Olegbpleg's comments are conducive to stating some rather obvious
points:
First of all, the concept of good/bad derives from religion. All religion groups conceive a morality system which defines good and bad based on their cultural experience and which shapes its notion of divinity to suit that system. God is always created in the image of the men who worship Him/Her. In other words the notion of what is good and what is bad is a religious/moral construct, varying from place to place and from time to time, so one cannot logically speak of religion as being good or bad because each religion defines its practices and beliefs as being good and all that is exclusive of itself as being more or less bad. Outside of that construct, there is no good or bad, just as in nature there is no good or bad. A comet strikes Earth and wipes out 90% of all species, but the concept of it being good or bad has no application: it simply is.
Historically, monotheistic religions are particularly intolerant of rival religions because they posit there is only one god/GOOD - theirs - whereas polytheistic religions (if not persecuted) are more inclined to accommodate other approaches to God/GOOD. The Greeks/Romans even built temples to the Unknown God fearing they had left someone out. One can even imagine a Buddhist saying to his Judaeo/Christian/Muslim friend: I'm a GOOD Buddhist, but I think it would be GOOD to be a J/C/M as well. The friend is likely to think this is a BAD idea, unless the Buddhist gives up his Buddhism.
It is probable from archaeological evidence that civilization as we know it has its origins in religious thought, that all sentient seeking after truth begins as religious wondering, as in looking up at the stars and imagining anthropomorphic gods at work; the earliest architectural works appear to have been erected as part of this religious search for the truth of things, with a priestly caste inevitably stepping in to improvise the answers. Olegboleg would likely agree that survival of the human species is unquestionably GOOD, but there are Christian fundamental religions that look forward to destruction of humanity as a GOOD thing, when the Chosen GOOD are swept up to Heaven on a cloud, leaving the rest of us (the BAD) behind. THey're even willing to expedite this process by pushing for political events that herald the end of the world. Ascribing this manifestation as being good or bad is beside the point.
What does distinguish religion is its insistence on FAITH as being the essential element of knowing good/bad. The religious practitioner must ultimately forego reliance on his own native intellect as the arbiter of truth and accept the tenets of his religion, based not on logical understanding, but unquestioning acceptance. He must believe, as a good Catholic does, that the wafer placed on his tongue by his priest transforms into the body of Christ, despite all scientific evidence to the contrary.
What distinguishes Science, as Olegboleg suggests, is that it transcends the concept of good/bad and eschews Faith as a ground for truth. Historically, it substituted philosophical/mathematical LOGIC as the starting point from which the truth is approached (albeit never fully grasped), as in Descartes' cogito ergo sum. Like Descartes, the true scientist believes nothing which cannot be logically proven by scientific means; to the extent that he/she does, the less scientist them.
Science originated as the handmaiden of philosophy (the love of wisdom), as the means by which philosophers (those who had crept outside Plato's allegoric cave, if you like) could accumulate evidence about the natural world and come to understand it. Scientists still aspire to PhD's but Science is now thought to have virtually superceded philosophy. In doing so, it parts company from paying heed to the concept that good/bad can be logically derived from moral philosophy, i.e., as in affirming that GOOD has to do with a sentient species surviving and evolving on a Star Trek kind of mission (coming to know itself and its universe). A true scientist is capable of saying as one did before Alamogordo, that if the nuclear chain reaction continues beyond the bomb's fissionable materials, it will only cause the loss of a minor planet.
As Oppehheimer had it, "now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." True, Science is neither good nor bad by its very nature, but this lack of philosophical grounding is in itself a challenge to the survival of our species, perhaps even the planet, as Steven Hawking recently acknowledged.
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