Ahem, not trying to turn this into a religious thread. What I should have said was “In fact, apart from religion (and not all people are religious) there is no compelling reason to follow any moral standard at all other than what you happen to feel is right.”

While you may not feel killing another person is wrong, how and the world are you going to compel another person who believes differently not to do it without the use of physical force? You can’t appeal to moral virtue, as this other individual simply has a different moral code from you. I merely brought up religion as the one construct I see that enables us to non-forcibly (in the physical sense) place our moral codes onto others. To be sure, I am very uncomfortable discussing religion is this light, as it seems to denigrate the whole faith thing into a means of non-physical control. However, pragmatically it seems to me that it is the only alternative to physical restraining those who have different morals than “society”.