"Dark Lord Drake"
The question to me is, why shouldn't they run amok? Or really be smart about it and subtly take whatever they want and all that? I don't understand what would make them behave. After if they're right all morals and stuff are man made and so are the concepts of right and wrong, good and evil and why should they have any kind of regard for those? Not that I think that's a good excuse to force religion as the idea of forcing religion to make people behave is stupid.
One does not have to have a sense of "right and wrong" or "good and evil" to have a moral compass. One can extrapolate a rather functioning morality simply from the desire not to be harmed and an assumption that others also do not wish to be harmed. The simplest statement in that code is "If I were harmed, I would want to gain revenge. It is likely that someone I harm will want to gain revenge on me. If they gain revenge for harm, they will likely harm me. Therefore, I will endeavor not to harm others because of the risk of harm to myself." It can continue for as long as you'd like to think of scenarios.
This differs from the Golden Rule in that it does not necessarily endorse positive action, but instead focuses on non-negative action. Furthermore, it links directly to one's own temporal well-being (will I be harmed?) versus one's potential spiritual well-being (will a deity do something to me after I die for this?). Certainly there are abuses. Some people will take the attitude of "Might makes Right", and decide that it's perfectly OK to harm anyone they don't fear. Considering the things that man has done even with the threat of eternal damnation as a future punishment (or even in the name of the deity that should punish them for what they've done), this really isn't all that different from the potential abuses of a deity-centered morality. If a system of governance is put in place with a similar moral code (holy crap, laws!), then even the abuses can be curtailed to some degree. If the government is corrupt, then you're boned, unless there's some way of altering the governance. Perhaps a system could be set in place in which the people could choose their leaders, and make them fear harm (at least in the loss of their career as leaders) if they harm others. Whoah, holy crap, elections.
Sure, those can be abused too. Find me something that can't. Two-thirds of this planet is covered in a substance that, if you submerge someone in it, they will cease to be able to breathe and die. This entire planet is made of abusable things. Fear of abuse of a system is not the same as proof that the system is bad. If it were, we wouldn't have CD-Rs, blank cassette tapes, VCRs, xerography machines, cars, knives, sharp rocks, pointy twigs, or FIRE. That's right, we would not be allowed to have FIRE if the potential for abuse were to be considered proof that something is bad.
Why should morality be any different?
