Religion and a literal "God" are not needed, for us to be a Stoic, and moral/ethical people.

Someone claimed
"You cant be an atheist while being a Stoic.".
 
My response was this:

"You can't rationally justify that position."
 
His next response was this:

"Read Meditation by Marcus Aurelius himself on the respects for God". 

To this, I offered:

There is a lot to unpack there.
As such, I can understand why you didn't try to, in these little boxes of text.
--

If we go back far enough, to before recorded history,
we can logically deduce that religion helped less developed people bond, survive, and thrive.

We also see examples of that in ~recorded history~.

I certainly don't condemn them for that.

However, 
these were ~training wheels~.

What once helped us
now hinders us.

Religion
is not the belief that a "God" exists.

Religion, instead, is that belief that a "God" (or: something external and greater than us)
attempts to inform our values and direct our actions;
and that we humans
should obey.

So then, a "deist" is not religious.
But a personal-God-theist is.
---

Surely you've noticed
that religion does more to divide
than it does to unite.

The more it unites, the more it divides;
because every new member is pulled away from the larger whole of the human body.

Meanwhile, most Muslims eagerly await the day when their Allah literally kills, and then endlessly tortures
all those whom didn't embrace Islam when they still had time.

A great many Christians feel the same way; eagerly awaiting the same fate
for everyone who didn't join their ranks instead.

Some Muslims do not think in such terms.
Some Christians do not think in such terms.
And yet, billions do.
And their texts are the reason for that.

Even under the umbrella of Christianity, the respective rival factions can't agree on anything meaningful.

They can't agree on what is moral, what is immoral, or how any of it should be applied to our lives.

So then, clearly, theism doesn't provide for a unifying moral framework.

It's just mere humans
competing to give their own subjective
~moral intuitions~ the appearance of greater-than-human moral authority;
-a platform which naturally breeds abuse.

Granted, non-theists can do the same thing.
Most don't.
Most wouldn't.
But some would.
And some have.

They can create a ~different yet similar~ fictional premise for their own moral intuitions being innately superior to everyone else's.

They can use that to give their own voice undue "authority".

They can set themselves up in Authoritarian systems, where they become the ~unquestionable moral authority~ that demands subservience from all "lesser" humans.

But that's still "religion".

They're just not bothering to use the god-gimmick.

Instead, they're copying the more specific mechanisms normally used in theocratic machines.
They're just installing it into a less grandiose casing.

That's what I'm against.
-No matter if it's happening as a Theocratic-themed project or not.
--------
Deism isn't a problem.
-------
Abstract theism
isn't a problem either.
(ie. Jung, Spinoza, Einstein, Peterson, etc)
(which, btw, is really just atheists coopting religious language, to express awe about the mysteries and grandeurs of the natural universe, and then using that ~appeal to greatness~ to promote pro-social behaviors)

Although, whenever metaphoricists (non-literalists) shelter and enable the literal religions, ...
That's when non-literal philosophers 'get dirty' and add themselves to our world's problems. 

---

Meanwhile, we've all heard a lot of literal-personal-God-theists assert that "without a literal God, we can't have a purely objective basis for our morals".

That is, of course, incorrect.

But even if that were true,
that's like saying "without a literal King of the Leprechauns, we can't have an objective basis for establishing the value of gold".

Even if I accepted that logic (which I don't; but even if I did), ...
my reply would be:

Oh well.

Needing a specific ~thing~ in order to objectively justify ~a specific value~ ...
doesn't prove we have the ~thing~.

We might not have the thing.

In fact, we very obviously don't have gods, leprechauns, or other fantasy beings setting our values for us. 

If that means we can't ~do a subsequent thing~ we needed ~the first thing~ for,
then
oh well.

We'll have to get by without it.

----------------------------

Someone else (Adam Culpepper) 
employing a different meaning for the term "religion, but still making the same point that I made, ...

added this:

I think you're a little confused.

Stoicism is a religion and it is the religion Marcus Aurelius was talking about.

The stoic "God" is what is referred to as the "cosmic God" however the cosmic God of stoicism is a pantheistic.

Pantheism is the belief that the entire universe is god ... so it's more like the Spinoza god.

Modernly Richard Dawkins has referred to pantheism as sexed up atheism...

Most modern stoics are atheists or agnostics.

However religion doesn't require the belief in a deity.

For instance, Buddhism is a religion and it has no deity worship.

 Either way, Marcus Aurelius is very famous for atheistic sentiments.

“Live a good life.
If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by.
If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them.
If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
― Marcus Aurelius