A few years ago I wrote a "Rebuttal to Pilgrim's Progress," and one of the characters explains why religious people (in this case citizens of the City of Dogma) hate humanity:

"In the City of Dogma, being human is a crime. To that end, you are expected to abandon your humanity to their God, thus circumventing any charges of humanness. This is why citizens of the city can do such egregious acts to others and never be called to account for their bad behavior. They proclaim that their humanness led them to do it, but that their God has forgiven that humanness and they are no longer responsible for any actions done because of it. You, however, have left the city, and subsequently chosen to embrace your humanity—and to take responsibility for it. In their eyes, you have fully embraced this crime; and because you have left of your own accord, you are also considered a traitor."
~ The Rebuttal to Pilgrim's Progress

Later, another character says:

"What makes humanness so meaningful is that you can consciously seek to evolve into a human who values this humanness—and, consequently, the humanness of others. In the City of Dogma, you are taught to condemn this perfection and mistrust your humanity and conform to a very peculiar series of "un-human" dictates. Sin and evil are religious constructs—completely made up by the religion that defines them. They want you to believe you’re not perfect, but that cannot be true for this reason: you are a human being. As human, you can only express yourself perfectly—as HUMAN. Nobody else in the Universe can be you. You can rise to the pinnacle of humanness, or you can sink the lowness of humanness… either way, you’re still a human “being”.

I used to try to use the more 'educated' knowledge that 'morality' is built in, and then gets upgraded as we become more aware of our humanness. But that doesn't work because it involves actual cognizance, and they're not into that.

So now I just say, The most moral thing I can do as a human being is find a way to teach Christians about Jesus and encourage them to one-day embrace his teachings.

I've always said if you need someone to tell you that murdering and rape and stealing is wrong, maybe you have some issues.

Since when does god come into this equation. No one needs god for morality, I have a deep personal soul and that is to love nature and humanity. I did this without the big idiot in the sky who apparently can be quite vicious. No, I like my morality over gods and we should all try to teach this so called god, how to act like a god and not some stupid ass judgemental moron.

Ask them one question: If you knew a man was molesting a child, would you do something about it?

When they say yes; tell them, "Congratulations, you are more moral than the god you worship."

Does God count as moral? My moral standards were always higher than Gods even when I was religious. I thought the Bible was full of horrible stories.

My first thought is to question what a "soul" is, then if you can get past that point, then the meaning of morality. Empathy, logic and reason are a good starting point to explain secular morality. Religion does not have the "high ground" on morality, they just think they do. Sam Harris does some good work in this area.

i have had people attack me on this issue. i refuse to bite my tongue. i feel no pressure at all. if i am a good person, and i hope i am, it is because i believe in being a good person. fictional characters from ancient texts have nothing to do with it.

g

I've had this problem before, and there are a couple ways I've dealt with it. My favorite way to describe how we derive our morality is to bring up our evolutionary tribe mentality. Aron Ra speaks about this pretty well in one of his talks. If you wanted to refute the point of God gives us morality, see what God really says in whatever religion they cite, and contrast that to what they say. Sometimes, it's just easier to stay quiet, however, so I do understand that pressure.