We should take the Moral Highground

[Neo-Scholastic]

Couldn't help but notice how you glossed over my criticism of a faith based system of morality and how it boils down to little more than "my imaginary friend tells me what's right which coincidentally is always whatever I want."

You and many other members continue to present a straw man of religious belief. Terms like ‘imaginary friend’ and ‘sky daddy’ do not accurately reflect most believers’ concept of a supreme being. This kind of willful misrepresentation of the others’ opinion does not help further your case. It just makes you sound like a jackass.

Couldn't Moving past that, you'll note how I discussed "innate sense". We are social animals that depend on one another for survival. The ability to form laws is an evolutionary strength as is developing a reputation for integrity that others may be comfortable in dealing with you.

You base your ‘innate moral sense’ on its evolutionary benefits. In my follow-up posts I sufficiently demonstrated that you do not understand evolutionary psychology or acknowledge that evolutionary mandates are not in themselves moral in any meaningful way.
By your definition religion could be considered a more powerful evolutionary benefit that some vague moral sense. Even if the beliefs of a religion are completely false, it still binds people into cohesive social units that can dominate over the less organized, thus ensuring their survival. It follows from this that idolaters and blasphemers undermine the cohesiveness of the social unit and are an evolutionary detriment and should be recognized as immoral.

You are free to believe that God gave us this conscience if you wish but doing so does nothing to validate your position. Either way, we still have that aforementioned innate sense and so we don't need religion.

But you do need to prove that the ‘innate moral sense’ is accurate and provide a standard for determining so. Otherwise your claim to the high moral ground is hollow.

One of the things that makes secular values superior is we eliminate the clutter and can zero in on the heart of the matter. Morality is a function of how we treat our fellow sentients. It is where our actions impact the wellbeing of our fellow sentient beings that questions of morality apply. Religion, by contrast, obsesses over distractions like blasphemy, idolatry and apostasy… peruse the 10 Commandments listed in Exodus 20. A few deal with real moral issues, like the prohibitions against murder, theft and adultery, but most are about being an obedient believer.

Morality is more than about interpersonal relationships. Morality also includes how we treat ourselves by cultivating virtues, like courage, temperance, and wisdom. From a theistic perspective the cultivation of virtue occurs hand-in-hand with establishing a right relationship with God. And as I showed above, if you assert that evolutionary benefit is the basis of morality then prohibitions against idolatry and blasphemy become moral issues, since these undermine the cohesiveness of the social unit.

By [its] nature, religion will be more concerned with its own interests rather than real moral issues.

Likewise each species is concerned only with its own survival, not real moral issues.

In sum, religion has a conflict of interest. Secular values don't. Ergo, we win.

You have proved nothing. Instead, you seem intent on winning and proving your superiority over others. You do this as opposed to seeking areas of agreement and mutual understanding. Your ‘innate moral sense’ should inform you that a hostile attitude is both rude and unproductive.