I would never and did not say such a thing. I do not see human interactions or cultures as being mechanistic. To be clear, I do not see it as mechanistic either as a result of deterministic forces nor from the actions of a cosmic watchmaker.
I don’t find I’m beset with destructive tendencies so dire that I must remain ever wary. I’m not saying evil does not exist or that it is always the result of natural causes, but I definitely don’t think there is demigod devoted to spreading it as wide as possible.
Yes we are all subject to a wide range of emotions but I would suggest just how highly destructive they become may actually increased by the effort to deny them. That doesn’t mean we should give them free sway, but whether they are addressed as murderous demonic urges or unruly children can have an effect on our behavior.
Very little in life is responsive to mechanisms based on what propositions we do or do not assent to. I don’t think that is how we work and it doesn’t reflect what we are.
I don’t think our intellectual appraisals are determinative in our moral behavior so I don’t like to use “belief” this way. But you could substitute “disposition” in place of “belief” and keep the question more relevant, I think. Though even with that adjustment there is no reason to look for a favorable disposition to be hard-wired into us either by natural selection or by divine decree. After all, if it were, wouldn’t we see a different world than we do? But humanity has a quicker level of evolutionary adaption in culture and that is where we see religion come onto the scene.
“The sound answer?” Conventional at least. But why immediately assume it is a God? Is that what you assume gives rise to your enduring sense of having/being a self? If anyone will allow that life can give rise to the latter, I cannot see why the former seems so farfetched to consider. As I said before, I think even if it is natural/cultural in origins I do think religion remains relevant but I 'm not convinced it would be the only way.
When the alternative is something you cannot produce or demonstrate and must be spoken of as ‘supernatural’, I think we’re both living in glass houses. I have faith in my assessment as you have in yours. You give the credit for that faith to that which you cannot prove, I give the credit to that which I cannot prove. However you know in atheist circles -not me- God is frequently refered to as your secret friend, suggesting essentially that you are really just making it up just as you imply in regard to what I believe.
I doubt if I’m the only one here who thinks “mind”, “self” and morality fits within an entirely natural world. Whether or not there is a God, we can and those of us outside of organized religion do, place these things in our everyday world without appeal to anything outside of it. If you believe that everything in the physical world is as it is only by divine fiat then the natural world begins to seem much less substantial. I would find that unfortunate and prone to cognitively expensive to hold.
FWIW, I have no intention to engage you @Dale on any of your posts in this thread. It isn’t anything you have written many times before.