answer:Somehow I suspect this study reported yesterday will make an appearance here. Ooops. It just did. What you’re asking about is at the core of what it means to be “good”. It’s why some theists and some atheists can talk past each other during discussions of morality. There are some theists that believe something is “good” or “moral” if it has been declared so by god. Secular approaches to these questions look towards suffering (human or otherwise) when we are considering these questions, so we end up using the same terms to mean different things. Also, there are theists who do take a secular approach to ethics, so it’s difficult to make a complete generalization here. Edit: To be clear, what I mean by the “theists who take a secular approach” is that some theists look at the bible’s approach to homosexuality or stoning non-virgins on their wedding night and use secular (non-religious) reasoning to determine that these are not correct moral teachings.