Truth is not carved in stone. However. . . .

People worry that if there is no God in heaven,
threatening us with bubbling pools of sulpher,
that we will have no morals at all. Nonsense!

In the first place, such a pessimistic view of humankind
assumes that we really are a savage lot of beasts.
And while it is true that we do occasionally spawn a psychopath or a sociopath,
most people are just what we see when we look around: just what we are.

Would you be savagely mean if you could get away with it?
I think not. I think you would be, and I would be, just about what we are.
We grow up in communities that teach us to behave the way they do.

We become human beings in community.
Parents, and aunts and uncles and grandparents,
friends, and teachers, and people at work,
nudge us toward what most of them think is good.
They learned it the same way. So do our kids.

Adding a god who will punish you if you goof up
is just a way to emphasize how serious we think it is.
Every ethical system ever devised and taught
was still nothing more than the best we could think of.
To think that one version of the good and the true
was divine, and that it just happens to be the one you like,
is asking too much of credibility. Especially since
the claims to have god on your side looks a lot like
the floor of the old stock exchange, with people

holding up their hands and shouting for attention.

If there were a divine system of ethics,
it would not be carved on tablets of stone:
it would hang on a post office wall.

So, for the first time in your life,
read the stuff on the post office wall!

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