Nero,
I don't believe that Cire was all that far off the mark.
If you take the historical perspective..... think back in the good ole dark ages, religion was a key tool to help people just make it through each day. The common bloke was a surf to some rich dude. The surf labored in poverty without relief. The prospects of a glorious and beautiful afterlife was the only means to make it through each day. Many argue that this belief system was effectively exploited by those in power to keep the working class under control and in poverty.
Religion and its moral teachings are intertwined. The promise of an afterlife is bound to living a good and clean moral life. I'm not denigrating what people believe, I'm just trying to help clarify Cire's perspective. A religious belief in the afterlife may distort one's perspective on the reality of the here and now, the life that we have been given to live. My ex's grandmother lived every day hoping and praying that God would take her home so that she could be with her husband. She held on for twenty years waiting to die. What a loss to her and her family that so much of her latter life was wasted.
A religious person will have a hard time separating their moral beliefs from their religious teachings. We see this daily in the political rhetoric on the tube. A non religious person will have a clear perspective of his moral system (if he chooses to look at it in this light) without the encumbrance of religious doctrine.
Cindi
