In this episode Bart takes a question that, he joked upon hearing it, may easily have come from his Christian father:
“What is the basis for your morality? I am not asking what your morality says, such as ‘Do not gossip’, ‘Be trustworthy’ or ‘Be forgiving.’ I am asking the ‘Why?‘ question about your morality (‘Why should you not gossip?’, ‘Why should you be trustworthy?’, ‘Why should you be forgiving?’). For me, my ‘Why?’ used to be my belief that people inherently deserve to suffer the worst possible suffering for an endless amount of time. I no longer believe this, and I now recognize the harm that often results from my old moral foundation. My new moral foundation is, in part, the desire to decrease suffering. Why? Because a scenario where every conscious creature suffers as much as possible for as long as possible would be a bad thing. I can’t prove it, but I hope it is self-evident. So what is your moral foundation?”
Takeaways: There is no objective morality; the value of life is central; maximizing the flourishing of conscious beings is at the heart of it.
