Without a higher authority, each of us must decide what is moral. The higher authority can be god, or it can be the government. The US Federal government finds it completely moral to kill criminals or send troops to foreign lands to kill people, often innocent civilians.

As a side note, without a universal morality - such as a god would provide - there is no meaning to "evil". Claiming someone is evil is a judgment you make based on your own morals. For example, is Donald Trump evil? Does he act in immoral ways? Everyone judges him based on their own morals. Possibly if actions can be judged based on whether they are good or bad for society, then a universal morality might be developed. For example, allowing the killing of someone when his dog poops on your lawn would be damaging to society whereas killing a serial murdered could be viewed as beneficial to society.

Its easy for me, put yourself in the sights of your actions, would you want to be there?

The base that I have an ideal of society that I wish to live in, and I will behave in a way to stabilize this model of society.
Then you take the average of the society models of everyone and build the "moral of the society".

And that is the problem of religious morality, they wish for a very nice model of society, BUT they don't behave in a way to promote it.

I suggest that you read some books re: humanism. Good without a god.

Immorality is whatever hurts other people. However, morality is necessarily relative and the actions of one person is rarely ever something that can be obviously or necessarily wrong to another.

Check with your local police.

Approaching a decision, ask myself 'what's the right thing to do?'
Then I do it.
Sounds good, but sometimes I don't 'do the right thing.'
THEN I feel guilty about it and upbraid myself for being, among other things, a hypocrite.
That feels bad. It humbles me to realize I'm often selfish and self-serving despite my lofty ideals.
Sometimes the RIGHT thing objectively is not the right thing individually. I TRY to do what is objectively right.
The Golden Rule is a good guide to figure out what that is.

I have no problem with a moral compass and simply base mine on common sense with consideration of people not unfairly harming other people while restricting people as little as otherwise possible. The Christian community has been telling us that the only compass in this regard is found in the Bible. You were presumably bombarded with that notion as a "tenent of truth" far more than me but I have never had a problem in that regard and I do hold morality to be very important.

Does an action do more harm than good? It’s not all that complex.

Empathy. The "golden rule" which is stated in some form in virtually every religion is "do unto others as you would have them do unto you". All you have to to is imagine how you would feel if you were on the other end of the deeds you do.

1. Strive to treat others as would want to be treated.

2. Strive to treat others as they would want to be treated.

3. Strive to never do anything to others that I would not want done to me.

4. Strive to cause or do no harm.

5. Reject hate and embrace love*.

   • The well being of others is as important to you as your own well being is to you.

I treat people how I want to be treated.

My gut!

As to "moral", I ask what is the moral of the story? Morals are principles of right and wrong and good and bad(evil) behavior of a person.

Moral development comes thru stories, the moral of the stories? Stories told by parents to children or stories told by teachers to students. Where do you hear stories that you learn things about other people's experiences and the outcomes that worked for them or failed, so that you learn from their experiences developing your understanding of morals. Moral is often a general type principle that can be applied to different situations where from one situation to another there may be apparent gray areas where as rules and laws would most often give for a stricter black and white distinction.

Right and wrong can best be understood when viewed from along the lines of a principle, rule, or law.

If a law made it illegal to be chewing bubble gum while walking then it is wrong for a person in view of that law to be walking while chewing bubble gum.

The genius of the biblical text is that with the knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong can be better understand and it could discern the goodness of such a law that would prohibit chewing bubble gum while walking.

Rules and laws can be very arbitrary, that is based a lot simply on a personal opinion with little or no basis in principle.

Why should there be a law prohibiting chewing bubble gum while walking? What "GOOD" is such a law to make it wrong to chew bubble gum while walking?

Knowledge of good and evil is among the first of biblical stories for good reason and its genius. However, one does not have to study biblical text to aquire such knowledge just simply study many different dictionaries AND thesauruses to get a broad but generally objective understanding of what the words good and evil are all about.

Moral acts are those that enhance the well-being of while avoiding harm to intelligent biological entities.