Everything I said works fine with KCC's post, and is still an accurate description based on Jon's assumption. If you think that just because there is no God and no eternal punishment for misbehaving that it's o.k. to be bad, you're a psychopath. He is proposing that the only thing keeping many psychopaths in check is religion. I don't look down on people enough to make such an assumption. I believe that you, and the overwhelming majority of religious people would still do the right thing because I respect you too much to think otherwise.
"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." Steven Weinberg
Easily one of the most ignorant quotes of all time.
It would be good for you to think about things a little more before jumping to offended mode.Steven Weinberg gives some examples. I am sure if you cared to think about this issue, you will find some yourself that fit this category:
"Frederick Douglass told in his Narrative how his condition as a slave became worse when his master underwent a religious conversion that allowed him to justify slavery as the punishment of the children of Ham. Mark Twain described his mother as a genuinely good person, whose soft heart pitied even Satan, but who had no doubt about the legitimacy of slavery, because in years of living in antebellum Missouri she had never heard any sermon opposing slavery, but only countless sermons preaching that slavery was God's will. With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil — that takes religion."
And the abolitionist movement was almost exclusively a Christian one. Your point?
Those were good people who would have been against slavery based upon humanistic principles alone, that they were religious was a coincidence. Meanwhile, otherwise good people were PRO-SLAVERY thanks to the influence of religion. This is just one example. Do you mean to tell me you can't think of other instances where good people do bad things based upon the influence of religious doctrine?
The vice versa is also true. That means that what you are pushing is void of merit because there is no weight behind it. Which was the point that you missed before. We (the human race) have tried the whole 'no religion' thing and what we got were some of the most evil governments of all time.
Of course, this also brings up the question of what is good and evil in the humanistic point of view? Really, there is no such thing as good and evil but rather a concept created by religion and thus is primitive, subjective and needless judgment. You can not have good people or bad people- you just have people that act as people. The murder of another person may be something that is negative because of the social impact that such actions have but there is no intrinsic evil about it because there is no good and evil. If you believe there is no God, then there is no judge on what is good and evil and if there is no judge on what is good and evil then you have no good and evil. Even social norms and restraints, like the murder one brought up earlier, fail to create good and evil because from closed society to closed society- you have different norms on what is good and evil. One group of people may see that murder and cannibalism is not only acceptable but encouraged (thus, not evil) while another finds this revolting (possibly evil?) or one group may see sleeping with your children as a normal practice and another as absolutely revolting. We can take that to a much lesser degree. In the US, corruption and bribery is seen as being wrong but we are actually in the minority on this when compared to the rest of the world where it is not only accepted but very much the norm and expected. So, why would a humanist even try to push the concept that 'good people do evil things' because of religion when in their perspective, there is no such thing as good and evil.