I’d say you live on 100% of your OWN PRINCIPLE and keep it 100% to yourself.

Most importantly, they feel “influenced.” “The Devil made me do it,”

This is not accurate. I am not sure if the author was making that statement exclusively for Christians, but as Muslims we don’t consider “The Devil” to be the only root cause for whatever devilish things we might commit. We have “evil impulses” within us and whenever we commit a crime we take the full responsibilty of it on our own shoulders.

It must be a “blessing” from God, rather than their own hard work, ability or serendipity.

This attitude makes us humble and modest, while it makes others arrogant, boastful and haughty. He might act modest before others but he feels boastful inside him nonetheless. Only a person who truly believes that all his achievements are due to God’s kindness can become a genuinely humble person. Then again may be according to your moral compass “what’s the point of that?”.

What all of this means, is that people who have all of their rules set for them, may never develop their own moral compass.

Well, when one bases his life on PRINCIPLE, 99 percent of his decisions are already made. However, we do make 1% of the decisions according to our own moral compass. Yes, we do have it. In fact, everyone has his own moral compass, its only a matter of recognising and exercising it. People who are strictly religious are often afraid that the direction according to their own moral compass may not lead them to the “right path” after all. Most importantly this talk of morality is pretty much funny when ones moral is nothing but set of experience and perception of right and wrong one gathers from the community and society around one. It’s funny because he thinks of himself as a “free thinker” having his own “moral compass” when his thoughts and morals are drawn, defined and bounded by the society he grew up in.