Bottom line from your piece:
Without a religious foundation behind a person’s moral code, EACH PERSON essentially is the decider of what right and wrong is. Each person becomes the ultimate authority (ie God) of their own moral universe. It would be nice if you were never wrong eh?
Further, without a religious foundation behind a person’s moral code, there is no single benchmark that all measure their moral codes against. There are no effective absolutes, and morals become nothing practically more than personal preferences. Even if a bunch of people agree on certain things, and maybe even so strongly that they feel laws need to be passed to ensure (fill in the blank), it still is about personal preferences of a bunch of like minded people.
Without a religious foundation behind a person’s moral code, people can have a very well-defined moral code, and have a lot of different moral beliefs, but that clearly does not mean these people are good people or are ‘doing the right thing.’ This can even happen with people who follow certain religions as well. Based on your parameters, ‘moral’ and ‘right’ are not the same thing. Socialists and communists had morals and followed them, and yet almost nobody holds them up as being ‘morally right’ or examples of ‘good people’. The Islamic suicide bombers live by a moral code but they are not morally right or doing good things.
Before hopping in the boat with a one-armed-boat-rower (flip side of the same coin) one may want to read this first:)
“..it is much more difficult to do battle with a weak mind than a strong one.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1846016/posts?page=78#78