Life Without God

Is it possible for a person to live a good, moral life without a god or system of religious belief attached to their life?

A common fallacy that the religious types love to perpetrate is that non-believers are monsters without conscience or morals when, in reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Morality and belief in a god or gods are not necessarily attributes that walk hand in hand, as history has proven countless times.

Religion has been a major contributor to the loss of millions, if not billions of lives via murder, torture, terrorism, genocide and myriad other forms of mayhem, all in the name of God. In more recent decades, religious groups have been at least partly responsible for the Crusades, Jonestown, Waco, WTC and Oklahoma City, just to name a few. Obviously, religion doesn’t have the market cornered on good, moral behavior.

In fact, it seems to me that a great many people have used their faith as a means by which to push their own monomaniacal agendas by exploiting the faith of their followers to further their goals. One needn’t look any further than the alliance forged between George W. Bush and James Dobson to see how dangerous and deadly religion’s grey shades of situational morality can be.

A convincing argument could be made for the notion that people could actually be more moral and ethical without the baggage that comes with religious dogma.

With all this in mind, the question remains: Is it possible for a person to live a good, moral life without a deity attached to their life? Absolutely.

As I go through my life, I have developed a very well-defined sense of what is right and what is wrong, and it is this sense that guides me through each day. I try my best to not judge anyone, nor do I place my assumptions upon them. I know that it is wrong to kill, steal, lie, or engage in practices or activities that could cause harm to anyone or anything else. I try to act with compassion for my fellow creatures, although I will admit that I fall short when it comes to insects.

I once believed in God and went to church. During that time in my young life, I did my best to abide by the laws of God (as interpreted by our human pastor, who later left the church after having been caught in an extramarital affair with a female parishioner) and do what was right; my motivations for living this were the promise of Heaven and the threat of Hell; reward for good and punishment for bad. Of course, I still set sail by my own moral compass, but there was always that feeling of celestial extortion, that I’d better behave or I’d pay a hefty, eternal price.

My youthful infatuation with religion faded; since leaving the church and abandoning the notion of a god or gods, I have not changed the way I conduct my life. On second thought, that statement is not entirely true. While my actions haven’t changed, my motivations have. Now, I have myself to answer to; if I do good, I can be proud and if I do less than good, I have only myself to answer to. Likewise, I get to own my misfortunes rather than blame them on Satan, just as I can claim full credit for good fortune rather than claim it’s part of some bigger, spiritual plan.

The religious hucksters would claim that this God-free existence would send me into a spiral of amoral depravity, when in reality there is no more chance of that happening now than at any other time in my life. It doesn’t benefit the churches to have people running around willy-nilly, living good lives and living without fear and not donating 10% each Sunday. They need to keep people scared and angry and ignorant; empty churches make no money.

The greatest evil humanity faces is the people who seek to force their beliefs upon others for their own profit. The greatest sin is to waste a life in preparation for a hereafter that does not exist.