When pondering whether someone can be good without God, it almost seems like a forbidden subject. Some people in the world believe that a person’s religion defines them for life regardless of the choices they make throughout their life. Others believe that people make choices and decisions every day to be good or to be bad. For the sake of this article, people can be good without God.

Choices are made everyday that define human lives in ever-changing ways. Most of them are conscious decisions such as holding the door for the person behind you and saying please and thank you. Others are tough or morally challenging choices that define a person’s character, but it does not have to relate to God or a religion. It is simply being a decent human being.

Morally challenging choices that define character can be as simple as finding a wallet full of cash on a sidewalk with a way of returning the wallet. Do you return the wallet or take the money and leave the now empty wallet on the ground? Another challenge is knowing information that needs to be told but fearing consequences of peers or friends. Could you keep the silence and continue a friendship or relationship in guilt or say what needs to be said and have either justice or the truth come out for the betterment of yourself?

By saying that someone is good because of God defeats the purpose of being good to begin with. A human should inherently want to be good and not because a higher being told them to be good. People that do not believe in God are capable of doing good things on a day-to-day basis because they are doing what they think is right. Just as people that believe in God can also do great evil because they choose to do so. So, by saying that someone is good due to God, it disgards that people can be evil, too, in the name of God or a god.

Humans have a dose of common sense and morality and can understand what is good and what is evil or wrong with or without a god. The purpose of this article, though, is not to disregard God or religion but to simply have an understanding that people can be good without God.  

Non-religious people or people that follow a religion that may differ from their cultural surrounding are not automatically bad because they don’t follow a dogma or doctrine similar to those around them. They are no less than religious people and are capable of doing good through their own choices.