"". . .people that were primed with reminders of a secular moral authority were just as altruistic as the religiously primed ones! It isn’t religion, it is the presence of a moral authority that does the trick."
Absolutely! Every religion has a moral authority. It is the primate alpha male of the human group social group and what we are instinctively attuned to. It may be a "God" or an emperor or President. After 9/11, and everyone became angry or afraid, Bush became our Alpha male moral authority. He told us who was "the Axis of Evil" and the people thought they were on "the moral hight ground" and willingly went to war as he directed (with lies)---all based upon our secular-Christian ideology. We were informed that the nations we attacked were "evil" (Satanic) and needed "democracy." (!) Without a common belief system, no one can be the Alpha male to a group larger than a few dozen.
Every society has a religion that binds the people into it and each society is made up of nations which are sub-groups of the society. All people have a common belief system that way. We call it "religion" and includes the East Asian Marxist nations and society. Even we atheists have our world of science theory (belief). No one has no belief, and only the insane have beliefs not common to masses of other people.
You believe much as I do, we believe in evolution, are Free Thinkers, accept many of the Ten Commandments and a dozen other moral axioms not found in the Bible and what are now apart of our Secular moral system---such as protecting the environment, being humane, tolerant, against slavery and torture, etc. etc. What controls public opinion is our secular-religious system.
charles
the Atheistic Science Institute - home page* *
