Who is more likely to commit a heinous act? A man threatened by retaliation from the law or a man threatened by retaliation from both the law and the eternal punishment of his Pantheon?
Late response this, probably ninjaed, but:
My default position is non-belief in any god[1] and ditto for afterlives in general. When you're dead you're dead[2]. There are live people who are nasty pieces of work, or might be considered useless (if not harmful) to the human race, but even they have consciousness whirring around in their brain carrying knowledge, thoughts, memories of people gone. Once dead, all of that electrochemical soup of information degrades and the only signs of it are in the ripples through causaility[4] such as the memories passed on by other people, carved stones, literature, interesting solutions to obscure problems being contained within the collective consciousness, whatever.
But the person themselves is gone. Unavoidable death by ageing is a loss I would rather did not happen, avoidable but understandable death by accident or lack of health provision is a tragedy in itself. To actually deprive a consciousness of 'being' is beyond the pale, and to my mind (as it currently stands[5]) I would never do this and would fight against doing this.
Whereas many religious opinions (from the "kill the infidel!" extreme of hate to "he's going to a better place" one of love) give credence to dying being merely an end to mortal suffering (and either the start of immortal suffering, or an eternal bliss of some kind, according to the relevant opinions), and make it an easy choice, it is far harder for me.
As a fully qualified example, I'm really having a hard time accepting the possibility that my favourite author, Terry Pratchett may well decide to undergo some form of assisted dying. I can only marginally temper this, in my mind, by the fact that the circumstances under which he might well take this course of action is where he already feels that he has lost the larger part of the very mind which I particularly value.
That is the clincher for me. It means that I might well accept his decision, but right now I couldn't say what I would do if I were unknowingly put into a sweepstake to be the one to do the assisting
and win. It would... an honour...? Not really the right word, but something like that, but I doubt I'd ever fulfil such a macabre request. Not that it'd ever be my responsibility. Doubtless wife and daughter Lyn and Rhianna would at least be present, and then there's Rob, his assistant, even if not close friends such as Stephen Briggs, Bernard Pearson, et al... No worries that I'd be ever asked, but I would feel distraught at his passing.
And, conversely, if I really did not like someone's existence, I would still avoid killing them. If I dredge my mind for the more extreme examples I still can't see me going much further than imprisonment. But I doubt I'd actively or passively hasten their demise in any way. And that is how this atheist, at least, would act
without the law of the land to stay my hand. The law additionally keeps me in hand as well, but is not the only reason there is restraint on my actions. I can only foresee vast changes in my attitude if there was a universal lack of law, so that I have to kill-or-be-killed, but a mere personal (or situational) removal of legal limits would not cause me to run rampage
just because I'm unencumbered by belief.
[1] Note: not disbelief, just non-belief. You know, us "soft atheists" that everyone forgets about, even after I've gone over this issue several times about how agnosticism is a different axis and not even the middle ground between 'normal' people and those
[2] Until there is evidence to the contrary, and I'm also strongly of the opinion that there is no way to have proof positive on that issue, positive or negative, and so shall doubtless stick to an opinion of its absence right up until I find those pearly gates in front of me[3], and maybe even longer if I don't find the end effect convincing enough, given my normal scepticism and general acceptance of Clarke's Third Law and Niven's corollary.
[3] Or am trying to get comfortable in whichever species of womb/egg/etc I am being reincarnated into, or am otherwise floating in the medium of the universe having 'ascended', etc
[4] Ok, so I'm also a fatalist/determinist, and so all that was going to happen is going to happen, because of causation being a stickler for rules, but I can (may, indeed, be forced to!) mentally divorce myself from that view in order to expound a looser view. Compare it to someone alighting a roller-coaster without having had a proper chance to view the ride. The tracks are fixed, an external observation can show that the ride will always progress along a fixed path and the train of cars upon it are going to get around the circuit without difficulty. But that still doesn't make the ride unexciting, and you may well want to go round again!
[5] This all has to be balanced by the "what would you do if you had to kill to survive" or similar questions about killing to save loved ones, or the killing/allowing to be killed of an individual to save a group of people (c.f. the 'fat bloke to stop the runaway railway cart'), etc, but in simple terms I'm talking about whether one should kill a person or not...