[mbrodersen]

> The main idea is to pass down moral values.

I am not sure that is true. You can absolutely pass down moral values without involving a God. That is what happened to me. It seems to me that the goal of a lot of religious teaching is to use a bogeyman (God) to scare little children into doing what you want instead of teaching the children why it makes sense to do the right thing.

[libertine]

I'd agree with you if somewhere down the line the, let's call it, character of Jesus was introduced as the personification of God's ideals in a human being.

Suddenly we could move away from the "fear based framework" to the "strive to be closer to the idea of God" framework since we had someone to emulate.

In fact we can arguably say that God gave us complete freedom, and full responsibility since he died on a cross (and in that process He even doubted himself) left us with a role model.

>why it makes sense to do the right thing.

This seems like a trivial task but it's not. Sometimes doing the right thing doesn't make any sense at all.

[mbrodersen]

> Sometimes doing the right thing doesn't make any sense at all.

I am struggling to find examples where that might be true. Can you give an example?