>>24724187 (OP)
Very well phrased question, OP. Human beings are unfortunately, and against all evidence honestly considered, hard-wired for some form of religious feeling, a fundamental defect that we will always need to overcome and get clear of, once and for all. And that imperative is never going to go away. To invoke any sort of god is always to reduce your capacity to correctly understand and negotiate reality. Just as unfortunate, humans live a few decades, transmit their fictions to their children, and then grow old and die, never having seriously interrogated their own biases, or else having accepted the unsatisfying copes that their traditions feed them ("it's all a test", as one silly example, favored by islam). In other words, the shortness of the human lifespan allows individuals to escape accountability for their false and unwarranted beliefs. This is helped by a tendency to go along and get along, which devalues truth.
The tragedy of the western university system itself is that it was founded with the transmission of theology and the like as its core purpose. In this way, its very formation was poisoned from the start, much as the academic discipline of sociology has been poisoned right from the very start through its association with Marx.
>>24724207
This is one of the sillier replies. Whatever else you may think about him (and he can be tone-deaf on certain things, like literary appreciation), Dawkins does in fact supply a satisfying answer on where morality comes from. You would do better to focus on the absurdity of something coming from nothing, the (measurable) health benefits of prayer, etc.
