Well, I don't blame you for having doubts about religion. As a hardcore atheist and one who doesn't believe in spirituality or anything like that, I don't look at religion.

However, before the kind of religion there is today, ethics were taught. They were completely different to the garbage the church teaches today - more in line with Jewish thinking (which is about ethics).

When i say that has disappeared, that is what I'm talking about.

I'm going to quote from my article. "When that disappeared, there was nothing to replace it. Duty became a dirty word. Self-involvement replaced society commitment. Gossip became widely accepted (inviting endless slander and destruction of innocent people)."

You tell me what church tells people about their duty to the community. It is all about personal prosperity, personal happiness, etc. Nor does current teaching mention the finer points of ethics. That used to be around - if you studied the Christian writings up until about the 19th century. That has completely gone.

No religion has room for anyone who is different to the tribe. All religion is a load of crap. However, until fairly recently, it was the only source of ethics we had.

I will also say that the bible doesn't write directly about ethics. The ethics came from those within the church who extrapolated from the bible and then put it together with other things, and that is how they arrived at their conclusion.s