As Einstein said, "If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are sorry indeed." Michael Sherman, in The Sicence of Good and Evil, calls it a debate stopper. If you agree that, in absence of god, you would commit robbery, rape and murder, you reveal yourself as an immoral person and we would be well advised to steer a wide course around you. If, on the other hand you admit that you would continue to be a good person even when not under divine surveillance, you have fatally undermined your claim that god is necessary for us to be good. I suspect that quite a lot of religious people do think religion is what motivates them to be good, especially if they belong to one of those faiths that systematically exploits personal quilt.
It seems to me to require quite a low self-regard to think that, should belief in god suddenly vanish from the world, we would all become callous and selfish hedonist with no kindness, no charity, no generosity, nothing that would deserve the name of goodness.
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