My morals aren't based on religion, I can choose to do right because it's the right thing to do, not because I seek reward in heaven or fear eternal torture in hell. I'm not sure I could trust the morals of a creator that plans on torturing me forever for simply being born a failed human. Morals based on fear lead only to bias.
Strabo, the Greek geographer and philosopher, says: "it is impossible to govern women and the gross body of the people, and to keep them pious, holy and virtuous, by the precepts of philosophy. This can only be done by the fear of the gods, which is raised and supported by ancient fictions and modern prodigies." And again he says: "The apparatus of the ancient mythologies was an engine which the legislators employed as bugbears to strike a terror into the childish imagination of the multitude."
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