Is there a such thing as ethics?
Yes, it is a real field. It is actually, at least secular and philosophical ethics, related to logic. With that in mind, I think you are making a logical error in what you are saying. You take the fact that murder can be justified in various circumstances as implying that murder is not actually wrong. This is an error, though. If murder was not actually wrong, no justifications would need to be provided. Murder would be much like deciding to wear a yellow shirt. No reason (survival, revenge, justice, etc.) would have to be given. What you are describing is the context-dependent nature of ethics: what is wrong in one situation may be acceptable in another situation. This is very, very different from saying that nothing is wrong at all. We can say that killing is not necessarily bad (meaning that it would have to be bad in all circumstances), while still saying that killing is typically bad. Personally, I don’t find the Golden Rule to be very convincing, but it does have a lot of psychol
