A while back, a discussion/flamewar of theism/atheism in comments here led me to re-read Glenn Tinder’s famous/infamous essay “Can We Be Good Without God,” which was published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1989.
Tinder’s was an odd, almost Burkean, argument in which he warned, among other things, against “the universal disaster of revolution.” In 1989 — 1989! — Tinder wrote that “There is perhaps not a single example in our time of a determined effort to produce swift and sweeping change which has not ended in tyranny.”
That was published in the December 1989 edition of the Atlantic, one month after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It sat on newsstands as the people of Czechoslovakia elected Vaclav Havel president.
Oops.
The larger problem with Tinder’s essay is the question itself, which is constructed in such a way that it’s either full of loaded language or full of vacuous language. Four of the six words there — we, good, without, God — are slippery, elastic and elusive terms in the context of his essay. The question invites either a question-begging definition of goodness as godliness, or a question-begging definition of God as goodness writ large. And what do you mean “we,” kemosabe?
Then there’s that fuzzy term “without.” It’s not easy to come up with a compellingly godlike meaning for “God” here that would allow the word “without” to be meaningful in Tinder’s question (see Psalm 139). That word has many senses with many different opposites. Is the opposite Tinder intends “with” or “within”? Those suggest very different meanings to his phrase “without God.” If the former, what does it mean to be “with God”? Does it mean one is siding with God? (“I’m with the opposition.”) Or does it mean that one has or possesses God? (“Can you make that with cheese?”) Does it mean a specific knowledge of or a faith in or an obedience to this God? Or does being with God, and God being with us, mean something else entirely that may or may not fit into the scheme in Tinder’s essay.
And anyway, which God are we talking about, exactly? There are 7 billion of us, and billions more who lived before us, and we’ve had a lot of varied and irreconcilable notions of what God or Gods are like. Understanding the term as inclusively as possible makes the question almost meaningless. Understanding the term more exclusively raises the specter of religion as a tool for demonizing the other (see History).
But the oddest thing about Tinder’s essay was that it never entertained the possibility that his question might be addressed less abstractly. He presents a fascinating discussion of some very interesting ideas, but throughout displays a curious incuriosity as to whether those abstractions correspond to the world one sees if one looks up from the pages of the Atlantic. Reading Tinder’s essay is thus a bit like watching a NASCAR race. You can marvel at the powerful engine and the expert driving, but you have to overlook the fact that he’s just racing in circles without ever going anywhere.
It’s immensely frustrating to read such an extended consideration of “we” in which the writer never steps back to look at us.
Yoo-hoo, professor — “we” are right here. There are 7 billion of us on hand for observation. We offer more than enough of a variety of examples to address Tinder’s concern. Some of us would fall into the category Tinder wants to describe as “with” God. Others would fall into his “without God” category. It’s not clear what metric for goodness Tinder intends to employ, but we are all readily available for measurement.
And how do we measure up? Well, some of those of us “without God” (as best I can guess at how Tinder defines that) seem to be or seem to have been good (as best I can guess how Tinder defines that). So can we be good without God? Evidently yes. The evidence says yes. Some of those of us “with God” also seem to be or seem to have been good. But many of us in the “with God” category have also proved to be rather appalling and harmful — as have many of us in the “without God” category.
The variable ingredient “with God” does not seem correlated directly to the variable “good.” G seems to be neither a necessary nor a sufficient precondition for g. And Not-G seems to be neither a necessary nor a sufficient precondition for not-g.
These laboratory results would seem to disprove Tinder’s hypothesis, which sought to establish a firmer correlation. I’m not sure quite what the purpose of that correlation was intended to be. Was it to demonstrate that godliness was desirable as a means to goodness? Or was it to demonstrate that goodness was desirable as a means to godliness?
Either way, I don’t find this a particularly helpful approach or a particularly helpful question.
Can we be good without God? Be good.
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