It's one of those threads again? Hard to comment with OP gone :P.
I don't think mistranslation is a correct word. Other meanings aside, technically both mean the same thing (Caesar Nero).

Uh, in practice you could mostly argue the opposite. Societal values do rub off on religions - actually religions tend to express them and to adapt to their evolutions.

Shockingly enough, morality existed bfore christianity. :-/

OP was basically a long version of : "i believe in god but atheists make good points and are not idiots so i don't think why we couldn't be friends". General answer being "but we're friends already, what are you talking about". To which was answered "ah, ok, cool".

Then, mostly irrelevant (but peaceful) theological debates ensued, between other people.

I did say that many people claim to be Christian and not act on it properly didn't I? I said that many are using Christianity as a mask to do horrible things to others and believing they will be saved by God in the end by proxy. I suppose some feel that no sin is any lesser or greater than any other sin in the eyes of God, equating a curse word with murder for instance. I don't believe that. I feel that God judges based on the extremity of the sin committed and based on the person's sorrow for what they've done and showing a true willingness to want to be forgiven for it.

Without religion societies would have never been formed the way they are today. It's easy for you to sit here today and say that if everyone had remained atheists that the world would have evolved the same way except with less war, murder, rape, etc. But that's just hypothetical speculation on your part. Since the world didn't evolve that way, it's impossible to say for sure what life would have been like without religion. Therefore I can only speculate as well - And I do feel that life would have been much worse than it is with religion.

Like I said, a world without religion has no morals as to what's right and what's wrong. Sure, some people long ago could have gotten together and established "rules" as to what's right and what's wrong.... oh wait, they DID do that. It's called religion! LOL!

I think you just don't like the creator part they added in into the rulebook aka Bible. You basically want to play "the game" aka life without an overseer or referee to judge you. So what are you left when then? Just another man asserting himself as your king instead. And you would be fine with that? I don't think so. You show you can even handle having an immortal God ruling over you so I doubt you'd be fine with another mortal like yourself to rule over you. I think you'd be jealous and do all you could do to kill that other man who tried to assert himself as your king and ruler. Because you'd have no fear in doing so because you'd know that life is just primitive and there's no meaning to any of it and the last thing you'd do is allow another mortal to rule over you when you show you can't even handle an immortal ruling over you either.

So I insist, religion is the moral glue holding us together.
Oh, you're perfectly welcome Marianne. Pretty name btw!

I'm sorry but this is immensely naive, narrow-minded and ethnocentric.

You really believe there is no morality (temporally, geographically, and culturally) outside christianism ?

Why would it need to be monolithic? Aren't murder, theft, rape, etc., shunned by all major religions? If I'm in a community with Jews, Christians, Buddhists, and Muslims - and they all share ideas similar to "Thou shalt not pick thy nose in public" or whatever it is - then doesn't that have the same effect? I mean, it's not like we have Christianity competing with a church that promotes murder and mayhem. Over time, it becomes "the way it is" through society, law, peer involvement, empathy, etc., but the foundation would likely include religious influence throughout the community.

Of course, but that doesn't mean the influences of each haven't ebbed and flowed over the centuries, and that there were never periods when "the church" was that primary 'moral compass'... for better or worse.

No, I don't believe in God nor I fear it because all religions share basically same things - they give people fairy tales about death and other realities of our lives they don't understand, so they don't be afraid of them in exchange for believing without asking.

No. Atheism frees you to question things as opposed to religions that usually distract believers from that. It doesn't mean that you don't believe in anything.

I live in country where a majority of people are Atheists. Moral code slightly differs per family. My faith is that acting in the way that causes harm to others is wrong. Acting good for sake of behaving well feels good, not for a fear of what a bunch of old guys wrote ages ago. I don't include persons fainting if anyone fails to live up to their expectations (not marrying a nice straight guy from neighborhood, etc.), of course.

I believe that a lack of consideration for others is what makes world-wide faiths so much of failure. It allows in written form to shame/kill/stalk/discriminate people who dare to live differently without harming others.

I was stating monolithic basically for ease of scientific equivalency - being able to say "result Y derives from cause X". With more religions in the mix it becomes more difficult to trace back to one specific one. But you are correct, one can argue it from the broad cases that are common to most religions.

However, I would then turn it back on itself and say that those very commonalities are due to something in human nature, as opposed to religion (with religion being one of the outward manifestations of this propensity). If you have religions which evolved from completely different stocks but which overlap, then the source of that overlap must be either (a) a deity or deities or similar external force which communicated the commonalities, (b) coincidence, or (c) human nature.

There are certainly some things which general religiosity do tend to increase in society, like encouraging respect for virtues like charity and honesty. But it is difficult to ultimately decode the circularity into cause and effect. It was created by humans, it shapes humans, and is in turn further shaped by humans. At what point does one demarcate the origin?

Such idiocy. Do you have an instinct to want your offspring to live? Of course, so does everyone else, thus everyone knows murder is wrong. Not religion, logic.

Perhaps you, but not I good Sir.

Anyone who cannot understand that ending a human being's life is wrong at face value and not because "you'll go to Hell" is a reprehensible soul indeed.

Exactly. I find it so annoying that people think IQ tests really test one's intelligence. They don't. Monkeys and other non human primates always do poorly when it comes to IQ tests but clearly, they are far from stupid. A stupid animal couldn't survival in the jungle for more than a few days.

Precisely my earlier point. Just as one might claim that his or her morals are not derived from religion, it's all-but impossible to quantify its affect on the community. So while I claim atheism for myself, I'm positive that my morality comes - in part - from a religious base since that's been a part of my community, peer, and familial surroundings since birth.

'Most of it' is just a strawman of ideas based on limited and flawed logic, so I certainly hope you don't. :)

Exactly.