If something is considered bad or evil, you simply can't engage in it if you want to prosper as part of a community that deems it so. The argument ends at "bad." If you try to argue for it, you're a collaborator, furthering the bad through indirect actions.
This isn't entirely a bad thing in itself. Inter-community killing can simply be sanctioned as a taboo without further argument, because it isn't productive to argue endlessly over whether one should be able to kill one's peers. This argument changes of course when you are talking about relations with outer communities that may be hostile in one way or another.
This isn't entirely a bad thing in itself. Inter-community killing can simply be sanctioned as a taboo without further argument, because it isn't productive to argue endlessly over whether one should be able to kill one's peers. This argument changes of course when you are talking about relations with outer communities that may be hostile in one way or another.
But what tends to happen is that the power of the moral language stops at the power of those charged with upholding it, and that power is derived from the assent of those under the power, assent that is won through the continuation of a community's well-being.
