metalmancpa - your attempt to distinguish between the acts of religion and humanity are meaningless in that religion is a creation of and exists within humanity. Animals aren't religious (well, or so I'd think we can assume). The matter that makes up the earth and everything on it isn't religious - only our human consciousnesses are. You raise valid points that the non-religious may be inadvertantly influenced by exposure to religion, but I'm going to restate Satori's argument that most of these beliefs are present within people inherently. Do the Ten Commandments really need to exist for anyone to know that killing is wrong, or is that an "moral instinct" we need not be told? Humans can come up with this stuff on their own... how old is Hammurabi's Code? (not that it fits today's moral standards exactly - but, hey! It was a start!)
Anyways, for the positivity/negativity of Christianity's impact on the world, let's look at this from a different and admittedly more specific/less significant historical perspective.
The Ancient Greeks were a pretty damn evolved people for their time. They had figured out democracy (to some degree), had advanced art to degrees some still consider unsurpassed today, their knowledge of science allowed them to create amazing architecture and provided the groundwork for modern math and science. They were rolling along just fine... until the Romans kicked their asses and pretty much took their culture. However, this allowed the spread of these concepts through the large empire.
...then, Christianity came along, the Roman Empire fell apart, and all "heretic" art and ideas were scrapped, seeked out and destroyed, neglected, and all of the enlightened goodness of the Classical era was lost and nobody bothered to try to progress to that level until the Renaissance, 1500 or so years later. The time in between was filled with plague, war, poverty, servitude, gross class distinctions, hell, they called it "The Dark Ages" for a reason. Oddly enough, when the renaissance did occur, people began openly questioning Christianity, turing towards atheism, and openly disputing what's written in "the book" at about that time.
Look at this example. I completely step out of what I know to be fact here, and go on some guesses and assumptions - but I find it interesting, and it goes to the point, so...
I seem to recall someone here (I think it was here on the forum) pointing out something interesting. We're all familair with Atlas - the greek god punished by Zeus by being forced to hold the world atop his shoulders? Well, is it my imagination, or are there statues of him that were carved back in Ancient times? I ask this because the world that Atlas holds is round. This would seem to indicate that the Ancient Greeks KNEW the world was round, again, 1500 or so years before the Christians bothered to figure it out. Huh.
Finally, I also feel that of the people I know, certain irreligious people are the most "morally sound", far more so than some devout Christians I also know. I would hypothecize that the reason for this is that religion promotes conformity - thereby essentially putting boundaries on how moral or not people, on average, will be (heh... now we're discussing morality like it's a numeric variable in a role-playing game: "my athiest friend has intelligence 23 and morality 27 while my christian friend only has a morality of 24, even though he's christian..."). Not following this conformity, irreligious people have the ability to be more or less moral, on average, than that of the religious.
To sum up: Negative, for historical reasons half-outlined above, and because the moral positives attributed to religion would, I agree, exist in most humans without it.
