What defines right and wrong?

God's command. Take God away and morality becomes preference — and everyone knows murder is not a preference. The Maker knows what harms what He made.

Human well-being, fairness, and reasoned reflection on consequences — worked out by ethical traditions like utilitarianism, virtue ethics, and contractualism rather than by command. Whether these standards are discovered (Wielenberg) or constructed (Mackie) is the live internal debate; in practice both camps condemn the same cruelties.

Agnosticism does not say — and honest agnostics admit this is borrowed ground. Most take right and wrong from humanist ethics: what helps or harms creatures who can suffer; Clifford adds the one distinctly agnostic duty, honesty about evidence.

God's own character, expressed in his commands and summed up by Jesus in two: love God completely, and love your neighbor as yourself — 'on these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets' (Matthew 22:40). Love, Paul adds, is the fulfillment of the law (Romans 13:10).

God's commandments — traditionally counted at 613 — as interpreted and applied through halakha, Jewish law. Yet the Bible also assumes a justice humans can recognize, by which Abraham can even question God: 'Shall not the Judge of all the earth do justice?'

The root of the act: deeds driven by greed, hatred, or delusion are unwholesome; deeds driven by generosity, love, or wisdom are wholesome. The practical test the Buddha gave his own son: before, during, and after acting, ask whether the act harms yourself, others, or both.

Dharma. The Manusmriti names its sources in order: the Veda, the smriti texts, the conduct of the virtuous, and finally one's own conscience — and karma enforces the standard impersonally, since every act ripens into consequence.

Alignment with God's order (hukam) as the Guru teaches it: whatever feeds ego, falsehood, or cruelty is wrong; whatever expresses truth, compassion, and service is right. The test is practical — truthful living stands above even truth.

For public life: equal citizenship, human rights, and Mill's harm principle — the state may coerce only to prevent harm to others, never to enforce virtue or creed. The deeper grounding of right and wrong is left to each citizen's own worldview.

Consequences for human welfare, judged by reason and empathy: Manifesto III holds that ethical values derive from human need and interest as tested by experience. What reliably harms people is wrong; what helps them flourish is right.

Liberals give rival groundings — natural rights, Kantian respect for persons, utility — but converge on a public rule: wrong is what violates another's equal rights, and only harm to others justifies forcing anyone (Mill's harm principle).

Right is what respects the equal dignity of persons regardless of sex; wrong is domination and exclusion by sex. The grounding varies: liberal feminists reason from rights and fairness, care ethicists from responsibility within relationships.

Nationalism brings no complete moral code; followers keep the ethics of their religion or philosophy. What it adds is one claim: we owe more to our compatriots than to strangers, and such partiality is right — a position argued carefully by Miller and Tamir.