There’s someone very dear to me who insists she doesn’t need to believe in God to be a good person. I think we can all relate to this. We all know atheists who are kind. And who doesn’t have examples of professing believers who are just awful? Still, this idea that we can be good without God is simply wrong.
Naturally, we all have some sense of what a good person is like. But this is only because we live in a world already saturated with meaning and morality. The notion that we can achieve anything on our own is a farce. The language we use to formulate thoughts, our biological ancestry, and, yes, even our morality are all gifted to us. Whether or not I believe in God, the fact is that practically everyone who came before me and built this world that I now enjoy believed in God. That’s not to say these were all good people. Nonetheless, their beliefs shaped practically everything. The point is that goodness, even by today’s standards, is wholly contingent on things outside of ourselves. And whether or not we are open to the idea, God is embedded in this. But acknowledging this fact only skirts the real issue.
We have to nail down this concept of goodness. This is a challenge for us moderns since we’ve largely reduced morality to the realm of subjectivity. Goodness tends to be seen as whatever we deem is pleasing or desirable. In other words it’s basically meaningless. And if goodness has no real meaning, then no one is really good. This will never do.
We need a more objective concept of goodness. Classically speaking, the good of a thing is found in its ability to fulfill its purpose as intended by its maker. Man has an essential nature and an essential purpose. And he is objectively good if he fulfills his intended purpose. Good isn’t measured by self-satisfaction or personal fulfillment. It cannot be defined democratically by the majority.
If we are to ‘live well’ or be ‘a good person’ we must consider our purpose or telos. The Christian story tells us we bear the image of God through cultivation and creative expression. Our existence, and our salvation, is for the life of the world. We exist to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Other traditions offer their own ideas about what a person is for. But when God falls out of the equation there can be no purposeful intent. A book or a machine might be good since they are backed by human intention. But a person arising spontaneously out of the abyss cannot be good in any objectively meaningful sense because this interpretation does not admit any intrinsic purposes.
No one writes the terms for their own existence. We are participants in a life that is given to us. Part of our given nature involves a telos. We preclude goodness when we refuse to acknowledge that telos. Any actual good that we accomplish is then purely incidental.
I’m surprised at how many true believers in atheism have so few reservations about abandoning an objective conception of goodness. I find far fewer willing to deny the existence of evil, particularly when it’s committed by Christians or other religious observers. They call Christians hypocrites without seeing the irony of this. The Christian, at least, admits he cannot hit the mark. The atheist acknowledges no target and then insists he cannot miss.