You've heard it. I've heard it. We've all heard it, probably more often than we'd care to count. "Without a belief in God, what reason is there to do good?" I'm sure that if we admitted it, we've probably all asked that question, not only in our pasts as believers, but also in the time since becoming freethinkers.
And certainly, much of what religion screeched about with such fervor is now shown to be irrelevant. There's no rational reason to regard homosexual activity as any more or less "moral" than heterosexuality, for instance; the good or bad of a relationship lies in the emotional aspects of it, not in what parts are interacting with what. And the absence of a god from one's belief system renders commandments against "blasphemy" and "idolatry" rather moot, although it's good to keep perspective on the worth of things.
But I think -- at least, I hope! -- that most of us would agree that rape, theft and murder aren't good things. (Though when disturbed at meal time by a door-to-door proselytizer, we might all entertain thoughts of murder.)
That search for "values" (now there's a loaded word!) is what leads many of us to groups such as Ethical Societies, Humanist groups, or liberal, freethought-friendly religious groups such as Unitarian Universalist congregations, pagan circles, or some forms of Buddhism.
Now, these different groups vary in their approach to life and "morality." Some are altruistic (UUism, many pagan religions), while others stress self-interest as the cure to society's ills (Objectivists, Satanists -- those following the religion of Anton Levay, not the idiotic and/or sociopathic teens killing cats in a cry for attention). That's not a debate I care to enter into, as I feel both sides have some merit. My own personal ethics, not that you asked, start with "don't unnecessarily hurt others" and then proceeds to deal with everything else on a case-by-case basis.
What I do want to comment on is the major -- but often unspoken -- difference between the theist and the nontheist, as applied to the question of ethics. They believe in some looming figure ready, willing and able to wipe away our misdeeds, clean the slate, make us "innocent" no matter what we do -- we don't believe in that option, and generally we try and live our lives right the whole way through, knowing that "redemption" can only come from hard work on our own.
The next time someone asks you that question I talked about at the start, turn it around -- "If you believe in God, what possible reason do you have to do good?"
I'll be honest; I can't think of a single one. They'll try to get around the question, say that God puts goodness in them and motivates them to do good -- that the redemption thing is for after a sin, not something that's in mind when it's going on. Sure. That's why Christian churches that offer "confession" do so on at least a weekly basis, I presume? I'm not buying it.
Do you remember the Karla Faye Tucker case down in Texas? The media made a big deal of her execution in the days preceding it, but since it happened, they've dropped the case. It's not "yesterday's news," really -- it showcased what happens every day in conservative religion, and the media doesn't seem to want to tell the truth about the "oppressed minority" called Christianity.
Tucker was a murderer like any other. She was sentenced to death by the legal system of Texas, like any other person on death row. Yet the conservative Christians who are always so vigorous in their support of capital punishment didn't want Ms. Tucker to die -- they urged the governor (in vain, as it happened) to overturn her sentence, convert it to a life imprisonment sentence. Why? Were there some new facts coming to light that pointed towards her innocence? Had the victims' families asked for leniency? No. The preachers wanted her spared because she was now "born again."
Some of your more prominent televangelists rallied behind this woman, suggesting that as a Christian she should no longer have to suffer the penalty under law for a crime she'd committed when she was "lost." This suggested that her religious conversion made her worthy of special treatment, extra consideration. Her life was now worth more than that of any other death row inmate.
If Karla Faye Tucker had embraced Islam instead of Christianity, would the Christian conservatives have rallied to save her? What do you think? No, they would have been eagerly cheering on her (in their eyes) trip to hell. She would have been inhuman, if she weren't a Christian.
Does Christianity make excuses for, even encourage, bad behavior? The Karla Faye Tucker case would seem to suggest that at least part of Christianity does just that. "She's not a killer any more; she's a child of God." Gimme a break.
Over the last two thousand years, Christianity has done some good, although I'd suggest that most of this good has been in the last few centuries. Some Christians fought to end slavery, some joined Unitarians in reforming the treatment of the mentally ill. Today, some Christians work to feed the hungry, clothe the poor, put a roof over the heads of the disadvantaged, teach the uneducated how to read, and so on. Christianity has done some good; I won't deny that. (I'd even suggest that I have more in common with the liberal Christians who focus on good deeds than with the angry, bitter atheists throwing paint bombs at the Popemobile.)
But you cannot truly discuss or engage the Christian religion without looking at the baggage it carries. There were, and are, plenty of "good Christian people" in the Ku Klux Klan. It was "good Christian people" who opposed the civil rights movement in the 1960s, opposed the women's suffrage movement before it, and oppose the gay rights movement today. The Roman Catholic Church, the largest Christian denomination in the world, opposed scientific progress for centuries, remained silent during the Holocaust, slaughtered those of other faiths all around the world, and today helps push our population ever-higher through their mandate against birth control -- leading to many deaths from starvation in the areas where people actually follow that rule.
Churches in America today refuse to "render to Caesar that which is Caesar's," and as a result we pay a higher tax bill every year to keep them on their tax-free ride. In exchange, they agree, at least on paper, to be non-political, and yet the Christian Coalition and affiliated groups are among our largest political influence groups today. Between the tax-free status and the broken promise of political neutrality, the Christian church in America commits theft and perjury on a regular basis. (Those churches which *do* remain neutral are still pushing our taxes higher.)
Then there are the movements to keep science out of the classrooms of our public schools, to water down the teaching of evolution by calling it "just another theory" while remaining silent on the fact that, well, so is gravity. The people behind these movements seem to think it's acceptable to lie to children by not telling them the whole story about the world around us.
These same people who are so anti-evolution also usually want to insist that homosexuality is a chosen behavior, like tying one's shoes, when science suggests the facts are much more complex than that -- but since the Bible seems to suggest that it's a choice, they'll call it a choice, facts be damned! Couldn't God, if such a being existed, reveal his or her plans to us through the world he or she has created around us? I think so. If that's the case, then these people don't really worship God at all -- they worship the Bible and let it keep them from learning God's lessons through nature. That's idolatry.
Idolatry, false witness, theft, and killing. Those are four commandments that conservative Christianity has broken and continues to break on a daily basis. Add to this plenty of "coveting the neighbor's wife," a healthy dose of "storing up riches in this world," and an almost universal tendency to hold church not on the Sabbath but on the day after, and you're left with a sorry, hypocritical mass of souls indeed. If these people can't even follow their own religion, what right do they have to tell us how to think and act?
And yet they say that we atheists have no morals. Amazing. Perhaps they should take another passage from "the good book" to heart and look for steel girders (or, in last summer's movie terminology, asteroids the size of Texas) in their own eyes before looking for a dust particle in someone else's.
All things considered, I'd trust the ethics of an atheist a lot faster than the ethics of a Christian -- we atheists have to live with the consequences of our actions. We can't just make believe our imaginary friend has said, "'Salright," and go on our merry ways. So the next time someone says "My god makes me good," be very, very afraid.

God Is Dead -- Now What?