Religion ≠ Morality

For me, consulting a 2000 year old book for tips on what is right is like feeling ill and expecting your doctor to diagnose you with an imbalance in your humours.

Before I get lynched by a bunch of religious zealots, let me make my point perfectly clear.  I am not trying to discredit anyones beliefs here.  Everybody has different opinions about why their god/scripture/religious culture is the right one and so long as you are not hurting anyone, that's fine by me.  What I am talking about is the notion that atheists are amoral because they have no such belief.  

I am writing this post out of confusion of this idea more than anything.  I was always led to believe that your conscience is what informs your behaviour when you think nobody is looking.  Now, if you believe in an omnipotent god who is keeping tabs on you, you are never not being watched and so every good thing you do is done in a bid to gain Brownie points.  Trying to impress the big man upstairs in order to get you into heaven/paradise/valhalla.  Surely your 'conscience' is redundant if you only do something to be rewarded in your next life...

'God loves you so much that he created hell so you would love him back'

The other thing which I just don't get is why certain people get so offended by people who do not believe in a god (especially if it is not their particular god)  Whatever happened to 'live and let live'.  What's it to them if we go to hell for being a non believer.  I would rather burn in hell for not believing in god than go to church every Sunday and get into heaven having been a total bitch in the process.  (By the way, I find the idea of heaven highly disturbing.  What kind of pyschopath would enjoy an eternity of marshmallow clouded bliss knowing that there were people having red hot pokers shoved up their arses for all eternity because they didn't say 'sorry')

As far as I am concerned, if humanity lived by one simple rule we would all be a lot happier: Treat others as you would want to be treated. I am not saying this is total fail safe, but for the big moral issues I think it works. Do you want to be stolen from? No. Well don't steal then. Simple.  Ironically, this is the constant in the major religions.  (You know, the ones who having been fighting wars with each other since their inception). Peel away the layers of misogyny, slavery, murder and violence of religious scriptures and you will find that very simple message. And actually it has nothing to do with god. Be good to your fellow humans because that it the nice thing to do. What's so wrong with that?