God, say the religious fundamentalists, is the source of all morality; there can be no morality without a Judge who rewards and punishes. If we did not fear hell and yearn for heaven, then what would stop people from murdering each other left and right?
Suppose Omega makes a credible threat that if you ever step inside a bathroom between 7AM and 10AM in the morning, he'll kill you. Would you be panicked by the prospect of Omega withdrawing his threat? Would you cower in existential terror and cry: "If Omega withdraws his threat, then what's to keep me from going to the bathroom?" No; you'd probably be quite relieved at your increased opportunity to, ahem, relieve yourself.
Which is to say: The very fact that a religious person would be afraid of God withdrawing Its threat to punish them for committing murder, shows that they have a revulsion of murder which is independent of whether God punishes murder or not. If they had no sense that murder was wrong independently of divine retribution, the prospect of God not punishing murder would be no more existentially horrifying than the prospect of God not punishing sneezing.
If Overcoming Bias has any religious readers left, I say to you: it may be that you will someday lose your faith: and on that day, you will not lose all sense of moral direction. For if you fear the prospect of God not punishing some deed, that is a moral compass. You can plug that compass directly into your decision system and steer by it. You can simply not do whatever you are afraid God may not punish you for doing. The fear of losing a moral compass is itself a moral compass. Indeed, I suspect you are steering by that compass, and that you always have been. As Piers Anthony once said, "Only those with souls worry over whether or not they have them." s/soul/morality/ and the point carries.
You don't hear religious fundamentalists using the argument: "If we did not fear hell and yearn for heaven, then what would stop people from eating pork?" Yet by their assumptions - that we have no moral compass but divine reward and retribution - this argument should sound just as forceful as the other.
Even the notion that God threatens you with eternal hellfire, rather than cookies, piggybacks on a pre-existing negative value for hellfire. Consider the following, and ask which of these two philosophers is really the altruist, and which is really selfish?
"You should be selfish, because when people set out to improve society, they meddle in their neighbors' affairs and pass laws and seize control and make everyone unhappy. Take whichever job that pays the most money: the reason the job pays more is that the efficient market thinks it produces more value than its alternatives. Take a job that pays less, and you're second-guessing what the market thinks will benefit society most."
"You should be altruistic, because the world is an iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, and the strategy that fares best is Tit for Tat with initial cooperation. People don't like jerks. Nice guys really do finish first. Studies show that people who contribute to society and have a sense of meaning in their lives, are happier than people who don't; being selfish will only make you unhappy in the long run."
Blank out the recommendations of these two philosophers, and you can see that the first philosopher is using strictly prosocial criteria to justify his recommendations; to him, what validates an argument for selfishness is showing that selfishness benefits everyone. The second philosopher appeals to strictly individual and hedonic criteria; to him, what validates an argument for altruism is showing that altruism benefits him as an individual: higher social status or more intense feelings of pleasure.
So which of these two is the actual altruist? Whichever one actually holds open doors for little old ladies.
Overcoming Bias DOES have a religious reader left. Me. I'm a philosopher with strong interests in political philosophy and philosophy of religion. I had several problems with the post:
You say that if we lose our belief in God that we won't lose our moral compass altogether. But that isn't the only issue for the theist, it's also whether the moral compass will point in the right direction all the time. If I become an atheist, I might still believe that murder is wrong, but I won't believe that a respect for the sacred is particularly important, and I'll probably start to reject, say, traditional teachings about sexual morality. Theists might well be worried about that.
Further, I think it's silly to imply (as you appear to) that most theists are divine command theorists. Most theistic philosophers today are not and neither were most theistic philosophers historically. Many of us (theistic philosophers) think that natural reason can tell us what moral rules we should follow.
I should also say that most theologians and philosophers who are religious (I guess all theologians are religious, but I think I have some exceptions in mind.) don't think that the primary reason to do as God says is because of external reward or punishment. That's just a silly caricature. Most theistic philosophers think that communion with God is our summum bonum. It's the whole point of our existence - He is our final end - our eudaimonia. They think we're naturally motivated to seek God and that those who are not have been corrupted by sin and rebellion. Pascal once said that everyone's heart has a God-shaped hole. Most of us believe something like that.
Note that much of what you say in your posts is pretty offensive to religious believers. We're not a bunch of morons, you know. Please see these philosophers and read their work as counterevidence.
When theists worry about losing sexual morality, it is because we are theists. Some of the reasons we think the world would be better if we are chaste depend on us preferring God to be happy than to be sad, the world being equal. If God could take some happiness pill, we'd want Him to.
That reason to be chaste would apply less if God were less important than He is. As such, our actions would displease the real God more if we believed God was less important. That means that believing God is less important would cause us to act in ways that we now consider worse, if we acted as would be right if God mattered less.