CAN ATHEISTS BE GOOD PEOPLE?
CAN ATHEISTS BE GOOD PEOPLE?
WHAT MAKES A PERSON 'GOOD'?
Two brave astronauts board a rocket ship, to be launched into deep space on a classified one-way mission. The journey will be lonely, with no radio communication back to Earth. They launch with a 10-year supply of air, food and water for each of them, and they fully expect to die when this all runs out.
After a few awkward months, they both realize that killing each other would double their lifespan. No one would know, and they would gain an extra 10 years of life.
Is killing still wrong, alone in space? Would being a “good person” mean the same thing out there, lost in the stars?
When I think about whether ‘atheists can be good people,’ I can’t help but play with imagined scenarios like this. Of course, atheists can be good people—many of them live decent and upright lives by normal human standards. The trouble starts when we try to clearly define it: Who gets to define what’s good?
WHAT ATHEISTS SAY ABOUT BEING GOOD.
Atheists claim that they can be good without God. They don’t need a moral lawgiver, someone telling them what right and wrong is, and overseeing the consequences for whether someone is good or bad, or so they claim. And many do seek to live this out. For instance, When I worked with the Richard Dawkins Foundation, we launched an initiative called “Non-Believers Giving Aid,” aimed at helping humanitarian causes and reducing the perception that atheists lacked in generosity. We were very aware that most charitable organizations serving these needs are Christian. We wanted to improve our image, and “do good” in the world.
In fact some aim, their good deeds mean more, because they only “do good” of their own volition, while Christians do good at God’s direction, fearing hell or some other form of punishment in order to be corralled into good behavior.
And where does this idea of being good come from? Most atheists will say morality is a by-product of evolution, and that societies that adopted certain moral behaviours, like not killing each other or not stealing, were more successful than others. But if morality emerged from successful in-group behaviors, then all we have are moral impulses, not laws. It doesn’t tell us that these are actually right or wrong, simply that they are preferable and have some benefits. But in essence they’re no different than hunger or sexual impulses.
WHO SAYS WHAT IS RIGHT OR WRONG?
In Season 2, Episode 9 of The Office (US), boss-man Michael Scott is in an improv class. He’s in an improvised scene with a pregnant woman looking for her doctor, but he pulls out an imaginary gun and yells “FBI! Freeze!” Later he’s in a scene with a fortune-teller, but Michael again pulls out the imagined gun, to everyone’s dismay. “Freeze! FBI! Boom! Boom!” Michael says he always pulls out the gun because “You can’t top it, you just can’t.”
Within the rules of an improv scene, we laugh at this because the gun ruins whatever internal story-structure may have been developed by the other actors. A stronger outside force overrides all of it.
But here’s the thing: if we are just improvising our morality, trying to find some way to keep the story going, what happens when the ‘man with the gun’ decides to tell you what is good, and what isn’t? It might be better for him that he does what you don’t like. If God is not the ultimate moral lawmaker, who can say he’s wrong?
And this is a problem if all we have is moral impulses Just like Michael Scott in the improv class, if you “hold the gun” in a godless world, you make the rules: You get to decide which evolved moral impulses are worth listening to, and which ones we should ignore. Without God, whose authority do we acknowledge to be the ultimate lawmaker among us? A president? Dictator? Congress? Who can we trust, and who gets the final say?
A WORLD WHERE WRONG IS RIGHT
Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was a strong proponent of eugenics, which seeks to control and modify human reproduction to increase the overall ‘genetic quality’ of the human race. With that goal in mind, Planned Parenthood has performed over 8.5 million abortions since 1973.
But who among us can say Margaret Sanger was “wrong?” Why would human life have any objective value? If the fetus is young enough, can’t it be logically determined that our silly evolved moral impulses are irrelevant for life at such an early stage? Sadly this has been the “moral determination” of many in our modern world.
There are lots of other examples where moral impulses could be different. Rape and incest are common in the animal kingdom. Sure, these behaviors may have been socially undesirable in human ancestral groups, but can we say they are “wrong?” If all we have are animal impulses to guide us, the morality we humans share is just a happy accident of our evolution. If we had instead evolved as hive-bees did, we might see a much different moral framework, as Darwin noticed in his book The Descent of Man:
If … men were reader under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would interfere.
Would it still be wrong to kill in this alternate reality? If you find yourself saying “yes,” then you are acknowledging that morality transcends human experience. If you wouldn’t have killed your fellow astronaut on that rocket ship at the start of this article, you are acknowledging that an objective moral order exists, whether we do or not. Right and wrong exist independent of what someone with a gun might be claiming.
HOW GOD MAKES US GOOD
Christians believe that God sets the rules for what is right and what is wrong. Atheists can and do make ‘good’ choices according to this standard. If an atheist solves world hunger, we would all agree they’ve “done good”.
and don’t think that their actions have anything to do with God, the fact that they think their choices are objectively ‘good’ assumes the existence of a real moral law.
The question is: by whose standard? Margaret Sanger’s standard of goodness? Joseph Stalin’s standard? Or God’s? The thing is, though they don’t think that their actions have anything to do with God, the fact that they think their choices are objectively ‘good’ by some standard, one that doesn’t change and isn’t based on one particular person, assumes the existence of a real moral law.
But that means, deep down, we all know there must be a real moral lawgiver. You can’t have laws without a law-giver. You can’t have absolute moral laws without an absolutely moral, that is to say good, lawgiver. Which is God. And like a fish that can’t see the water in which it swims; atheists live and act in God’s world, and know that these moral laws exist.
BEING GOOD IS NOT ENOUGH
There’s still a problem we need to address in all this. If there is an absolute moral law, then breaking that law, which we all have done at some point, is sin. The consequence for that is eternal separation from God, and no amount of good works can change that. God, as the law-giver, must be just, and just as a good judge cannot simply pardon a crime because the criminal has done lots of other good deeds, so God cannot simply wave a wand and ignore our sins even if we do other good deeds.
This is why Jesus entered our story: God, as judge, handed down our sentence for breaking this absolute moral law, and Jesus took on the sentence meant for us. With this, Christianity alone explains how God achieves both ultimate justice and ultimate love.
Living a “good” life is not enough. Ephesians 2:9-10 tells us “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.”
So atheists can do good—but for us to even talk about it, we need the objective moral order that is provided by God, which makes their entire godless identity a little silly.
Written by Josh Timonen
Click here to hear Josh share what it was like working for the world's leading atheist, and how he finally came to believe in Jesus.
WHAT MAKES A PERSON 'GOOD'?
Two brave astronauts board a rocket ship, to be launched into deep space on a classified one-way mission. The journey will be lonely, with no radio communication back to Earth. They launch with a 10-year supply of air, food and water for each of them, and they fully expect to die when this all runs out.
After a few awkward months, they both realize that killing each other would double their lifespan. No one would know, and they would gain an extra 10 years of life.
Is killing still wrong, alone in space? Would being a “good person” mean the same thing out there, lost in the stars?
When I think about whether ‘atheists can be good people,’ I can’t help but play with imagined scenarios like this. Of course, atheists can be good people—many of them live decent and upright lives by normal human standards. The trouble starts when we try to clearly define it: Who gets to define what’s good?
WHAT ATHEISTS SAY ABOUT BEING GOOD.
Atheists claim that they can be good without God. They don’t need a moral lawgiver, someone telling them what right and wrong is, and overseeing the consequences for whether someone is good or bad, or so they claim. And many do seek to live this out. For instance, When I worked with the Richard Dawkins Foundation, we launched an initiative called “Non-Believers Giving Aid,” aimed at helping humanitarian causes and reducing the perception that atheists lacked in generosity. We were very aware that most charitable organizations serving these needs are Christian. We wanted to improve our image, and “do good” in the world.
In fact some aim, their good deeds mean more, because they only “do good” of their own volition, while Christians do good at God’s direction, fearing hell or some other form of punishment in order to be corralled into good behavior.
And where does this idea of being good come from? Most atheists will say morality is a by-product of evolution, and that societies that adopted certain moral behaviours, like not killing each other or not stealing, were more successful than others. But if morality emerged from successful in-group behaviors, then all we have are moral impulses, not laws. It doesn’t tell us that these are actually right or wrong, simply that they are preferable and have some benefits. But in essence they’re no different than hunger or sexual impulses.
WHO SAYS WHAT IS RIGHT OR WRONG?
In Season 2, Episode 9 of The Office (US), boss-man Michael Scott is in an improv class. He’s in an improvised scene with a pregnant woman looking for her doctor, but he pulls out an imaginary gun and yells “FBI! Freeze!” Later he’s in a scene with a fortune-teller, but Michael again pulls out the imagined gun, to everyone’s dismay. “Freeze! FBI! Boom! Boom!” Michael says he always pulls out the gun because “You can’t top it, you just can’t.”
Within the rules of an improv scene, we laugh at this because the gun ruins whatever internal story-structure may have been developed by the other actors. A stronger outside force overrides all of it.
But here’s the thing: if we are just improvising our morality, trying to find some way to keep the story going, what happens when the ‘man with the gun’ decides to tell you what is good, and what isn’t? It might be better for him that he does what you don’t like. If God is not the ultimate moral lawmaker, who can say he’s wrong?
And this is a problem if all we have is moral impulses Just like Michael Scott in the improv class, if you “hold the gun” in a godless world, you make the rules: You get to decide which evolved moral impulses are worth listening to, and which ones we should ignore. Without God, whose authority do we acknowledge to be the ultimate lawmaker among us? A president? Dictator? Congress? Who can we trust, and who gets the final say?
A WORLD WHERE WRONG IS RIGHT
Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was a strong proponent of eugenics, which seeks to control and modify human reproduction to increase the overall ‘genetic quality’ of the human race. With that goal in mind, Planned Parenthood has performed over 8.5 million abortions since 1973.
But who among us can say Margaret Sanger was “wrong?” Why would human life have any objective value? If the fetus is young enough, can’t it be logically determined that our silly evolved moral impulses are irrelevant for life at such an early stage? Sadly this has been the “moral determination” of many in our modern world.
There are lots of other examples where moral impulses could be different. Rape and incest are common in the animal kingdom. Sure, these behaviors may have been socially undesirable in human ancestral groups, but can we say they are “wrong?” If all we have are animal impulses to guide us, the morality we humans share is just a happy accident of our evolution. If we had instead evolved as hive-bees did, we might see a much different moral framework, as Darwin noticed in his book The Descent of Man:
If … men were reader under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would interfere.
Would it still be wrong to kill in this alternate reality? If you find yourself saying “yes,” then you are acknowledging that morality transcends human experience. If you wouldn’t have killed your fellow astronaut on that rocket ship at the start of this article, you are acknowledging that an objective moral order exists, whether we do or not. Right and wrong exist independent of what someone with a gun might be claiming.
HOW GOD MAKES US GOOD
Christians believe that God sets the rules for what is right and what is wrong. Atheists can and do make ‘good’ choices according to this standard. If an atheist solves world hunger, we would all agree they’ve “done good”.
and don’t think that their actions have anything to do with God, the fact that they think their choices are objectively ‘good’ assumes the existence of a real moral law.
The question is: by whose standard? Margaret Sanger’s standard of goodness? Joseph Stalin’s standard? Or God’s? The thing is, though they don’t think that their actions have anything to do with God, the fact that they think their choices are objectively ‘good’ by some standard, one that doesn’t change and isn’t based on one particular person, assumes the existence of a real moral law.
But that means, deep down, we all know there must be a real moral lawgiver. You can’t have laws without a law-giver. You can’t have absolute moral laws without an absolutely moral, that is to say good, lawgiver. Which is God. And like a fish that can’t see the water in which it swims; atheists live and act in God’s world, and know that these moral laws exist.
BEING GOOD IS NOT ENOUGH
There’s still a problem we need to address in all this. If there is an absolute moral law, then breaking that law, which we all have done at some point, is sin. The consequence for that is eternal separation from God, and no amount of good works can change that. God, as the law-giver, must be just, and just as a good judge cannot simply pardon a crime because the criminal has done lots of other good deeds, so God cannot simply wave a wand and ignore our sins even if we do other good deeds.
This is why Jesus entered our story: God, as judge, handed down our sentence for breaking this absolute moral law, and Jesus took on the sentence meant for us. With this, Christianity alone explains how God achieves both ultimate justice and ultimate love.
Living a “good” life is not enough. Ephesians 2:9-10 tells us “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.”
So atheists can do good—but for us to even talk about it, we need the objective moral order that is provided by God, which makes their entire godless identity a little silly.
Written by Josh Timonen
Click here to hear Josh share what it was like working for the world's leading atheist, and how he finally came to believe in Jesus.
