LEJ:

I agree with you that htere is no standard of culture on this planet that would condone any such an act.

However, the strength of agreement on such issues makes the measure of its goodness more pervasive, more binding, more persuasive, but not more true.

If I were to kill a man to steal his wallet, because I was on the brink of starvation, and it turned out he was an incipient tyrant who in a few short years would have risen to found the second American Reich; while I staggered into a coffee shop to assuage my hunger, met the most wonderful woman on earth, turned my life around and gave birth to a Nobel Peace Prize winner, it could be argued that my intolerable and unjustifiable crime was good.

It happens sometimes that a being hits an epiphany where he shares the universe with all life at once and declares that it is ALL good. An extreme view, to be sure.

Most of us live in the middle ground where suffering indicates badness, good survival is the keystone of goodness, and unnecessary harm is against our code of ethics. I like that space, myself.

But it has no absolute referent in the universe that I can see. It is a purely human-scale sens eof ethics, a very powerful one and within that scale it is perfectly true. I uphold it and try to live by it, out of preference.   I think that is an exercise of choice based on the highest opinion I can form about such things. But I don't think ethics values are "a fact" -- more like a spiritual commodity, or currency of life.

A