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Assume there is a universal goal that is better sought than any known to human. The duty to this universal good would be more important than a person's duty to himself or his species or his planet. By what means should a human try to learn what this universal good is?

edit: just hashing things out here:

By the laws of nature one should take whatever action gives the highest chance to pass on one's genes. This leads to a direct ethical duty to one's species. So to take that one step further one has a duty to uphold the stability of the universe, right? But that's shortsighted too: it assumes that replicating one's genes actually is the ethically correct thing to do. So a search for transcendent ethics may start at a higher* level than life. It may involve duties beyond one's own universe.

But how can an entity have a duty beyond what that entity is able to influence? That's a red herring. Whatever my actual ethical duty it's best to understand that duty from the highest* possible perspective. Even if I have no higher duty than is in regard to those things I can influence, knowing what that duty is requires a higher* level of understanding.

*as in high level vs low level programming, where assembly is low level code and java is high level code

Assume there is a universal goal that is better sought than any known to human. The duty to this universal good would be more important than a person's duty to himself or his species or his planet. By what means should a human try to learn what this universal good is? edit: just hashing things out here: By the laws of nature one should take whatever action gives the highest chance to pass on one's genes. This leads to a direct ethical duty to one's species. So to take that one step further one has a duty to uphold the stability of the universe, right? But that's shortsighted too: it assumes that replicating one's genes actually is the ethically correct thing to do. So a search for transcendent ethics may start at a higher* level than life. It may involve duties beyond one's own universe. But how can an entity have a duty beyond what that entity is able to influence? That's a red herring. Whatever my actual ethical duty it's best to understand that duty from the highest* possible perspective. Even if I have no higher duty than is in regard to those things I can influence, knowing what that duty is requires a higher* level of understanding. *as in high level vs low level programming, where assembly is low level code and java is high level code

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[–] • 1 pt

Without God, there is no compulsion to do good. There is also no stable, immutable definition of what "good" is. The concept of "good" is meaningless without God to define and enforce it. Your good? My good? The good of the moment?

Unless we acknowledge that the good comes from a source that is higher and greater than our common sense of self, it is merely a made-up term that can be changed or denied at will. Only when the good is transcendent and eternal does it become a thing we must follow. The same applies to truth and justice.

[–] • 0 pt

Your logic is bad. Indeed ethics must be subjective without a transcendent, objective definition. But there's no reason that definition has to include a god.