trying to adopt an amoral worldview

[Rev. Rye]

A passage from Schopenhauer that's very relevant to drich's assertion, and one that, frankly, I've seen borne out in the real world more often than not:

If only a statistician could tell us first of all how many crimes are refrained from each year from religious motives and how many from other motives. There would be very few of the former. For when a man feels tempted to commit a crime, then you can depend on it that the first thing he thinks of in opposition to the idea is the punishment appointed for it and the probability of its falling upon him; the second consideration is the risk to his honour. On these two objections he will, if I am not mistaken, ponder for hours before religious considerations so much as occur to him. If, however, he gets over these two first bulwarks against crime, I believe that religion alone will very rarely hold him back.

Granted, I'd add the possibility of empathy, that other people wouldn't want wrong to be done to them, but that might be a bit more abstract and intertwined with the issues of punishment (not helped by the fact that, where he lived, capital punishment was still a thing and I'm fairly certain state-sanctioned torture was still allowed within his lifetime), but, frankly, if one isn't deterred by punishment in this life, which is clearly a thing, they're probably not going to be too deterred by the possibility of punishment in the next life, which hasn't really been demonstrated in a way that's inconsistent with hallucinations brought about by a lack of oxygen to the brain.