7 Points of a Godless Life

[Angrboda]

Empathy, evolved or otherwise, gets you nowhere, because the feeling of empathy is just one among many other instinctual responses like disgust, contempt, fear and shame. You have no basis for privileging one set of feelings over another other your own personal inclination to do so.

Parker in particular shows himself to be his usual clueless self.  He falsely accuses believers of shirking responsibility for not constructing their own moral code. Believers do not have to make-up a feel-good ethical system that you find satisfying. Reason and experience teach the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” that transcend personal preferences and individual proclivities.

In the same way, believing in a god doesn't lead one to a specific moral attitude derived from that god - that requires the personal proclivity to invest one's morality into a specific theological theory. Existential freedom isn't a problem solely for the atheist, the theist faces the same crisis in whether to invest in a specific view of God. You yourself acknowledge as much by your final statement that, "Knowing the truth of the Gospel and having the will to live according to it are two separate things." The person without such will simply manufactures a different God. The problem of will and bias isn't magically solved by positing a god. There are plenty of theists who consider themselves moral regardless of their relation with God.