Well Cris, I'm with you on that Blight Garganchic character. I was away a year and more, and used to blight these hallowed halls of science myself a few years back under a different incarnation, but when I recently learned that he was banned I recalled that LG was a total troll and attention-seeking pain in the backside. So what's it tell you that even people who have been gone two years remember him in a negative light?
As for this:
There remains no evidence of actual existence of gods or even the possibility that they might exist and until then it is not reasonable to assume they are anything other than human constructed concepts and fantasy products of human imagination.
Once you realize your god is just an imaginary figment then we can more appropriately discus the other useful human created and beneficial observations of treating others with respect, dignity, tolerance, and love
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You mean there is no evidence that you are willing to accept. And there is just one God, you need not belittle Him by grouping him with Zeus, Loki and Quetzalcoatl.
Then your use of "imaginary figment" shows me your not always a clear thinker or writer yourself. What other sorts of figments are there but imaginary, pray tell?
And we could discuss 'other useful human created and beneficial observations of treating others with respect, dignity, tolerance, and love'. I look forward to it, but this thread was started by an OP that merely asks what shall we replace religion with. Now he may well have meant just what you say, but the only reason any of us think that is because we understand instinctively that treating others with respect, dignity, tolerance, and love is the real business of religion. So actually I am confused. The OP seems to have set us a conundrum: How do you treat people with respect, dignity, tolerance, and love in the absence of respect, dignity, tolerance, and love?
Some posters above have argued that atheists and cavemen and maybe even atheistic caveman had a handle on civility and fair play, and giving their neighbor the cloak off their back and walking that extra mile, but no, I'm sure that much of such thinking originated with a bearded revolutionary Jewish fellow, and his name was not Karl Marx.