In general, a man with religion is better than an atheist.

[Angrboda]

"What an eccentric performance." -- Monty Python and the Holy Grail

I try to resist, but it is difficult.....

Since it hasn't been mentioned, I'll just quickly offer it. Man's innate moral sense trumps his religious revelations. Throughout history the most popular brand of faith has been "Cafeteria Faith" wherein the religious man picks and chooses what is agreeable to himself and discards the rest.

The bible condemns the wearing of cotton/polyester blends, yet how many Christians live in mortal fear of hellfire for wearing Fruit Of The Loom undies? How many Christians spend their days worrying if they've stoned enough witches? Did the pope reverse his position on Galileo because God or the bible changed, or because of the changes in men? How many Christians are ready to drink poison as a testament to their faith -- it would be a lot more convincing demonstration of the truth of Christ than a thousand preachy sermons.

People look to their own moral sense to determine which religious imperatives to accept, which to consign to "a different age" when that moral precept was necessary, and those that they simply ignore because they're "obviously wrong" (or simply inconvenient; Catholics continue to get abortions, hellfire or no). The Sharia law practiced today is a world of difference from that practiced 1,000 years ago, ditto for Christianity. When Christians find difficulties in the bible, what do they do? They use their own judgment of what is best to resolve the difficulty. How many people actually believe that Irenaeus decided on the four canonical gospels on the basis of their being four winds and four "zones" of the world, rather than that their content was agreeable to him, and their authorship believed? The history of the development of the biblical canon is littered with examples where books were accepted or expunged, not on any epistemological basis, but rather on whether the contents were agreeable to those deciding their acceptance.

Even if I bought the idea that hellfire is a great motivator -- I don't, people always believe it's "the other guy" who is acting improperly -- since religious laws are conformed to the image of man and not the reverse, religious compulsion ends up being a rubber stamp on whatever way the religious want to live. That's not even touching the fact that having a moral code does not lead to moral behavior unless the individual is moral to begin with.

When it comes to immoral behavior done in the name of self interest, Christians wrote the book on it; it's called The Bible.