Christians Are Lying to You — Yes, You Can Be Moral Without Religion

Jakub Ferencik
9 min readAug 13, 2024

When I was younger, I firmly believed that only those who believed in Christian doctrine can be moral because morality had to be based in metaphysical objective principles unreliant of any specific human laws.

Many Christians believe that their belief in God is instrumental to living a good life — an inherently moral life, perhaps the most moral life, that prevents society itself from crumbling.

We have heard the misused quote that is attributed to the Russian novelist, Fyodor Dosteovsky, “If God does not exist, then everything is permitted.”

I think there are many compelling reasons to believe that this argument is flawed.

Atheists behave morally for many reasons — chief among them are evolutionary impulses and society’s constraints. Christians behave morally for the same reasons, of course, however, they appeal to different motivations.

Let me explain.

“Those who wish to base their morality literally on the Bible have either not read it or not understood it. “— Richard Dawkins

The Vatican. Photo by Benjamin Fay on Unsplash

For Christians, many of their moral positions derive from the moral compass God has given to them (our intuitions)…

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Jakub Ferencik

Journalist in Prague | Author of “Up in the Air,” “Beyond Reason,” & "Surprised by Uncertainty" on AMAZON | MA McGill Uni | 750+ articles with 1+ mil. views