Religion as a source for morality? Seriously?
This brand of morality not only endorsed but encouraged such things as slavery, the torture and murder of non-believers and even witch burning.

Disembowelling adultresses and having them eaten alive by pigs was a common practice carried out by Christians in Alexandria, as well as the frequent murder and harassment of non-believers.

The promotion of education by religions is a relatively recent phenomenon but now comes with provisos about what may or may not be taught.

These were not short-term aberrations but lasted for decades and even centuries in some cases. Given the religiously bloodthirsty history of the last 2000 years, we are probably living in an aberrant period right now but there are some who refuse to let it go.

Morality is not something that is "handed down from on-high" - it's a social agreement between people on what is mutually acceptable and changes and evolves as circumstances change. The claim that society would collapse without these iron age doctrines is as false as the warm-and-fuzzy Sunday School version of history that it wraps itself in.

The concept of a universal creator is as impossible for the human mind to grasp as the scope of the universe itself and it takes a special kind of arrogance to dream up a scenario where one not only knows what God wants but what He did, how He did it, why He did it, what He wants and even what He looks like. All this is based on a random collection of ancient documents and selective fragments of several other religions by people who thought the earth was flat and inhabited by unicorns.

How unbelievably convenient.

It's one thing to surrender responsibility for your own life and personal decisions to somebody else but that does not give you the right to impose that choice on others.

Lexi: "For many people, the idea that human beings evolved from lower forms of life does not diminish the uniqueness of human capabilities and the accomplishments of human civilisations."
No, but it makes rather a mess of the foundation beliefs of Christians. With no Adam and Eve, or anyone else, suddenly materialising as completely formed modern day humans, who committed the original/inherited sin from which we all had to be saved? With no original sin, why was a saviour necessary? With no need for a saviour, what was Jesus really trying to achieve by getting himself killed and rising again — if he really did? Given the number of books in the bible that biblical scholars now agree are forgeries, its claim to be the inerrant word of God is looking shakier and shakier. Of course, scholars who are committed believers cannot afford to call them "forgeries"; they call them pseudoepigraphical works.
And who was the first person to be equipped with a soul? Given that everyone (except Runner) now accepts that our species evolved from much lower forms, and given that Christians believe that the lower forms do not have eternal souls (only we do), there must have been a first person — a girl, I reckon — to have evolved enough to be worth fitting up with an eternal soul. That person's parents couldn't have had a soul if their daughter was the first to have one. So what will God say to their daughter on the Day of General Judgment when she looks round in vain for her loving mum and dad? It would have to be something like, "There's good news and bad news about your missing mum and dad. The bad news is that they just failed the ready-for-a-soul test and so won't be joining you in eternal bliss. Do try to be happy about this as we don't like sadness in Heaven — it lowers the tone of the place. The good news is that you needn't worry that they might be in hell. Same reason — no soul. They are actually… nowhere."

Despite Cardinal Pell delivering a series of clangers, and revealing himself as rather ignorant in the debate on Q & A, Dawkins utterly failed to show any humanity. He failed to say or do anything to attract you to his commited atheism.

I came away from the debate thinking that these two dingbats are showing us the two extreme positions that no 'life-loving' person would want to back themselves into. Much better to be agnostic, or a moderate broadminded religious person who just gets on with life, doing good things and enjoying it all.

There's no such thing as an unbeliever, atheism is a faith and it's rapidly developing into a religion, the Reason Rally in the U.S recently gathered 25,000 people, they have their own music, writers, artists etc.
This is all too hilarious as far as I'm concerned, there's no such thing as an Atheist or a "secular" movement, the Church Of Reason is one of the most active and aggressive evangelical groups in the world.

Dear GlenC,

You're taking Adam and Eve literally by the sound of
your post. I have always assumed that they represented
"everyman" so to speak. The Bible also should not
be taken literally - but symbolically. And it to is
open to interpretation - afterall it was written by men -
a long, long time ago - words, change their meaning
over time as we all know.

As for arguing with you about religion. As I stated earlier -
religion is personal. And I wouldn't dream of forcing it
onto anyone else.

Secularises organised religions have
become in many cases, as calcified as other institutions
that form the structure of our modern world. Our religious
institutions have far too often become handmaidens of the
status quo, while genuine religious experience is anything
but that. I have come to see that true religion is internal,
not external. The spirit within cannot be blamed for the
blasphemies carried out in its name. What some have done in the
name of religion; projecting their neuroses even penetrating evil
on the world, does not make religion as a mystical phenomenon
invalid.

Religious institutions as such, are not the only arbiters
of religious experience. They do not own the Truth. For the
Truth cannot be owned. Nor should they think they hold some
francise on our spiritual life. They are consultants and
frameworks, but they are not God Himself. We should not
confuse the path with the destination.

Lexi,
Science is also God's work, reason is another one of God's gifts to man, through science and scientific reasoning we can better understand the machinations of the divine.