Can We Be Good Without God?

In December 1989 Atlantic On-line, had an article with this title. There are many people today, and it is a growing percentage, who believe that morality can be apart from God. This article delves into this expression of faith.    

Glenn Tinder, the author, goes into Enlightenment rationalism and states that it "has translated certain Christian values into secular terms and, in an age becoming increasingly secular, has given them political force." But he continues that it "is doubtful, however, that it could have created those values or that it can provide them with adequate metaphysical foundations."    

Even Robert Bork speaking of morality apart from religious underpinnings wrote: "That might seem to suggest that religion is unnecessary to morality, but the counter argument is that such people are living on the moral capital of prior religious generations." Even as the author stated, "customs and habits formed during Christian ages keep people from professing and acting on such" impulses as imagined by "the one Dostoevsky thought was bound to follow the denial of the God-man: ‘Everything is permitted.’"    

So even if one today professes a faith that morality can be apart from religion, they still have not answered where that morality came from in the first place; other than to borrow existing morality from religion. Tinder uses Nietzsche’s belief that "if Christian faith is spurned ... then Christian morality must also be spurned." Tinder continues: "We cannot give up the Christian God--and the transcendence given other names in other faiths- and go on as before. We must give up Christian morality too. If the God man is nothing more than an illusion, the same thing is true of the idea that every individual possesses incalculable worth."  Tinder does ask a pertinent question; "To what extent are we now living on moral savings accumulated over many centuries but no longer being replenished?"    

Without borrowing from the moral capital of prior religious generations, it appears difficult for the atheist/non-theist to find a reasonable framework for morality.

 

Can We Be Good Without God?