What I am curious about is how do we substitute for religion's call to be good because of the all seeing power of a god. How will people behave themselves if we (hopefully) remove that call. Just ,for example, with the rule of law? is that sufficient?

@Mcflewster The same way they do it now: through societal morality, which is an organic, emergent consensus of what is harmful or beneficial to the sort of civil society most of us wish to live in. Religion has no morality of its own, its claims to the contrary notwithstanding. Religion claims to be the originator and nurturer of morality, when in fact it has simply appropriated what's already there, added a few unhelpful flourishes, and claimed it for its own.

Given half a chance, most people mean well and try their best to do well.

@mordant I agree with what you say but a lot of people look int the direction of the religions when they grieve and when they have a moral decision to make. My question is how do we get these people to break that link?

@Mcflewster I think it happens naturally when people leave religion. Sometimes religious people don't even see their morality as dependent on their religion, but as something they're already personally responsible for. But when they buy into the notion that they're depraved, barely-restrained rapers and pillagers, when they leave that belief system, if nothing else they discover pretty quickly that the sky doesn't fall. I certainly did.