We’re in the 21st century, and the vast majority of us still believe in an utterly and obviously fictional creator deity. Plenty of people, even in developed countries with decent educational systems, still believe in ghosts or magic (e.g. voodoo). And I–an atheist and a skeptic–am told I need to respect these patently false beliefs as cultural traditions.
Fuck that. They’re bad cultural traditions, undeserving of respect. Child-proofing society for these intellectually stunted people doesn’t help them; it is in fact a disservice to them to pretend it’s okay to go through life believing these things. We should demand that people contend with reality on a factual basis by the time they reach adulthood (even earlier, if I’m being completely honest). We shouldn’t be coddling people who profess beliefs that are demonstrably false, simply because their feelings might get hurt.
I’m concerned you seem to imply here that we require some abstract deity to determine what our moral guidelines should be. Take the following hypothetical: if it was proven tomorrow beyond any reasonable doubt that no deity exists or has ever existed and all religious texts were hogwash written by crazed lunatics, would it be ok then to go out and do whatever you felt like, whether that was murder, robbery, or something else?
In other words, is it solely a belief in a deity that is keeping you from going out and committing extremely immoral acts?
To answer your question though, you would use philosophy, of which science and statistics play a role, and common sense. It doesn’t take a genius philosopher to figure out that maybe we shouldn’t randomly kill other people.
No. That was not my intention. I’m trying to better understand where and why you (or anyone) think religion is holding us back and how we can move forward.