If there is no "God", what is "good"?

 ​ @catfinity8799 asks:
re "If there is no God, what is good?"

--- Right off the top of my head, here is a multi-faceted and completely fair reply : If there is a "God" (whatever that is), we're still left struggling to make ethical-values assessments for ourselves. As evidence for that: Billions of Christians and even more theists can't agree on what attitudes, concepts, and behaviors should make any deity's list" of "what is good". The God-hypothesis neither prevents nor resolves divergence of values. It only does so in random pockets. But then it pits all those randomly divergent pockets of theists against each other; - making it impossible for humanity to harmonize their values. Because when a person thinks their values are gifted to them from an infallible source which they have well-understood, it makes that person less able (often even outrighted incapable) of questioning those alleged revelations. - Because then it would be tantamount to questioning "God". Authoritarian theisms create division. They divide people up. And then they cement those minds into place, so that we can't progress to reaching moral agreements. Meanwhile, that mental cement (egocentric stubbornness)

is made even more rigid and permanent

when we factor in : * a paradise-bribe. Every religious faction has a mentally "seems real" paradise bribe which offers to PAY THEM for their loyalty to whichever religious narrative-and-culture they're already plugged into. And to help ensure that loyalty, all of those factions are also locked in with: * the fear of death that bribe is being used to shield against * the nihilism that many Christians are using their religion as a shield against * a hell-threat * the threat of being estranged from religious friends/family/community if we give ourselves the opportunity to migrate our views and values. With that comes: the risk of losing all the social benefits (respect, inclusion, support, etc..) which depend on membership in a religious-ideological community * the ego's fear of becoming 'a disappointment' to a super-Parent who seems very real * the risks of losing the selfish comforts that are being generated by that sense of connection to a super-parent * fear of having to take personal ownership over one's own life's-journey; which would make that person solely responsible for the relationships they have with everything and everyone (including themselves) * the threat to one's ego after it's been so completely displaced into an external locus of identity (the root of clinical narcissism; due to not getting their psychosocial needs met during formative years), and then (due to a predatory religion exploiting that opportunity) becoming deeply crutched into a religious narrative of personal identity and value; which other men control via the illusion that a "God" is doing that.

These are only some of the ways for "How Religious Fundamentalism Hijacks the Brain" (or "mind"). Psychology Today has a great article about that. [link] I have more to say about this. But it'll have to wait until I have more time for it.