If any religionist is asked to describe an ethical precept that is unknown without their religion, they will be incapable of doing so. The only thing unique to religions are human-made stories, doctrines, rituals, and equating, murder, torture, animal cruelty and ritualistic sacrifice, maiming, genocide, racism, and ignorance with morality.
 
Concerning the Bible, Adam and Eve had no such holy book, nor did Noah, Abraham, or any of the people mentioned there. People were not without ethical direction before Moses descended from the mountain with the Ten Commandments. Moreover, only three of the Ten Commandments—shalt not steal, kill, or lie—qualifies as ethics. But that doesn’t single out the Bible as unique since no society has existed or could exist without these prohibitions.
 
Some of the Commandments are impossible to comply with, such as not coveting (desiring) things. That's condemning people for thoughts that pop into their heads. Other Commandments about the name of god, a sabbath, graven images(idols), and swearing, have nothing at all to do with ethics.
 
Other Bible rules also don't make sense if followed through. For example, "love your neighbor as yourself" (Mathew 22:39) would make functioning, even survival, impossible. Imagine trying to care about every aspect of all your neighbors' lives like you care about yours.
 
Spiritual movements and leaders such as Lao-tze, Zoroaster, Confucius, Hinayana, Zen Buddhism, Jainism, Shankara, Padmasambhava, Nagarjuna, Epictetus, and Longchenpa claim no Western-style god or inspired holy book, and yet represent highly moral systems. Even diehard atheists and agnostics feel an ethical pull.
 
The fact of the matter is that bad, as well as good people, emerge out of every religion and every society.
 
The poor farmer in a third-world country tied to the plow from sunup to sundown eking out a living for his family, and the primitive in the middle of the bush without any reading skills, must still be capable of discerning right from wrong.
 
And that is the case. The Senoi of the Malay jungle live a highly ethical and benevolent life where unconditional love is just a fact. The Yequana aborigines of the upper Cuara River basin in Venezuela demonstrate similar wisdom without compulsion. These remote people have no formal religions, codes, holy books, prophets, priests, or other such trappings.
 
Contrary to the refrain that religion is the source of goodness, throughout history, slitting throats, warring, and denial of basic human rights are the signatures of human-made holy book religions. Right today, Sunday schools teach children to celebrate in song the slaughter of non-Jews at Jericho, the annihilation of humans and creatures by a world flood, the killing of innocent first-born children, and to look forward to an Armageddon where everyone who does not believe as they do is slaughtered.
 
Go through the inspection at an airport to be reminded of the horrendous deeds perpetrated by human-made religions. The Qur'an can be read to make it moral to fly planes into office buildings, behead nonbelievers, kill women who are raped, marry nine-year-old little girls, cut the clitoris and labia off girls (circumcision/infibulation) and sew the vagina all but closed, only to be broken open on the wedding night.
 
The Bible justifies killing whole populations in unbelieving cities, brides who are not virgin, adulterers, those who take the Lord's name in vain, those who disobey a mother or father, and young boys who aren't circumcised— and done so "correctly" by a Jewish mohel biting the foreskin off so blood is let.
 
Slavery is a Bible practice. In large part, it's justified by Bible racism. The granddaddy of all racisms is Jews writing a Bible, claiming god wrote it and then having that god say he chose them over all other races. (Nah, that wouldn't be coincidence, would it?) The "mark of Cain" and "Curse of Ham" are also Biblical justifications. Then there’s the story of Noah and his family being the only people to survive the worldwide flood. They are thought to be white. Therefore, it's reasoned, black, yellow, and brown races must have been on board, but way back with the animals! (Yes, yes, I know there are passages contrary to slavery. But that makes the point that any form of morality can be derived from the Bible.)
 
Muslims and Hindus war in Pakistan and India. Jonestown cultists committed suicide following their Bible-thumping leader. Protestants and Catholics kill one another in the British-Irish conflict. Catholic priests (including modern day), supposedly obedient to the Biblical doctrine of celibacy, have sexually abused and scarred for life innumerable children. Meanwhile, the church hierarchy and many parishioners turn a blind eye. (See the documentary movie, The Spotlight.)

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Other religions condemn these horrors, but the underlying cause is largely ignored: Islamists are simply acting on belief and faith in a holy book.
 
If today's Jews and Christians followed their holy books (as they have in the past and are commanded to by the books), they would be engaged in similar horrors.
 
True, many now put a liberal patina on holy books, but literate people without coaches read scriptural urgings that clearly encourage the killing of unbelievers and those who commit the sin of reason.
 
In other words, morality is not a reason to embrace religion, it's a reason to flee from it.
 
RELIGIONS ARE ETHICALLY TAMED BY SECULAR GOVERNMENTS
 
Religious atrocities are held in check today because the secular state has stepped in to forbid it. Where religion can dictate its own terms, fuse eschatology (end-time guessing) with the state, and make demands people cannot refuse, heads getting lopped off and religious war and torture of heretics are still a part of life.
 
Even in modern societies, religions bless troops and condemn those being blessed on the other side. Nations that do not benefit from such helpful guidance could fare at least as well.

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It's a sad fact of history that the words that divide people and then unite them in butchering one another are often traceable to the religious institutions and holy books humans create.
 
AMERICA'S VIRTUE IS NOT DUE TO RELIGION
 
Christians and Jews brag that America's greatness is the result of Judeo-Christian principles. The fact is, the unsavory history of Judeo-Christian religions led America's founders to write a Constitution that separated church and state. It doesn't even once cite or refer to any holy book. Moreover, the very first thing mentioned in the Bill of Rights is: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."
 
People were fleeing to the New World in search of both freedom of religion and freedom from it. Most Founding Fathers understood this and created a secular (meaning nonreligious, not godless) nation based on freedom and the inherent "God-given" morality within each individual. "God," for most of the founders, was a secular Creator.
 
THE GOOD RELIGIONS DO DOES NOT EXCUSE THE BAD
 
This does not deny that religions can do good. For example, even in Islamic states that promote terrorism and brutal punishment for disobedience, social services, and charitable giving rivals that of any other religion or nation. The same is true for Christianity and Judaism even before the secular state tamed them. However, religions and holy books that justify both atrocity and benevolence provide no clear ethical guidance that should supersede one's conscience, nor are they reflective of the pure unequivocal justice of the Creator.
 
Nevertheless, nobody likes uncertainty. Thus, there is a natural inclination to follow systematized and formalized morality. People want clear and easy, right and wrong, black and white. We don't want to have to think and probe our consciences: "Somebody just tell me what to do so I can check off my moral chores, avoid god's ire, and get on with my life."

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Religions come to the rescue by providing grocery lists of dos and don'ts to check off each day. But does it fit any semblance of rationality that guidance from the Creator of the universe as to right and wrong should come from such stories as an angel Gabriel reciting text to the illiterate Mohammed in a cave in 610 CE, or Joseph Smith burying his face in a white top hat in the 1800s to read god's Mormon messages from a "seer" stone, or Moses climbing a cloud-covered mountain and remaining there for forty days to obtain the Ten Commandments written on stone by the finger of god?
 
Such untenable stories serve only to create huge worldwide religious institutions with immense power over people's minds. Dutiful believers can then employ the Nuremberg defense, regardless of the damage done by following religious rules: "I was only following god's orders."
 
GOODNESS COMES FROM FREE WILL AND CONSCIENCE, NOT FOLLOWING OTHERS
 
It's human to seek to be good. That's a consequence of free will, not an original sin putting us in need of salvation. The struggle between right and wrong, good and bad, underlies and pervades every religious, political, legal, and social institution, and has from time immemorial. Equity, justice, propriety, social graces, respect, honesty, and so on weigh on each of us personally every day because we have been given the gifts of conscience and free choice.
 
On the other hand, thousands of years of cathedrals, temples, churches, mosques, pyramids, Inquisitions, mummification, animal sacrifices, self-mutilation, witch trials, holy book reading, wall wailing, breast-beating, flagellation, jihads, fatwas, idolatry, sacrifices, converting savages, witch trials, celibacy, polygamy, circumcision, infibulation, not sparing the rod, stonings, suttees, ecumenism, parochial schools, catechisms, beheadings, conquistadors, pilgrimages, holy books in motel room drawers, drawing and quartering, eye and tongue removals, forbidden foods, special clothing, tithing, speaking in tongues, poison drinking, dancing with snakes, indulgences, evangelizing, chants, excommunications, hymn singing, hermeneutics (deciphering holy books written in arcane languages), eschatology (attempting to figure out from holy books when the world will end), missions, confessions, wafer eating, wine drinking, prayer in the right direction, penance, and heretic burning have not brought us closer to truth, made us better people, nor improved our lot.
 
Religions impose the impossible task of eliminating uncontrollable thoughts ("thou shalt not covet") and leaving people forever guilty and condemned for having them. Our measure should be what we choose to do, not by thoughts we have no control over.
 
Note how the religious leaders writing the Bible, from the get-go, attempt to deny free choice and conscience. Eve's "original sin" was to eat an apple from the "tree of knowledge of good and evil." (Gen 2:17) To know good and evil is to exercise one's own conscience. This was painted by the Bible writers as so egregiously criminal that all humans, billions and billions of us, supposedly inherit it as an "original sin" and the cause of all depravity and death.
 
This mysterious passage becomes crystal clear when the true authors are recognized, namely human religious leaders. These leaders didn't want people to decide for themselves. Their goal was power and control, meaning they alone, not the people, were to have the "knowledge of good and evil." Proof that is the case is the supposed knowledge of good and evil laid out as rules and regulations in their holy book.
 
Actually, the ultimate sin is not to eat the apple, meaning to follow other humans (and their human-made religious "knowledge of good and evil") rather than one's own Creator-given conscience.
 
When people come to believe that following the rules of others constitutes their duty to ethics, they abandon the best moral governor of all, conscience. We must freely author our actions.

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​Yes, we all struggle with nasty thoughts and imperfect actions, but we almost always intuitively know how we should behave. If we don't know and act improperly, consequences always follow and we make better choices next time. Such experience is the best teacher of all. And Earth life gives us plenty of that.
 
Up to a certain age, children have little empathy or ethics. They simply follow the commands of elders for fear of punishment. Adulthood brings with it free choice and an active conscience.
 
However, unlike a hairy chest or breasts that come automatically with maturity, activating free choice and conscience is a choice. We can remain like children and look to other humans and institutions (surrogate moms and dads) for rules to live by, or listen to the voice of conscience—eat the apple—implanted by the Creator.
 
We are also given reason and logic. Engaging those truth-deciphering skills is as much a matter of ethics as not lying, stealing, or harming others. Without truth, we live in a lie and contribute to a false world that ultimately brings harm.
 
We may be diamonds in the rough and struggle with making goodness manifest. But it's always there, urging if we will only listen to the voice within.