Picking up from where Fiyenyaa left off, I’d like to talk about the origins of morality, in terms of religion.
Many people attempt to claim that religion is a good thing because books such as the Bible provide a sense of morality. There are several problems here.
It is difficult to claim that there is any form of universal or objective morality. All we see are moral statements that, more so than others, tend to be culturally universal and broadly-accepted. For example, let’s consider the commandment “Thou shalt not kill”.
To deal with the obvious first, I hope that there isn’t anyone that genuinely believes that the Jews and other people of the Earth thought for 196,000 years of humanity’s existence that it was fine to kill others within their social group and were shocked when Moses came down and suggested that, in fact, God doesn’t like this.
The important thing we have to recognise here is that religion is, in no way, the source of this ‘morality’. These are concepts that came about through the process of humanity’s interaction with the sociological and biological realities of the world they inhabit. They transcend and outdate religion. Religion, in saying that one should not kill, is only entering into a discourse that reflects society’s engagement with the realities of their existence. It is not saying anything that is original or ground-breaking and, in fact, it really just saying things that secular reasoning had determined tens of thousands of years prior.
Holy Scriptures such as the Bible have very little original to say, and people who point to parts of it and say “but we can all agree this is good” ignore the fact that the reason we can all agree this is good is an entirely secular one to do with human sociological patterns that, in fact, renders the morality of religion entirely useless.
As always, I welcome all comments. Also, forgive the fact that this isn’t as detailed as I originally intended; uni calls.
Godless Musings 
An obvious argument against absolute objective morality within Christianity specifically is that fact that there is an old and a new testament, instead of only accepting one of them.
Within the Christian worldview, there came a point where the all-powerful, perfect creator of the the universe decided that the first set of rules he’d came up with were rubbish, and decided to change them substantially.
1. Cavemen killed each other. We need rules so we don’t do this, kapeesh?
2. Morals may have existed before scriptures and Biblical texts, the Bible demonstrates how these morals relate to, and affect our relationship with God. The ten commandments and moral teachings in the Bible are an excellent template or scaffold to base one’s life off of, where if it was not a good set of rules, it would not have survived for thousands of years.
1: Yes they did. People still do. And rules are not the exclusive domain of scripture; rules can come from secular government.
2: The ten commandments are an excellent template? The majority of them are completely useless – simply demanding that people do not worship incorrectly.
The fact that it survived merely means that it was successful, not good. Otherwise we must apply the same rules to other ideas that have survived for a long time; Islam, Judaism, the Egyptian pantheon; as well as non-religious ideas that have survived for just as long; the concept of war, the concept of an earth-centred universe, the concept of the divine right of kings.
The fact that something lasts does not make it either moral or correct.
I think the morality of the old testament is an interesting case study of why things are written. The god of the old testament is a genocidal maniac who encouraged murder, theft etc, whilst at the same time imposing his commandments. This is a strange juxtaposition. However, given that the old testament was written during a time that the Jews were being persecuted, it’s not a huge leap to imagine that they constructed this image of a wrathful god so that they could say “look, if you don’t treat us well our god is going to get you”. Then insert a standard list of how to behave well (along with some weird, jealous ones and hundreds that Christians ignore), and hey presto, the old testament.
As you say, it’s just another example of religion stating a moral system that already existed. I’m not sure it’s necessarily secular reasoning (as you put it) that put this system in place, but it was there.
It’s interesting you mention that, actually. Historically the Old Testament contains a lot of what we could call, to use a more modern term, pro-Jewish propaganda. For example, the whole idea of a Jewish exodus is entirely mythical and has no factual basis, historical or otherwise. Yet this can be seen as the Israelites attempting to legitimize their hold on power through divine claims and discourses of past woes. It lends them a legitimacy in a period and area of extremely superstitious cultures and in the lack of an overwhelming/overarching dominant society in the area.
Mythic discourse was important in the ancient world. Many Greek city states played on such connections to claim political legitimacy, as did Roman Emperors and Egyptian Pharaohs. You can look at the Old Testament in this sort of vein, and see how aspects such as exodus, which are entire mythical, can be analysed in terms of their political value at the time, as you say.
P.S.: Are you Australian? I only ask because you seemed to be familiar with Bishop Fisher.
English, not Australian. I just read the link you had at the start of the post and it seemed very familiar! PZ Myers has had lots of similar stories on Pharyngula, and it’s an argument I hear a lot of in general.