[quote=So Boerd]
What Atheism, by design, lacks is a counter to the ring of Gyges. The secular reason I have for resisting a turn away from religious to secular morality is exactly that. I can never have a ring of Gyges; God is always watching. Indubitably many people won't become heinous when given total anonymity in real life, but a religious motivation is stronger than a secular motivation when it comes to the ability to do evil and no one would know.
[/quote]

I'm not sure the threat of divine retribution is much more of an adequate mechanism for morality than secular mechanisms anyway -- Boko Haram, FLDS and so many others manage to justify their depredations against their fellow human beings and lawyer away any moral objections they might have with the course of action they're taking by figuring that it's okay according to scripture, so don't feel guilty. Hell, in the Jewish community (so this is closer to home for me) there are people that think it's okay to defraud gentiles because it's not prohibited in the Talmud, whereas fraud against fellow Jews is specifically prohibited in the same. White supremacists tend to make a lot out of this, but the reality is that some fanatical communities consider fraud fine, so long as you aren't defrauding within the Tribe. And not a night's loss of sleep is given with the faithful involved.

So I don't see religion as entirely a mechanism of prohibiting certain acts by dint of proclamation -- I see that sword cutting both ways. There's all sorts of exhortations to do shit in certain circumstances and people willing to play word-games and essentially cleave it as finely as they can. Sure, that gets done in secular law, but that's the point -- write away with the best intention, but someone's gonna fuck with you using the loopholes. (Human nature seeks competitive advantage, just adding that so as to sort of square this all with my initial statement. ;) )

PS: Editing mostly for clarification, I'm not yanking the rug out from under people here.