MrHen comments on Fake Morality - Less Wrong
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This was intended to be a counter example -- not a description of how all people work. I can imagine that someone out there would very much become a murderer if they lost religion.
Introspection is scary. Dismantling any large area of your belief system is also scary. I would expect that knocking over one's central morality system would (and should!) have drastic effects that would filter down throughout particular behaviors.
My only point was that pointing at the fear of becoming a murderer (or any other particular thing) does not imply an external moral system which is what I read out of the original post.
The adaptability of a meme is related to truth but people often follow what they think sounds nice. Is there anything that makes religious beliefs immune to the dilemma of advertising or political rhetoric?
A central God-source morality would imply a deeper, er, source. But is it theoretically possible that some other system of morality is at work that is just as (or appears as) common as what a God-source morality provides?
(These are honest questions, but somewhat rhetorical.)