligence and conscience of our own acts grew.

Human morality evolved from traits - such as a sense of self, social norms, concept of continuity - possessed by our primate ancestors (i.e. chimpanzees). It was, and still is, derived from basic emotional responses including empathy, altruism, sympathetic reciprocity, attachment, etc.

That's an interesting concept, I haven't heard of it before. I didn't really know chimpanzees possessed those traits. I guess you may be right, but that does explain only a part of a common sense of morality.

I guess that chimpanzees would have feelings for those who cared for them and protected them. This is natural, as they would know that the special treatment will end if they stop this behavior or act rude towards them. But what about, for instance having respect, compassion and helping the elderly people? In my country, it is normal to give seats to older people in public transport and generally being nice to them.

Morality is fluid as it's relative to what people deem and perceive as "wrong" and that can be quite complex when factoring in things that color perspective like religion and politics. But just in general, stripping morality down to the extreme simplest form, what generally separates moral from immoral, good from bad and right from wrong for most people regardless of their religion or politics is harm. What does and doesn't cause harm is essentially what we establish as north and south on every moral compass before all of the other more complex factors.

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Yes, but how does being naked in the streets cause harm? Nearly everyone until the age of 4 has seen a naked person, usually their parents.

I acknowledged that there are many things that come primarily from belief systems created by humans and that's the relative aspect; clearly things like nudity, sexuality -- things that aren't inherently harmful yet still considered taboo because of social norms would fall under that. Nudity isn't inherently harmful nor is it even taboo in all cultures, but that's one of the more fluid/relative aspects of morality that's almost always traced back to belief systems established by religion and/or politics. That's the "how", now if you want to get into the "why" people decided these things were indecent and created the religious tenets that in turn created cultural norms and taboos that affected laws, that's another discussion altogether.

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I was reading something similar about famous / infamous, genius / ingenious, flammable / inflammable, habitable / inhabitable, etc.

As far as I could work out, infamous is the only adjective in this instance that doesn't mean the same as its counterpart. While famous is something regarded as good, infamous is bad.

These words are derived from Latin I presume, right? Whose sick idea was it to have both flammable and inflammable to describe something that's easily set on fire. Isn't that rather dangerous to anyone who may differenciate the two words? 💀

Using this thread's example, the opposite of moral is immoral and that's comprehensible..