Hmmmm. Well, I agree that most ethical notions are arbitrary, and depend upon cultural agreements, but...

Here's my notion of very basic ethics:

That which is in favour of life and liveliness, in a general sense, is positive (helpful, constructive) while that which is opposed to life and liveliness, in a general sense, is negative (harmful, destructive).

Example: Smashing up property is harmful. Building a house or a piece of furniture is helpful. Being crabby and hostile is negative. Being cheerful and friendly is positive. Being cowardly is negative, being courageous is positive. And so on...

I believe it is from such very basic things that societies and cultures develop most (but not necessarily all) of their ideas about ethics. It's pretty simple really.

A clever mind can always propose exceptions to the above, but as a general guideline I think it works.

Going by that guideline, I should pay attention and learn to be less crabby and critical at times, obviously... :-)

- LH

p.s. Mark - I have known of at least 2 atheists in this area who DID go about trying to force everyone else to be atheist too, by persuasion, harassment, legal action, etc...so it can happen. But fortunately it's rather rare. In some of the Communist societies you had a whole government that was forcing everyone to be outwardly atheist! Of course, what they were really doing was trying to supplant older God-based religions with a new materially-based one called "Communism". Same old shit in a brand new package, complete with its very own holy scriptures and prophets (Marx & Engels).