Is belief in God necessary for a person to be good? God is often thought of as the moral law-giver, or the source of morality and law, and thus many believers conclude that if we reject the law-giver, we have no reason to be moral. Another way of putting it might be that without believing that a more powerful, judgmental being is looking over your shoulder, you will be more likely to do wrong, thinking you will escape punishment. Unfortunately, this line of thinking is a fairly common one today, even though it is based upon several unfounded assumptions. First we will look at the notion of gods as law-givers, then we will examine the moral effects of religious belief, and lastly we'll consider the significance of being good without God.

I. The Lawless Law-givers

What is good or moral can vary in each religion, but there is at least one central idea to all of them: anything God does, or says is good, is good. This should be pretty obvious, because no one really wants to worship a deity that is known to make mistakes or immoral decisions. The Greek philosopher Socrates expanded the issue into a dilemma: does God command something because it is good, or is it good because God commands it? If God commands something because it is good, then goodness seems to be independent of God and he may be subject to the same morality he advises us to follow. Yet if something is good because God commands it, then good is simply whatever God wants it to be, and so the statement, 'God is good' is basically meaningless.

Religious believers label their gods as law-givers because it is a part of their faith, but rarely ever do they attempt to demonstrate exactly why their specific deity should be considered a law-giver. Citing the passage of Moses receiving the 10 commandments is not enough. Many Christians do not recognize Allah or Ahura Mazda as law-givers, even though both religions have scripture that dictates good behavior. Unless it can be shown that a particular god is responsible for a particular set of morals, the deity cannot rightfully be called a law-giver. It is also worth contemplating whether or not the god is, in fact, a moral law-giver. If the laws provided are actually harmful or immoral, then the god in question certainly cannot be called a moral law-giver.

Whether you look to nature or to scripture, it's hard to believe that God has any concern for morality. The bible says that God does not discriminate in his treatment of the righteous and unrighteous (Matthew 5:45), and even looking at our societies, we can see how bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. If God has truly given us moral laws to obey, should he not punish those who disobey or reward those who follow? Some might contend that he will do that in the afterlife, but it is not by respecting moral laws that one is saved, only by faith in Christ, according to countless Christians.

When faced with their god's apparent apathy towards moral behavior, believers fall back on an all-too-common adage: 'the Lord works in mysterious ways; his ways are higher than our ways'. Conveniently, this serves to exonerate God of any responsibility for his own immoral behaviors. The theist often claims that we, who are the inferior creations, cannot sit in judgment of God, the superior creator. God can order the slaughter of the Canaanites (Numbers 21:3), drown the overwhelming majority of humanity in a flood (Genesis 7:11-24), and kill the firstborn child of every Egyptian (Exodus 12:29), and still be considered good by his followers, because 'his ways are above ours'. If God himself can be held to no moral standard, then he is a lawless law-giver, not dissimilar to the parent who says, 'do as I say, not as I do'.

II. The Cosmic Police

If you don't believe in a certain god, you probably won't acknowledge that god to be any kind of law-giver. Realizing this, some religious believers restructure their argument in favor of faith alone, so that simply believing in a god (whether it exists or not) is more moral than not believing. According to these people, someone who believes that a cosmic policeman is watching them at all times will be less likely to commit crimes than a person who does not believe in the cosmic cop. However, several studies have found that countries with high religious belief tend to have higher crime rates than those countries with little religious belief [1] [2], and the majority of prison inmates are religious [3].

Now it would be unfair to take this as evidence that religion makes one immoral, because most people on our planet do happen to be religious, and these statistics may just reflect that fact. But what this does illustrate is that religion does not reduce crime and being religious does not make you a good person. There are also many supporting examples from history, like the crusades and witch-trials. Most Christians today will denounce those atrocities, although some of them seem unable to see how such atrocities invalidate their notion of religious faith being a necessary component for inspiring people to be good.

Even supposing that it might produce better results to have a paranoia about a cosmic cop watching your behavior, I think it is hardly respectable or desirable, compared to the alternative. I would much rather someone behave morally because they value their fellow humans, instead of behaving under duress or a duty to a god, ancient book, or anything else. This is really the crux of the issue and leads to the big question of how and why we should strive to be good without God.

III. No Belief Necessary

Religious believers often have it so engrained in their minds that there is no morality apart from God, because it is what their religion teaches. It defines goodness for them, and goodness is always following the religion as closely as possible. Therefore, they think that someone who does not observe their religion cannot be good. As I have already shown, their definition of goodness is not very defensible. There are some nice moral teachings to Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, but they all have some fairly disturbing teachings too. What does it really mean to be good, and is it something atheists are capable of?

Opinions vary on what is good, historically and geographically. For centuries, we have devised ethical paradigms and theories to aid in our interactions with one another, as well as our own pursuit of happiness. Even the appeal to God as a source of morality is a paradigm, known as Divine Command Theory. Although they all seek ways to understand and live by what is good, no one view is clearly more privileged to truth than another. Yet if we value our own survival and peace, I believe a strong argument can be made for an overarching concept of the good. If we want to live unprovoked, we ought not to provoke others.

You don't have to believe in God to respect and value other human beings, and you don't have to be an atheist to think humanity is dangerous, harmful, or unworthy of respect. There are men and women on both sides of the fence. Atheism is not a belief, it is the lack of a belief. It is a-theism, or the rejection of theism, just like asexual reproduction involves no sexual methods. There are no intrinsic morals to atheism, rather it is like a blank slate. Saying that an atheist cannot be moral is like saying a barber cannot be moral. If the person were just an atheist or just a barber, it might be true, but we are much more complicated in the numerous beliefs and views that we hold.

There is no real connection, or even correlation, between belief in God and morality. Our views on religion may influence our moral decisions or vice versa, but there is no evidence that believing in God makes you a good person or that lacking such belief means you are immoral.

IV. No God Necessary Either

We've talked mainly about belief up until this point, but what about the existence of God? Some believers do maintain that one can be moral without believing in a higher power, but if there really is no God, then it is impossible to be good. The Christian apologist Norman Geisler spells out the claim in an article entitled, Can Atheists Justify Being Good Without God?:

As I explained before, Christians merely take it on faith that their god is a moral law-giver. Nowhere in his essay does Geisler endeavor to establish why he thinks his particular deity qualifies for the position. This leaves him at a significant disadvantage, because if it may be doubted that he actually relies on a moral law-giver, then he is in the exact same situation as the atheists he criticizes, having to look to fallible and finite sources for his sense of morality. It is not clear that his god is moral or a law-giver.

Geisler believes that a moral law cannot be meaningful apart from a law-giver, whom he identifies as God. But what prevents this law-giver from being society or ourselves? The apologist seems to believe that those sources could not provide a moral law, because they are relative and not absolute, but this entirely depends upon our definition of a moral law. Would it have to be of supernatural origin? Could it not simply be a brute fact, like many theists claim the existence of God is? Why must morality be absolute to be valuable? Geisler's statement leaves many crucial questions unanswered.

Geisler also says that relativism is bad because under such a view there is no way to denounce Nazism's treatment of the Jews. These sorts of people often seem to forget that the Nazis were not moral relativists though, they believed in what they did with absolute conviction. Even so, no apologist seems able to demonstrate just why relativism forbids moral judgments against opposing views. It only recognizes that no ethical paradigm is more privileged than another, but criticisms and condemnations can certainly be made, and one is still very free to persuade others of their position. If I witness a murder attempt and my morality tells me that murder is wrong, I will act on my belief, not that of the person whose morality permits him to kill. It is perfectly consistent for a relativist to intervene based on their own values, unless their ethics demand that they defer to the other persons involved in a conflict.

Believers can argue that morality requires God all they want, but until they can provide some legitimate reasoning or evidence for it, they do not deserve the benefit of a doubt. Who's to say that a universe without God could have no morality? We aren't 100% sure that this one has a god, and yet many of us seem to have no difficulty in making moral decisions. Being good without God is not a problem.

1. Gledhill, R. (2005) Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side'. TimesOnline.co.uk. Retrieved July 24, 2009.
2. Zuckerman, P. (2009) The Virtues of Godlessness. ReasonWeekly.com. Retrieved July 24, 2009.
3. Swift, R. (1997) The results of the Christians vs atheists in prison investigation.. Retrieved July 24, 2009.
4. Geisler, N. Can Atheists Justify Being Good Without God?. NormanGeisler.net. Retrieved July 24, 2009.