“This essay aims to debunk the notion that we need faith in any kind of god or any of the supernatural claims of religion to be moral. Faith-based morality is anachronistic at best. In many cases it has been the direct source of unspeakable wickedness, causing a lot of unnecessary suffering. The standard objection to this is that it’s the people who misinterpret religious texts, not faith itself, that causes them to kill, rape, and torture in the name of their religion. In the following pages I will show that the immoral behavior of religious people is, to the contrary, very often a direct result of their religious texts and beliefs and that the gravest misinterpretation is to mistake these texts for sound moral teachings that could or should ever be the foundation of modern morality and ethics. The position held by religious fundamentalists, moderates, and some secularists alike, that without our religious traditions humanity would descend into barbarism at the drop of a hat, simply doesn’t bear up against reality. In fact, religious beliefs have been the immediate cause of many of the darkest chapters in human history”.