If someone needs an invisible noncommutative being to be their guide, I send them my invisible noncommutative hope.

Anyone who needs a god or gods to compel them to act well, to treat others, nature, etc. well, is a horrible person.

If some one needs the fear of punishment and the promise of rewards to live as a good person, they are not a good person.

Good discussion

He should be grateful you responded to his stupid question. But then....they expect that. They expect 'respect" to be given their beliefs, not yours.

So many think that their god made humans with a flaw that only god himself can fix. In order to do this you must be into your god 24/7.

So many theists cannot wrap their heads around the fact that human beings do not need any religion or any God to be moral and good people. I pity them.

Anybody that asks me such a question instantly reveals themselves to me as being a mental defective.

He was befuddled because that truth had never occurred to him….

Amen sister!! Hallelujah, praise the lord!!!

Both anecdotal accounts as well as replicated scientific studies show animals have an innate sense of fairness. People have often seen remarkable instances of animal empathy (Middleway is full of shit as usual).

American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate, Steven Weinberg once famously said, "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."

They get so brainwashed that they can’t fathom how anyone functions without religion.

I don't see why anyone would think a book would be a better guide than empathy and compassion.

The problem is that some people seem to want soem kind of outside authority to tell them what is right or wrong. I don't think books written by bronze age goat herders are good guides at all, especially when the books are full of cultural biases which are not at all universal.

Or tell him. To come and see me, and I will share with him my short list of about thirty or forty books which are quite good guides if taken as a whole. (His book did not make the top hundred. ) Also tell him. that I give no credit to anybody who has only read one book, especially if he is waving it in my face.

Tell him. If you need god to tell you right from wrong, then you are not a good person, only a bad person on a leash.

Most people like rules and structure and order, basically a set of guidelines to help them colour between the lines of their everyday routine because they don't like to think and actively avoid it. Just keep your head down and your nose clean, plus when they give into their baser nature it is comforting to imagine that there is an imaginary friend in the sky (really just in their heads) that will forgive them their trespasses and love them unconditionally as only an imaginary friend can.