"Imagine there's no heaven..."

[sudopod]

26. Oh kaaaaaaay...

I was being serious. It's common among people everywhere to think that they've got some special insight into whatever it is they're "in to" at the moment, as if experts in the field are bound by convention and unable to see an "obvious" answer. Go on a science website and see how many folks think that they can build a perpetual motion machine. Now, are those people dumb? Mostly, the answer is no. Many of them are actually educated people, and often as not have tangentially related degrees (i.e. engineers). The only thing that they suffer from, other than a mild case of hubris, is the Dunning-Kruger effect, which seems to be a design flaw (lel) in the human brain rather than a character defect. What kind of freshman physics major doesn't think that they're going to invent a warp engine?

The only solution is education, which, upon consumption, tends to mellow into humility with repeated doses.

Morality without religion is a thing in some philosophical circles, and as a hard-nosed scientist I am not the best expert on modern thought in this direction. However, it only takes a little work to find some good summaries of people who have done work in this area. Like always with Wikipedia, the value isn't in the article itself, but in its value as an aggregator of source material. The "references" section is rich with informative goodness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality_without_religion

Among the philosophical arguments found there is this meatier nugget, a bit of science in the form of a paper from the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, which you might find interesting.

My Brother's Keeper? Compassion Predicts Generosity More Among Less Religious Individuals
Laura R. Saslow, Robb Willer, Matthew Feinberg, Paul K. Piff, Katharine Clark, Dacher Keltner
and Sarina R. Saturn, Social Psychological and Personality Science published online 26 April 2012,
DOI: 10.1177/1948550612444137

A download-able PDF is hosted at UC-Berkely here:

http://www.religionfacts.com/big_religion_chart.htm

Moreover, there are a large number of religions and belief systems that have very little of what we'd recognize as the Divine Carrot and Stick, especially in the forms of Heaven and Hell. Many religions believe that the soul dissolves with the body at the time of death, notably Taoism, several of the western-style polytheisms, and some strains of Judaisim. Others believe that the afterlife is uniformly bad, regardless of how one lives ones life, such as Shintoism and the ancient Mayan religion (though you got a ticket to heaven if you were a sacrificial victim!). A nice summary of several world religions' views on the afterlife can be found here:

http://www.religionfacts.com/big_religion_chart.htm

Now, if you'll excuse me, there is a ravening horde of Taoists looting my car that I must attend to, brb.