Although religion might be useful in developing a solid moral framework - and enforcing it - we can quite easily develop moral intuitions without relying on religion.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The moral systems of religion, I think, are super important.
Religion may have become a codification of morality, and it may fortify it, but it's not the origin of it.
I do not want to suggest that you have to be religious to be moral.
I think that the practice of religion allows one to discover emotional and psychological truth of a kind not available in the secular world.
Behaving morally because of a hope of reward or a fear of punishment is not morality. Morality is not bribery or threats. Religion is bribery and threats. Humans have morality. We don't need religion.
The difference between religion and morality lies simply in the classical division of things into the divine and the human, if one only interprets this correctly.
Through some combination of culture and biology, our minds are intuitively receptive to religion.
Religion without morality is a superstition and a curse, and morality without religion is impossible.
The very idea that we get a moral compass from religion is horrible. Not only should we not get our moral compass from religion, as a matter of fact we don't.
Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning - an endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea by measuring the distance we have run, but without any observation of the heavenly bodies.