Chapter One

Should you live without God?

Not necessarily.

Belief in God, even devotion to God, has been too prevalent in history, and remains too prevalent in modern society, for us to assume that it is pointless. And if it is not pointless, it is probably right for some people.

For better or worse, the dark side of religion is what most often makes the news. We see clergymen sued or hauled off to prison for sexual abuse, we see passionate adherents of religion railing against science or against certain forms of medical research or trying to legislate their moral opinions into law, we see believers kneeling in front of water stains or window cracks that somehow suggest religious images, we see wars or terrorist acts justified on religious grounds, we see prejudice and hatred legitimized by appeals to scripture.

What we rarely see or hear, however – unless we tune into the religious media (and I’m betting that you don’t) – is the bright side of religion. We don’t see the hundreds of thousands of good and intelligent men and women of the clergy who, though imperfect as we all are, devote their lives to low-paying work in the service of others. We don’t see the missionaries who bring education and medicine and science and hope to people not getting it from their own culture or their own government. We don’t see the individual believers, motivated by love of God and belief in the scriptural commandments to love one’s neighbor, who work in countless hidden ways to help the poor and the sick and the incarcerated and the refugees. We don’t see the millions, perhaps billions, who feel strengthened by their faith and enabled to face what can be a hard, harsh life.

For many, many people, belief in God provides a foundation for everything they do. It explains for them why they are here, what they should be striving for, and how to get there from here. Their belief shepherds them through troubling times, and their churches offer a community that supports them and shares their joys. This is not trivial stuff, and if you get all that from religion, then maybe you simply should not risk trying to find it all without God.

Even those of us not getting all that from religion should stop and think about it, though. No matter how negative an impression we may have, nothing – and no one – is all good or all evil. In learning to live without God, we should strive to be sensible and fair, so while we grapple with the inadequacies of religious belief, let’s keep in mind what is good and powerful in it. Learning to live without God means finding other sources for the good things religion offers – and we can do that only if we acknowledge what those things are.

We will come back to this in more detail at the end of Chapter One, postponing it until then because we first need to think about the validity of religious belief. If such beliefs are true, then maybe we should adopt them whether we like their side-effects or not. But if they are not true, we are probably better off looking for other ways to get the good things that religion seems to provide to its adherents.

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