There are religious people who preach about empathy but do not have any developed right brain functionality of empathy.

An example of a religious person with no empathy at all would be a priest who rapes little children. How could anyone with true empathy commit such a horrific act?

There are two other possibilities which may warp priests into monsters and that would be those who had also been abused as a child or, number 2, low empathetic natural homosexuals who were twisted into an obscenity by the conflicting religious decree of celibacy.


On the other side of the coin there may be atheist people who teach ethics but may never employ ethics as a guiding priciple in their own lives.
A better example may be a Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld who feel very little destorying countless lives not because of any religion or lack of it but due to a principle they believe in that supercedes ethics or morality, patriotism that pays hard cash.

Commandments may be well intentioned but the spectrum of inate human talents and abilities and disabilities differ enough to make certain people immune from good advice to the core of their being, with or without religion. For most of use endowed with Empathy, empathy is enough for the basic morality of society, The higher teachings still require education be it a secular golden rule or religious law.