[gavinlit]

As an aside on ethics, mathematical models do suggest that the most successful behaviour in an interactive society is to be 'friendly' or 'nice' to others. I know this is only a model but it does seem to suggest to me that any organism with reasonable intelligence (which we have an abundance of - maybe) would choose to act in a MOSTLY cooperative manner with other members of it's species. This leads to a greater chance of the species continuing in time. I tend to think that it's kind of hard wired into us. Think of how hard it is to act in an 'unfriendly' manner towards someone if they are smiling and extending their hand.
Of course once you throw in greed, jealousy, lust for stuff (goods, power, the fairer sex) it all gets a little messy but by and large I'd say our societies are fairly cooperative places and while plenty of religions support this line it may just still be possible without the support of the religious line or reference to a higher being.
Back to work now so leave you all to it. For what it's worth I'd call myself an atheist but still think there's a lot of good stuff in the bible. Went through the whole catholic education system and a lot of the values I believe in certainly align with those found in christian teachings. Parts of the bible could almost be titled 'a book on how to get along'. I guess I feel that all of the good stuff could still be there without an omnipotent power of some kind. Maybe one day something will happen that makes me think otherwise, but for the moment I truly believe that we're on our own and for the most part we're not doing too bad a job.