(Originally posted as a comment on Richard Dawkin's website, here)
I think it's important to realize that believing in a creator God or Gods doesn't necessarily imply any particular creed or set of beliefs outside of that. Many societies have believed in a "great spirit", or creator God of some sort, but have not necessarily postulated a set of moral codes like that given in the Sermon on the Mount, for example.
Whether we believe in a God (or Gods) or not, we are still free to form our own ideas of what is important in life, and even those who claim to belong to the same religious denomination will be found to have significantly different values from each other, if we scratch beneath the surface.
The fact that various religions attempt to "own" God by telling us what God is and what God (supposedly) wants, I find distasteful. I think we need to figure that out for ourselves, if we choose to believe in a transcendent reality. And even if we don't, it's still up to us to determine what values we will uphold. And in that space, we are all empty-handed and free- to create as we wish! That is the meaning and reality of free will and if a creator God did create us with free will that is presumably what they would wish, also!
Sharka Todd
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