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Thank you for sharing. Interesting.
I never said anything about it being simple (or hard). I am only trying to point out that someone who has, for some time, belonged to a religion or faith, and taught that religion's or faith's values, and then subsequently seeks out another religion or faith because those values don't sit will with them is actually not believing that those values come from God. They've already decided what values they are comfortable with, on their own, and are now looking for the religion or faith that validates what they already believe.
I'm quite fond of the author Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens, Homo Deus, etc.), who says that "human beings are algorithms" (as are all organisms), differing from the usual algorithms only in that they are biochemical, and have evolved at the whim natural selection over millions of years. If our algorithms (our emotions and intuitions) lead us to help and support, rather than harm, those who help us to survive, as the social animal that we are, then they are adaptive, and likely to be retained.
And in that style of living they must also afford everyone else the same "luxury." To not do so is something along the lines of hypocritical, narcissistic, possibly sociopathic. All of which you can also say are relative positions, held by people "living their lives how they wish." Well... then they can't really complain when the rest of us catch them exercising their "livelihood" and then consequently live our lives how WE wish... by throwing them behind bars so they can't affect the rest of us in the harmful ways they seem to want to. As soon as there is more than one person in the equation, just about everything is automatically a two-way street. Locking people up, defending yourself, etc. - these are all actions of people living their lives how they wish. Just try and claim otherwise.
This presumes that morals are objective. I think that ethics can be objective, insofar as most reasonable people can agree with certain societal rules, regardless of religious affiliation or lack thereof. Don’t steal, don’t assault or murder people etc.
I wonder, really, whether it's actually even sensible to try to separate ideas like "morals," "ethics" and "right and wrong." And that we continue to try to force these distinctions are precisely what makes for our "societal rules." The problem, for me and for many, is that "societal rules" too often wind up twisting people into knots trying desperately not to be who and what they are in an effort to comply.
What Grayling is saying, in my personal view, is that the only real "good" is the freedom to live one's own life in the way that best suits him, and the only "not good" is to deprive anyone of that. From there, I have zero difficulty in determining whether what I want to do from moment to moment is right or wrong.
I won’t pretend to be a philosopher or indeed know anything about philosophy. But I think there are certain base ethical values that are the result of our species being social. Cooperation helped us survive and sure our tribal tendencies often cause infighting. But a peaceful society is normally achieved by people simultaneously leaving people alone to do their own thing (as long as no harm is befallen anyone) and minding their own business. Something which religious people often struggle with.
I wonder if you know how much you ignore, when you make this heartfelt faith statement. You ignore, for example, that while you claim goodness comes from God, implicit in your faith is that everything comes from God, so of course evil must, as well. You ignore that the Bible itself claims that evil comes from God (Isaiah 45:7). Islam confirms the same notion when it affirms that everything that happens is "inshallah," which means "if God wills it."
According to the Bible only goodness comes from God, never moral evil (which is not what the context of Isaiah 45:7 is referring to, despite the continual misuse of this verse by anti-theists). Moral evil originates in the desires and mind of the creature in rebellion to God's goodness, giving birth to sin, evil, and death.
Wrong. The only real reason to refrain from evil and live in a moral way is love, real love for God and others before self-centeredness.