title: Can We Be Good Without God?: Biology, Behavior, and the Need to Believe
author: Robert Buckman
description: "...clear and accessible ... provides a very helpful survey of current ideas on nonreligious approaches to morality." -- <i>Research News and Opportunities in Science and Theology</i><br /><br />"Buckman's got it right--a realistic and positive moral blueprint for being good." -- <i>Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.</i><br /><br />"This well-written book ... could help protect the world from the kinds of horrors we have seen in the 20th century." -- <i>Free Inquiry, Winter 2002</i>
zlib_text: How we got a head start on our animal natures
  
  # How we got a head start on our animal natures, - Our selfish genes made
  brains that turned the tables on them--The Sunday Times Dec 29, 1996
  
  Do we need God to be good? The question means two very different things.
  First, does religion provide an explanation for why we are good (to the extent
  that we are)? Second, do we need the inducements and threats, the carrots and
  sticks, the heavens and hells, that God can offer, in order to persuade us to
  be good? A similar ambiguity arises about science. Can science explain why we
  have impulses to be good? And can it advise us what is a good thing to do?
  
  If you must use Darwinism as a morality play, treat it as an awful warning.
  For this reason I have sometimes jokingly put myself in the vanguard of a
  passionate anti-Darwinism movement. Nature really is red in tooth and claw.
  The weakest really do go to the wall, and natural selection really does favour
  selfish genes. The racing elegance of chee