Mdthbs

This seems to be the key sentence in the question: "It claims no moral authority of right and wrong, but supports progress.".

So "good" can be defined as that which advances progress, and "bad" that which hinders it.

And that's where the "moral authority" actually does reside in this world. What is the definition of "progress"?

In our real world, we have competing definitions of progress:

• One group wants to build a factory to produce inexpensive essential goods that will help raise the quality of life for everyone. For them, building the factory is progress.




• Another group campaigns to ban the industrial techniques that make that factory possible, because the process results in significant pollution and long term ecological damage. For them, preventing the factory is progress.

Or in the proposed world, perhaps:

• Someone wants to perform an experiment that, while it will result in the deaths of thousands of people, will almost certainly provide amazing new knowledge. This is obviously a source of progress.




• There exists an individual that will eventually develop a new theory that will provide amazing new knowledge. This is obviously a source of progress.

The thousands of people in the first case are almost certain to contain an instance of a person from the second case.

Should the experiment be allowed? That is a conflict that the authorities must resolve

They get to define what "progress" means.

They are a de facto moral authority.

"Good" or "right" is always subjective and depends on the viewer. Your religious concept already contains concepts of good and bad, right and wrong, but certainly not all of them are in alignment with our current moral standards.

People in Europe and North America agree that democracy is "right" and any form of dictatorship is "wrong". People in ancient China agreed that an empire with a wise emperor was "right" and people governing themselves was barbarism and thereby "wrong".

A few quite obvious concepts of moral for your religion include:

• Truth is right, lying is wrong. People would be taught from very young age and much more rigorously not to lie, not even a tiny bit. Every lie is a sin and needs to be confessed to a religious authority. That could lead to behavior that seems extreme to us, like people rather bluntly saying the truth and apologising for it than telling a white lie like "I was stuck in traffic jam" or "you look fabulous today".


• The end justifies the means. If scientific progress is the highest religious goal and no creature enjoys special protection as "God's creation", then experiments on animals and humans are "right" and hindering progress by not experimenting is "wrong".


• Education over labour. Wasting your time with laborous work and not having the chance to progress science in any way is a punishment comparable to exclusion from church. Labourers would be lowest in social status, but the society would also face problems in construction or manufacturing because of the lack of labor forces.


• Mental disabilities degrade someone to an infidel, maybe even subhuman... Killing people with mental disabilities might be the morally right action in that religion.

What you need to do is distance yourself from our current moral standard. Write down objectively logical means to progress scientific understanding as much as possible while ignoring any morality and current religions. Then exaggerate them to appear religious.

What would people do? What would they not do that seems natural to us? Think about examples from history (the Nazis did some sick experiments without any regard to moral) and science fiction, like Vulcans from Star Trek, crazy scientists or rampant AIs.

“Why are we talking about this good and evil? They're just names for sides. We know that.” ― Good Omens: Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett

Good is us and evil is them. It's a fundamental throughout the ages. Good is what we want to do and what we want you to be and do. Evil is what we want you to not be and not do.

A classic example of this is that "killing is evil" but many manage to also hold "the death penalty is good" in their heads without the doublethink upsetting them at all.

Put simply, you follow the tenets of the religion, if you do you are good, to do otherwise is evil.

Consider ripping off most of early Taoism.

Even a brief introduction to Taoism is well beyond the scope of this answer, but to speak very briefly about the points which may be of interest to you:

• Taoist ethics are concerned less with doing good acts than becoming a good person who lives in harmony with all things and people.




• Taoists thus always do what is required by events and their context, but they only do what is required, no more.




• The constant and unmistakable teaching of the Tao Te Ching is that humans are indeed capable of intervening in life's events, but the evidence of life, which humans constantly ignore, is that such intervention is destructive to all involved, and that we therefore have a moral duty to refrain from taking such actions.

(The above points taken from a good BBC article on Taoism.)

A different article contrasts early Taoism from later developments:

The Taode jing and Zhuangzi were not interested in promoting specific
moral virtues, and were critical of the idea of regulating society
with standards of behavior. According to these texts, to emulate
nature and "do without doing" (wei wu-wei), and to harmonize oneself
with Tao, will lead naturally to behavior that is genuinely virtuous.
"Drop humanity, abandon justice/ And the people will return to their
natural affections".

It's probably not exactly what you're looking for, but I think it may provide a good starting point.

You mentioned that the universe is considered the the highest god. This gives you the option of introducing lesser "gods" that seek to end the Universe. Concepts like Entropy that seek to remove all usable energy from the Universe and DarkEnergy which threatens to reap the Universe apart might be seen as bad. Inefficient use of energy helps Entropy so people who are not efficient with energy are labeled as bad people.

In my view, you cannot.

Religion is (next to other things) first and foremost a value system.

To have values, you have to call some things bad and some things good.

It doesn't matter if you call them "helpful" instead of good, what matters that they are better than the other thing.

Claiming one thing is better (or more ethical) than another is claiming moral authority.

Every teaching is claiming to know something that another beeing does not know (yet). If the teaching is on an ethical subject, it has to claim moral superiority to justify teaching it to the other beeing.

A religion that doesn’t teach divine-command morality can still promote any other definition of right or wrong from moral philosophy. For example, they could be Utilitarians, who hold that their metaphysical beliefs are true, and that “good” means “good for people.” They could follow the teachings of a revered sage they consider to have been the wisest person in history and the most worthy of emulation, but not divinely inspired per se. They might believe their moral precepts can be deduced from “natural religion” and observing how the universe works, and does not come from revelation. They might not necessarily claim to have all the answers on what morality is, beyond the things that everyone who counts can agree on.

Simple Hedonism - striving for maximization of pleasure - could be a guideline for that kind of religion. This doesn't contradict progress, empirically proven by how much technology is harnessed for hedonist means these days; neither will it necessarily promote violent or oppressive behaviour since defensive reactions incurred would contradict a hedonist ideal without any need of moral judgement.