RELIGION USES GOD TO ROB YOU OF YOUR MORAL AUTHORITY

Each one of us wants to see what is good by our own resources and by our own authority. We find it off-putting if somebody tries to impose their idea of right and wrong on us and that includes God. The God belief only puts people off being truly good. Even if we decide we must let God decide for us what is good and what is evil the fact remains that we have still decided what good is namely what God regards as good. We cannot get away from our wish to decide for ourselves independently of God.  Get that? Choosing God as your guide to good means you are still being independent of God. It is you who gives him the honour of agreeing with him.

We want to believe that we know what morality is not God even if we decide we know that God knows what moral is and we should follow him. We wouldn't be doing that unless we thought we knew what morality is namely doing what God wants. The fact that we decide that what God wants is good and we should do this good he wants does not mean we are deciding that we should treat God as if he is making all the decisions for us. After all we have to decide that God is good independently of his authority. Those who say they follow the authority of God are really following their own authority that tells them to treat God as an authority. He is not a real authority.

When a Christian says, "Give up this sin for God and not for me", they are lying. What they really mean is, "I wouldn't choose God if he didn't match my needs and thinking. I say I accept his authority. But it is really my own I accept if I am honest. When I obey a boss I really obey my own will for I decide to do what he asks. I am the real boss over me even if I am a doormat . So give up your sin for me."
 
A belief that puts people off moral authority - or should put them off if it doesn't - such as the God belief can hardly be said to be necessary for believing in morality. God botherers are causing a lot of trouble by claiming that belief in God and belief in morality go together and that one is essential to the other. It is like encouraging an athlete to win when you know that she can't win. It's patronising and cynical.
 
Human nature does not need God to justify the theory of right and wrong even if God is the only justification. We are built to do without it. The fact is that if we hurt others nature takes care of us and sets us up for destruction.  This keeps some control over us.  Nature does better than morality.

Religion tries to get us to base morality on God. All that can do is discourage us and maybe rob us of our whole potential for it is unnatural. It implies too that we must put consciously thinking of the theory first to test ourselves to make sure we are in accord and harmony with it.  The God botherer when lives are to be saved and every second counts will pause anyway to check out their spiritual state, their standing with God. And if the theory is false, it takes away from the goodness of our intentions. What would you think of a person who would not do good unless they were commanded to do it by a person or a principle?
 
The Church advises that we should believe in the morality God reveals to be on the safe side. This is Pascal's argument that we should believe in God and the Catholic religion for if we don't we could end up in Hell forever so it is safer to believe and even if we are wrong we will be virtuous nonetheless. Against that it could be argued, "It is the best and the only safe route to stick to the principles that all people of faith and people of none believe in such as not sexually abusing children etc than to worry about specific religious rules eg, if a woman is going to have sex with her AIDS stricken husband you are expected to encourage her to ask him not to use a condom. That way you are sure of being virtuous". Religion and God then are against real morality and commonsense.
 
If we want to believe in God we must want it for it is best for us or moral and because God gives us standards to live up to. Then, we will believe in God because it is our duty to. If it is true that we need the belief in order to live a good life then clearly it is our duty to believe in God. Those who do not then are evil whether they mean to be or not and should be stopped and silenced.

God's existence is not obvious. The hiding God and his giving of doctrines that are not reasonably certain opens the door for wolves who wish to get the flock to kill in the name of God or faith. If you believe in God you believe in one who kills. He knew what people were like but inspired them to develop religions that were bad. 

Anyway if God gives the right to kill as in the Bible or Qur'an you have no right to assume that God has not delegated his right to kill to other people. He may even command members of another faith such as Islam to do it even if it is not the one true faith. If you really believe you should take the most non-judgemental interpretation of another's actions then you can excuse the killers by saying they really believe God told them to do it or that maybe he actually did tell them. Belief in God calls for the violent religionist to be enabled or as good as.

Just because God is believed to be perfect goodness does not mean that it is good for us to believe in God or obey him or to hold that people should obey him.
 
Christians do not consult God or the clergy or their Bible all the time about moral issues. They only consult him in very difficult cases - eg for some abortions and when there is a question of euthanasia being a solution. Otherwise they just do what nature inspires them to do just like atheists do. But that does not stop them stating their superiority morally and otherwise to atheists.
 
You will see Christian mothers who are asked to have an abortion so that they may save their lives and be there for their children. They may refuse believing God does not want them to have an abortion and will look after them. Then they end up dead and their families destroyed and the children turning out anti-social and wallowing in profligacy. Christians know that they can't depend on God to give the right decision. When God is consulted so little in relation to morality it is just badness or irresponsibility when a Christian says you need to believe in God to be moral. Even those that do consult him have little faith but they take a chance. If Christians want morality and belief in God to be co-dependent then they should make that true in their own lives all the time.
 
Christians believe that there is an all-good God and that evil is not a power but a falling short. It's a distorted good or a good that is in the wrong place. When cancer cells grow they are good at growing so that is a good that is in the wrong place. Christians say that to say evil is a power is to say that God must have made evil. It would be a disproof of the existence or the goodness of God. If you accept the argument that evil is not a thing at all then it is possible that cancer is not a real evil. Perhaps it needs to thrive and kill us all off to save us from worse. So you are only able to guess what is good and what is bad. You cannot judge God as good and as having authority unless you have an idea of what good is already in your head. This is really just picking a God that suits what you think and feel. The differences between many religions is about how to determine what religion or scripture speaks with God's authority. So there is nothing you can do. You just pick your moral codes and invent a God for yourself that implements them. To say that morality depends on belief in God or in a God commanding us to believe that x is bad and y is good is really to say that we should treat human thinking and human authority as God.
 
Some say that the believer says that what is out there and our human lives are ultimately worthwhile and there is a purpose and that purpose is God. They will say that the unbeliever holds that all that exists including our human lives is ultimately purposeless. If that is true then unbelievers are demeaning human nature and trying to lure people away from true happiness. The reply is that we can believe in an ultimate purpose without that purpose being God. Also, to say we need belief in God to have ultimate purpose is admitting that we can feel that there is ultimate purpose even if there is not. Believing in God doesn't prove God is there. If we can create a belief to help ourselves then why should the belief necessarily be belief in God? We live our lives from day to day and don't have the luxury of worrying about ultimate purposes.
 
If you believe in God, you will believe that your secret bad thoughts and bad feelings about people that you deliberately consent to are offending him. If you are an atheist, it becomes your own business not God's. Belief in God inflicts the burden of thinking there is that wonderful God there for you to offend a lot of the time. It will encourage you to hurt people when you are hurting God anyway.

Atheism is the way to go!!!
 
Handbook of Christian Apologetics, Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, Monarch Publications, East Sussex, 1995
The Future of Atheism, Alister McGrath and Daniel Dennett, Robert B Stewart, SPCK, London , 2008
Ethics: The Fundamentals, Julia Driver, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, 2007