Moral reasoning

I spent half a year in college studying Rawls's Political Liberalism for a sophomore philosophy seminar. What I remember is that Rawls is trying to figure out how to get people to find a moral consensus when those people do not agree on the source of morality. If my moral beliefs come from the Bible and yours come from the Koran, then we will just never see eye to eye. I can't remember Rawls's resolution--I think he lays out some principles that people have to accept to enter into the discussion, or to go behind the veil of ignorance.

But I think Dennett lays it out much more plainly. He says that anyone who appeals to "higher authority" as a moral argument simply should be removed from the discussion. Their arguments should carry no weight in society.

Quoting Breaking the Spell, p. 295:
"It is commonly supposed that it is entirely exemplary to adopt the moral teachings of one's own religion without question, because--to put it simply--it is the word of God (as interpreted, always,by the specialists to whom one has delegated authority). I am urging, on the contrary, that anybody who professes that a particular point of moral conviction is not discussable, not debatable, not negotiable, simply because it is the word of God, or because the Bible says so, or because 'that is what all Muslims [Hindus, Sikhs ... ] believe, and I am a Muslim [Hindu, Sikh ... ]," should be seen to be making it impossible for the rest of us to take their views seriously, excusing themselves from the moral conversation, inadvertently acknowledging that their own views are not conscientiously maintained and deserve no further hearing.
...
"The fact that your faith is so strong that you cannot do otherwise just shows (if you really can't) that you are disabled for moral persuasion, a sort of robotic slave to a meme that you are unable to evaluate." [original emphasis]

It's hard-hitting language, but I think it's true and I think we need to talk about it more because a lot of people defend their moral positions simply because, "My faith tells me so." Now, the problem we run up against is that we live in a democracy, and my belief in democracy as an effective and just form of governance trumps my belief in policies defended by rational moral arguments. So it's incumbent upon rationalists to persuade society that supernatural beliefs should not be taken seriously.