Recent observations and experiments concerning a sense of fairness ("justice") and reciprocal altruism among apes suggest that widespread ethical behavior may have evolved by natural selection — long before anyone could talk about or proscribe rules. In other words, behavior that contributes to viable societies evolved eons before there was any rationalization of those behaviors by religious dogmas or verbalized systems of ethics. That is why certain "good" behaviors, like helping someone, just "feel right."
— Richard Milner, author of Darwin's Universe [2009]

Compassion is the basis of all morality.
— Arthur Schopenhauer

Fundamentalists like to argue that if a person doesn't fear God's wrath, then he will become a dissipated hedonist and feel free to do anything he just happens to feel like doing from moment to moment. I have always felt this claim to be a bit odd. If a person stoops to help a fallen child only because some god told him to do it, then tomorrow he can kill that child for the same reason. And guess what? This is how religious people actually behave.

Humanists counter the Fundamentalist Fallacy by saying, no, there are other factors on which to base morality, such as The Golden Rule. I've found that compassion for the suffering of others is a pretty good basis for one's treatment of them. But I resent being put on the defensive here. Why should I have to explain why I do good deeds to someone who's already convinced I'm incapable of them? Can't I be in love, be charitable or be brave without having to explain to some hostile stranger my reasons for being so?

The truth is that quite often we don't have explicit "reasons" for our reaction patterns. They became useful habits so long ago that we no longer remember why or how we adopted them. At this stage they just "feel right" in the moment. And that's enough for me. In fact, although fundamentalists love to feel they have the right to tell everybody else what to do, I've never met even one who advanced reasons for why they think such behavior is ethical. What the hell is their moral basis anyway?

So for all you self-appointed judges out there who think you have a right to demand explanations for everything I do? Go find someone else to pick on.