My personal perspective is that morality and religion are actually distinct concepts. The majority of people actually derive their religious beliefs from their morality and not the other way around.

For such a belief to make sense, I have to believe that 'good' has meaning outside a religious context.

The only positive argument I could give for this off the top of my head is that we can talk about morality without talking about religion. If 'good' only had meaning within a religion then we couldn't talk about it except within a religious context. Contrast it with 'sin', sin is a purely religious concept. You can't even describe sin without involving a religious context.

Background wise, it's all self taught. Even with the programming I do for a living, I learned far more on my own, reading and experimenting, then I did in school.

Jay