We all have a seemingly endless maze of internalized rules which we use to decide what is right and wrong, good and bad, positive and negative, moral and immoral. I believe that these rules do not intrinsically exist, of and by themselves -- they are always learned from others and typically reflect the beliefs of our cultures. For instance, in American culture it is typically wrong to talk back to your parents, walk naked in public or cross against a "Don’t Walk" sign.
I visualize my own structure of rules as a massive set of interconnected tinker toys, each piece providing strength and support for the other pieces that it connects to.
When pressed to define our belief structures, they ultimately rest upon some (usually very small) set of axiomatic beliefs -- that is, things we believe in but are unable to support. It has to be so -- otherwise the explanations either become circular or unending.
For many people, it comes down to a belief in what God has laid down for us. There is nothing wrong with this, as long as we recognize that the belief (or possibly a lower-level supporting belief) is axiomatic and is something that others, who may have different axioms, may not agree with. The larger and more complex the structures are which rest on the axioms, the more resistant we are to questioning our axioms. After all, yanking a single axiom can cause a lifetime of beliefs to come crashing down. Tinker toys all over the place.
My personal choice of an axiom is Love. If a rule or structure derives from or supports Love, then I accept it as a good fit for my personal belief structure, while recognizing that my choice of Love as an axiom is, by definition, a subjective choice and hence something I can explain but ultimately can’t objectively defend. Having said that, one of the reasons I have selected Love as my single axiom is that it appears to be the one thing that almost all religions value and respect. It is the closest thing to a common, universal axiom there is.
Try to visualize your own complex structure of beliefs. What are your axioms? How might your beliefs be different without the kinds of misperceptions and misunderstandings outlined above?