It is no more a vaccuum than religion if religion's main objective is absolve us of our guilt and sins.

What if there is no God and religion is a human construct, made for those reasons which you describe in your article. That is, some ancient soul decided that our sins were too great and needed to be reigned in or tempered via a moral framework that was presented as something more than 'of the human' ie. the supernatural. Where does that leave us? You have to consider the possibility merely on the basis of rational thought and science.

Freedom and rights are also human constructs but something we have come to in the face of a worse alternative - that of totalitarianism. Some aspects might not sit well with religious folk such as abortion of which debate normally focusses on issues of rights vs what constitutes a life. Homosexuals and women are not treated well in religious texts suggesting that no God could have ever insisted on such a gross lack of compassion,egalitarianism and instead promoted prejudice.

Recently I was invited to an atheist friendship group and although I declined I can see a common purpose similar to Christian fellowship. People who might wish to meet to discuss ethics, philosphy and issues of the day.

Would humans be any different with or without religion? Humans are flawed and will sometimes sin but other times demonstrate real empathy and compassion or contribute in some other way to improving the wellbeing of others.

The absence of a formal religious framework may not be perfect perhaps but the religious framework is not either, in fact it could be argued that despite good intentions the divisive and over-judgemental nature of religion has the potential to cause greater hardship and provide the impetus for sin than a more human or earthly approach.

These are things worth considering as none of us can say for sure where we would be now without the concept of God that has influenced societies for such a long time.

Would humans be any different with or without religion?
pelican,
that is a great question. Imagine not having the influence of superstition. Then imagine people being without fear. that's how I see people with & without religion. without religion or rather, superstitious brainwashing people might have even less conscience than they have with it. would people have more or less compassion if they hadn't been indoctrinated. the funny thing is that many of the religious people I know are actually the worst yet many who don't give a hoot about it are in general quite honest.
I say let people grow up before lumping them with religion. just don't ruin childhood years with it.

Self-autonomy is not the problem,Peter.
The Church is.
Who should be invested with the right to tell those seeking or demamnding self-autonomy?
The Church? Yeah. That is the old saw. Look where it has got us, Christians and Muslims.
You are asking us to hand back to the Church the authority we wrested from that institution and sure as hell we arent going to trust the Church again.

socratease

individual makes a good point. Were humans inherently evil and selfish before the onset of religious indoctrination? We'll never know but I'm prepared to guess the answer ... and it won't make Peter Sellick and his cohorts happy.

Remember Epicuris on the mystery of God: "Is He willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is impotent. Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able and willing? Whence then is evil?"

Christianity does not even have a fully comprehensive model of what we are as human beings, or what a Fully Conscious human being might begin to look like. Christianity (and our entire "culture") effectively conspires to reduce us all to the failed complications of the first three stages of life - there are seven possible stages of life.

We do not even begin to become fully human until we are stably established in the fourth stage of life. Of course very few human beings have ever "achieved" that level of psycho-physical maturity. Yet that is our evolutionary destiny as a single species.

The seven stages are briefly described here:

http://www.aboutadidam.org/growth/seven_stages.html

Christianity is also based on the Taboo Against the Superior. Every aspect of our common culture is pervaded by this taboo.

We "educate"/indoctrinate/brainwash our children into becoming normal dreadfully sane examples of this non-superior human being. In doing so the "sins of the fathers" become incarnated upon/in the beaten flesh-bodies of every new clone/victim.

The dreadful sorry-go-round perpetuates itself unconsciously generation after generation. And thus creates all of the dreadful "news" and dreadful collective destiny of an entirely sub-human mass "culture".

References on the origins & consequences of the TABOO.

http://www.dabase.org/2armP1.htm#ch2

http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/jesusandme.html

http://www.dabase.org/proofch6.htm#idol

The sleep-walking-human-world does not want to awaken

http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/Aletheon/ancient_walkabout_way_1.html

of course 'our sins are greater than we are', we only need to remember the holocaust and Port Arthur Massacre, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, My Lai, Wounded Knee and Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, the whatsits rendition, and our oh ever so modern freedom of 'choice' in which millions of the unborn have been destroyed - abortion.
But if our pride is greater than our reason, atrocities such as these will only continue, for we are all prone to error and sin. So we need to repent and bring a conversion of heart to bear on our evils, because our pride stands in our way. And we cannot forgive our own sins.

As Carl Jung so aptly put it, "Man is many things, but he is not rational."