Do We Need God to Keep Us in Line?

I don’t believe it is necessary to have God in order to be good. I think this because all really God is the idea that there is something bigger than us and that it has the power to control our eternal fate. There is no physical presence that is stopping anyone from doing anything. I think people who aren’t religious are still able to realize there are laws and there are people who will physically enforce these laws if they were to be broken. I think if you took someone who believed in some form of God, and they wanted something that didn’t belong to them and had no way of getting it legally, their reason for eventually not taking it would either be the fear of punishment from the law or having an idea for how the other person would feel once they realized what belonged to them was missing. There would probably be very little thinking of “how would God think of me if I did that?”. I think the person would end up thinking about God if they did steal something because they started to feel guilty for what they did. If this is true for most people I think that’s very selfish. I think that’s very selfish because there reason for feeling bad now, is because they are afraid they will be punished by someone they are trying impress and has authority over them. Of course there would be some who do think of God first, but I believe that number isn’t very many. I believe this statement because I’m religious and have been guilty of fearing punishment or hurting others before wondering what God would think.
I think Lisa Conyers and Phillip D. Harvey in their article “Religion and Crime: Do They Go Together” gives good data to back up the fact that someone does not necessarily need God to be good. Especially after they use entire countries and compare things such as the percentage of people who consider themselves religious and how many murders occur for every 100,000 people. (65)The United States seems to be the major country that is most religious with the exception of Ireland and Italy. Yet it has higher murder rate per 100,000 people than any other.(65) I don’t think this is telling us that people who are religious are bad people who murder, but instead it is telling us that a lot people in our country become religious because their afraid of what is going to happen to them . I think it is telling us this because even though people are joining religious groups they aren’t acting the same as what has been thought of as the behavior for someone who believes in God.
I also think that it is the meaning of being good differs between people who believe in different things. The average person who does not believe in a God will really only have the laws to tell him what to do. Those who are religious will have to look at both the laws and what their religion is telling them to do. Unfortunately when it comes to religion those in a religion believe they are right and everyone else is only partially right or wrong completely. Unfortunately because people often fear what is different, they fear those who are different religion and those who aren’t religious at all. That isn’t to say that non-religious people don’t ever think that religious people are weird or something along those lines, but it just seems to me that it’s the religious groups that go to extremes against others. Overall, I think those who are non-religious can be good and more so than those who do believe in God.