Can We Be Good Without God

I’ve been asked to speak today on the question, “Can we be good without God?” To answer, I’m tempted to tell you my own story. Years ago when I rejected God, I also rejected the distinction between good and evil. Then again, I was an extreme case. Someone who asks “Can we be good without God?” isn’t trying to be extreme; he’s looking for a halfway house. So instead of telling you my story, I’ll try to lay out the logic of the matter.

Now the question “Can we be good without God?” may be taken in two different ways. One way focuses on knowledge, the other on action; one takes the question as meaning “Can we ‘know’ what’s good without ‘knowing’ God?”, the other takes it as meaning “Can we ‘do’ what’s good without ‘following’ God?” Let’s consider both.

As to the first — whether we can know what’s good without knowing God — you may think I’m going to say that unless we study the Bible we can’t know anything at all about right or wrong. I’m not, for the Bible itself makes the opposite claim: it says God has written a law on the hearts of all. Everyone has a conscience, and although the outer ring of our conscience may be influenced by culture, the inner core is universal and unchanging.

For instance there isn’t a human being alive who doesn’t know the good and right of love, and there isn’t a human being alive who doesn’t know the evil and wrong of murder. In the Biblical view, if we are confused about such things as sex, selfishness, abortion and euthanasia, the problem isn’t so much that we don’t know about right and wrong, but that we “suppress what we do” know about them. For we can’t not know the basic outlines of right and wrong.

Perhaps you think, then, that the answer to the question “Can we know good without knowing God?” is “Sure. Didn’t you just say we can?” Not so fast. I’ve said we all “know” something — but I’ve also said we “suppress” that knowledge. Let’s dig a little more deeply into this business of suppressing what we really know.

To begin, let’s ask why we do it. Why do we lie to ourselves about what’s right and wrong? We do it for the simple reason that we have a vested interest in doing so. We may want to know the truth, but the desire to know is not the only desire at work in us. The strong desire “not” to know competes with it, for our knowledge of right and wrong is an inconvenience to us. So we moan about how difficult it is to know what’s right even when we know perfectly well what’s right.

Now I propose to you that one of the things about good that we know perfectly well is the reality and goodness of God. When the Bible says, “The fool says in his heart ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1), it doesn’t call him a fool for “thinking” it, but for “saying” it, even though deep down he knows it isn’t true. From the Biblical point of view, the reason it’s so difficult to argue with an atheist — as I once was — is that he’s not being honest with himself. He knows that there is a God; he only tells himself he doesn’t know.

If this Biblical view is true — you are perfectly within your rights to challenge it, and we can take up such matters in the question-and-answer period — but if this daring, preposterous, Biblical view is true, as I think it is, it changes everything. Why? Because that would show that the real meaning of the question “Can I know good without knowing God?” is “Can I admit one part of my moral knowledge while holding down another?”, or “Can I admit to myself that I know about, say, the goodness of love and the evil of murder, while ‘not’ admitting to myself that I know about the goodness of God and the evil of refusing Him?”

My answer is you certainly can do that, but you will never do it well. To hold down part of your moral knowledge is to lie to yourself. So what? Think. We all know from experience that one lie leads to another. If you tell a big enough lie about something, pretty soon you have to tell a second one about something else just to cover it up. After a while you may find yourself lying about lots of things, and then you start losing track of when you’re lying and when you’re not. Before long you can’t tell at all any more. You’re lost in a maze of your making, unable to see the difference between how things are and how you said they are.

Now the same thing is true when you lie to yourself. Here too one lie leads to another. This is especially true with the biggest self-deception of all, when you lie to yourself about God, because that knowledge is connected to the knowledge of everything else. Let me illustrate with something I mentioned earlier — the knowledge of the good of love and the wrong of murder. You may try to hold onto your knowledge of the good of love — but if you lie to yourself about the God whose very being is love, then your understanding of all love will be defective. That’s why we do such awful things in love’s name. Or you may try to hold onto your knowledge of the evil of murdering your neighbor — but if you lie to yourself about the God in whose image your neighbor is made, then you will find it difficult to recognize your neighbor when you see him. That’s why we do such terrible things to those who have the greatest claim on our protection.

I said at the beginning that the question “Can we be good without God?” may be taken in two different ways. We’ve just considered the first way. Can we “know” what’s good without “knowing” God? What we’ve seen is that in a superficial way the answer is “Yes,” but in a deeper the answer is “No.” Now let’s consider the second way. Can we “do” what’s good without “following” God? The answer this time is the same as before: Yes and no, but mostly no.

The “Yes” side is that as everyone knows, a person who doesn’t follow God can sometimes do the right thing. He can sometimes tell the truth, he can sometimes show compassion, he can sometimes set aside his own interests for someone else. The problem is that this isn’t enough. God is absolutely holy. We’re not. When Moses asked to see God face to face, God said no, because it would kill him. When the great prophet Isaiah caught just a glimpse of the glory of God, He said “Woe is me! I am undone.” When the glory of God filled the ancient temple, strong men fell down. These were what we call good people, but as St. Paul says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Once one of my students asked if he could talk about God with me. I said okay. He told me he didn’t see why he couldn’t be good without God. I asked him why he didn’t. He said, “Because I think I’m a decent person.” I replied, “If you think your decency is high enough for God, your idea of God must be pretty low.” At first he was shocked. But then I asked him whether he thought he could go a week without selfishness, without resentment, without lust. I asked whether he thought he could go a day, an hour, ten minutes. He got the point, because he knew he couldn’t. By myself, neither can I.

You see, trying to do without God has ruined us inwardly. Yes, by His mercy, there are still some good things in us, but not one of those good things is in its original healthy state. Not only are we broken, but we can’t repair ourselves. Could you perform surgery on your own eyes, or treat yourself for madness? Suppose you tore off both arms; without your hands, could you sew them back on? Our sin-sickness is something like that. We may long to love purely, but our desires have become idols that control us. We may long to be holy, but our righteousness has become self-righteousness that rules us. We may long to be reconciled with God, but we can’t stop wanting to be the center of the universe ourselves.

Because the law of right and wrong is written on the heart of all, many philosophies and religions teach about right and wrong with pretty fair accuracy. What they can’t do is heal the sin-sickness. However true, no mere doctrine can do that. Our cancer requires more than a doctrine. What it requires is the divine surgeon, God Himself, and the name of His surgery is Jesus Christ.

If we take the Golden Rule - "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" - as the standard for good, then I will admit that there are atheists and agnostics who live up to this principle. They may not believe in the divinity of Jesus, but they see the wisdom of this principle.

It was a later misrepresentation of the former that lead people to think the baby, not the issue itself, was in limbo.

Well I learn something new every day. Went to a Catholic high school and Catholic College for two years in the 50s and this is the first I have heard of this. Heard limbo went away along with St. Christopher and a bunch of others. I guess that statue I had on my dashboard was a misunderstanding also. I visit these threads and usually don't post to them, but this one just brought back all the things that pushed me away from "The One True Church". For those of you that are so secure in your faith and your belief in the accuracy of its dogmas, I welcome you to the comfort it provides. I would not try under any circumstances to disuade you. The thing I find most offensive on these threads is the arrogance implied by many that they posses THE TRUTH, and woe to those who don't accept it as they can't possibly be a "good" as those "in the know".

Let's not overlook Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia where they love death, oppression, and lies. I believe man can have a form of godliness while denying the power thereof. People like Oprah, just an example, who talks about everyone's spirit but never refers to Jesus or his Father. It is spiritualism without a love for the Spirit of God, it is self love and self promotion and an excuse for self-indulgence.

Exactly, people who claim to represent God have to give a much greater accountability of themselves to God, much is required of them and they best not fail or bring shame to His name or judgement day will be a terror for them instead of a joy. Oprah, for instance, will have much less to answer for on that day according to scriptures.

Real simple: every atheist I've ever met has understood the concept of good vs. evil, but has simply not applied a superstition to it.

You speak of good and evil as self-evident(and they are), but why are they self-evident? What is the basis for their objective existence?

Every atheist I've ever met has been a good person trying to do good, to the best of their abilities. The atheists I've ever met on the whole have been the moral equivalent of Christians, but have been driven to be so not because of a fear of God, but because they knew it's the right thing to do.

You beg the question: What is good? You posit its existence without justifying its existence. I agree with you that atheists/agnostics may have an excellent moral sense, better than many Christians. But this is irrelevant, we must go deeper, why is there a binding morality at all?

You continue to assert that Christians seek to be moral only out of fear of God. If this were true, you would be correct- because acting morally merely as a means to an end is not to act morally at all. However, this is the very antithesis of a Christian morality- one cannot truly be moral to they love others for their own sake and love God freely.

You continue to assert that Christians seek to be moral only out of fear of God. If this were true, you would be correct- because acting morally merely as a means to an end is not to act morally at all. However, this is the very antithesis of a Christian morality- one cannot truly be moral to they love others for their own sake and love God freely.

Well said; Rather notably, I'd replace "If this were true" with "Where this is true".

This scenario contains a fundamental contradiction. For God to act in this manner this manner would be arbitrary. God by definition is immutable and unchangeable- the god in this scenario is some sort of divine tyrant.

Ummm... I think God can be arbitrary if he damn well pleases. God *IS* God, after all. I've been told that it isn't wise to state what God can or can't do.

You speak of good and evil as self-evident(and they are), but why are they self-evident? What is the basis for their objective existence?

Golden Rule = Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma.

It isn't so much that it is self-evident as it is that it is rational behavior. The rational behavior in this case has long-term benefits to all parties, whereas irrational behavior has long-term negative consequences. Most people figure this out subconsciously pretty early on, and behave rationally without consciously thinking about the rationality their behavior. A small fraction of the population IS aware that good behavior is optimal and beneficial (independent of any religious system) and behave accordingly. The combination of positive and negative feedback create a system with a fairly strong vector towards behavior that is "good". The word for people that don't learn these patterns or figure it out is "sociopath".

Real simple: every atheist I've ever met has understood the concept of good vs. evil

Not without abandoning logic. There is no good and evil if there is no God. There is only, as Richard Dawkins says, dancing to one's DNA. Who decides what is good? Stalin, or you. One has no foundation to claim killing a child is evil. They may rationalize and say something like " well based on reason it is evil" How can one determine whose reason is superior, the killer's or yours? Well, if one rapes a women, I'm not going to say the rapist was just "dancing to his DNA". I would say it is ojectively wrong to rape, not because I or anyone else say it is, but because it is divine moral law.

Thanks for adding me to the list. Here is my input: Yes, we can be good without God, but not for long.

As a real life case, let's look at abortion. If a person gets his morals by what is socially acceptable, we see that once A was verboten, then it was only for hard cases. Fast forward to those who are defending China's enforced abortion to solve the problem of "overpopulation" and thosse who approve of killing babies in their first month of existence outside the womb.

No absolutes means slippery slope.

I say it is objectively wrong to rape because it causes unecessary pain while it serves no productive purpose

This is an empty statement because the one committing rape or any other cruelity could turn it around and say it is wrong for someone to tell me not to. It may appear wrong to you and me because of how we were brought up, but the nut has his "reason"s. No rationale argument can be made against another's cruelity (in a Godless world). It may cause the women pain, but it gives the nut pleasure; isn't pleasure a good thing? By what objective standard can a non-theist say causing another's pain for ones pleasure is wrong?

The whole of the law is summed up with these two commandments, love God with all your heart and love your neighbor.

Those who know right from wrong because they know right from wrong are less of a concern.

No one is born knowing right from wrong. We are born with an instinct of survival and that means behaving in a brutish way in order to seek pleasure and security. Believing in a universal Godhead and that is Jehovah and his son Jesus creates a framework leading to a consciousness based upon rules and prohibitions.

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