Is There a Point To Living a Moral Life?

[Zazzy]

So.... we are either essentially good, or not so good...Atheists or Religious! God has little to do with that descision.

I think you're entirely correct here, except that I don't think we're "essentially" goo or not so good. The idea of a "bad seed" gene has been floating around for a long time, but it's never gone anywhere. We are raised as we are raised, in a particular cultural ethos that may or may not allow room for dissent. If you were raised to believe that women should be castrated, and you had never had any opportunity to see a dissenting view, you'd probably be defending that practice. Me,too. I often wonder what I would be if I had been born to rich Southern slave-holding plantation family. I'd love to believe I would have been an abolitionist, but that's probably not realistic, given the ethos I would have been steeped in since birth. We are taught our morality, and if our culture is an open enough one, we can stray from that to greater and lesser degrees depending on our level of indoctrination.