Tooth Fairy Bullshit

[robvalue]

If religion is required for a person to be "good", I'd say that person is probably a psychopath.

How "good" someone is has a lot to do with their upbringing, of course. If you take a person who was raised religiously by nice people, and the person turns out nice, I'd say it's very probable they'd still be just as nice raised by nice non-religious people. If they would have been drastically different, then they are only capable of being nice because they are compelled to do so. That's a psychopath.

However, a poor upbringing can make a potentially nice person into a nasty person; or at least less nice. This can be due to religion, or not. But religion is particularly scary because it can sometimes give people extremely powerful motivation to do or think things they otherwise wouldn't. Motivation that isn't concerned with the wellbeing of humans. Rewards and punishments that transcend our whole existence. Clearly, if these can be powerful enough to make a psychopath behave nicely, they can easily make an otherwise nice person be a monster. And these are ultimately entirely selfish goals.

Is that worth the trade? Of course, it depends on exactly what a particular person is being taught in their religion. But I'd say that teaching someone the value of doing (or not doing) certain things simply because of their effect on other people is far better than ordering them around based on an invisible dictator that cannot be challenged. Ways of raising children with psychopathic tendencies have been developed, and I'd wager they are far better than just ordering them to be good. A psychopath combined with a bad religious upbringing is just... too horrible to contemplate.