Maximizing Moral Virtue

[Alan V]

The problem with abrahamic religion is not that people pretend to know good from bad...they actually do...  It's that they conflate maximal evil with maximal virtue.  It's this, exactly this, and nothing else required....that makes a good person do a terrible thing.  We don't even need shitty people in the world to effect a shitty outcome if the good people are equally - if unintentionally - committed.

In my opinion, religious commands and prohibitions are either too out-dated or too oversimplified to be usefully applied to most situations.  Secular laws do a much better job of defining ethical behaviors.  This is why I dislike seeing religious ideas intrude on legal discussions, about abortion for instance.

Luckily most nominally religious people do not behave in accordance with their over-simplified religious teachings in most instances.  However, this has led to the confusion of religion with commonsense ethical ideas, a confusion conveyed by the original poster's questions.