Wendy Kaminer is a public-policy fellow at Radcliffe College and a contributing editor at The Atlantic Monthly. She is a contributing editor of IntellectualCapital.com. The unauthorized reproduction and/or distribution of any material from this Web site is strictly prohibited by federal copyright law.

Considering the dismal state of science education, there are probably more Americans who believe in God than the law of gravity. It is an article of faith among these believers (some 95% of the population) that religion is essential to virtue. So as the millenium approaches and supernaturalism intensifies, it is not surprising to find faith being touted as the solution to drug abuse, teenage pregnancy and other social ills.

Some churches do oppose government funding of faith-based social services: the Presbyterian Church USA, the American Baptist Churches USA and the United Methodist Church were part of a coalition that fought recent federal legislation giving churches a right to administer federally-funded welfare programs. But politicians oppose church-state partnerships at their peril, and it is virtually impossible to imagine any candidate for public office questioning the ameliorative effect of religion -- although there is little empirical proof of it.

Realities of religious belief

People accept with faith the value of religious belief. I suppose they must. It is probably impossible to measure the historic effect of organized religion on human welfare. How do you balance the Inquisition with the Civil Rights Movement, for instance?

It is equally difficult to make generalizations about the character of believers or to use religious belief as a predictor of virtuous behavior. Religious people practiced and opposed slavery, after all. What can we infer from this -- that, as novelist Mary McCarthy wrote, "Religion is only good for good people"?

McCarthy's dismissal of religion's moralizing effect probably would not evoke much agreement today, although many believers would be comfortable with the converse notion that religion is only bad for bad people. Even that principle, however, is not applied consistently. That is why political and religious biases are likely to determine whether we attribute acts of terrorism to individual terrorists or the religions that breed them. Americans may blame Moslem fundamentalism for the acts of Iranian terrorists a little more readily than they will blame Orthodox Judaism for the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin or the massacre of Palestinians at a West Bank mosque by Orthodox extremists. Absent particular religious or ethnic prejudice, religious belief generally gets the benefit of a doubt. It is credited for the good that people do and excused for the evils that it encourages.

Atheism and the Golden Rule

Atheism, however, is identified with evil and moral anarchy, and some atheists indeed are less than virtuous -- just like some religious people. As a group, disbelievers surely are no better than believers, but are they worse?

It is difficult to mount an affirmative defense of atheism without sounding as self-righteous as religious zealots quoting scripture. But you can, at least, acknowledge what atheism is not: It is not inherently nihilistic, as many believe; it does not deprive you of moral standards or instincts.

Except for the sadomasochistic among us, childhood lessons in the Golden Rule may serve as well as fables about God handing Moses a tablet of commandments in establishing acceptable behavior. (In fact, sadomasochists are apt to feel more at home with religion given its occasional habits of authoritarianism and self-flagellation.) Nor does atheism encourage hedonism. The conviction that there is no cosmic justice can fuel a commitment to the cause of earthly justice. Atheism denies you the luxury of believing that the wrongs of this world will be avenged in the next.

Atheists are not magical thinkers; without faith, people celebrate reason, an underrated quality in these pre-millennial years. This does not mean that they disdain emotionalism, like Dickens' Mr. Gradgrind, in the belief that human beings are like computers. Passion is hardly dependent on a belief in the supernatural. Atheists are apt to be as irrational in their preferences and personal lives as believers, but they are probably less likely to consult their horoscopes or suppose they have been abducted by aliens.

They are as likely, however, to be guided by sentiment, or instinct, in addition to reason. To answer moral questions, questions about ends and not means, a non-believer will consult "his own heart," Bertrand Russell observed. These questions "belong to a realm...of emotion and feeling and desire...a realm which is not that of reason though it should be in no degree contrary to it." Faithlessness can make moral choices harder; it demands an active inner life as well as a capacity for empathy and engagement with the world.

Besides, science can explain our ethical impulses as well as religion. In Descartes' Error, an intriguing study of the relationship between emotion, reasoning and moral judgment, neurologist Antonio Damasio suggests that there are "biological mechanisms behind the most sublime human behavior." (You will be guided by these mechanisms whether or not you believe that God designed them.)

Common sense tells us that parental nurture, as well as a vision of the divine, helps make people good. It is possible, after all, to instill respect for justice and generally accepted notions of ethical behavior in children without encouraging them to believe in God. (I grew up in a secular home and have not committed any sins much worse than blasphemy yet.) Acknowledging that there are no gods on their side, it may be easier to imbue them with moral modesty and respect for differing worldviews.

The divisiveness of religion

Faithlessness also can avoid the cruel sectarianism often engendered by faith. In Alabama, where a judge has posted a copy of the Ten Commandments in his courtroom in defiance of federal law, Jewish children are forced to participate in Christian religious observances in the Pike County public schools. Organized, official religious activities are not uncommon in the nation's schools, especially in the South, despite federal laws prohibiting them. Members of minority faiths who challenge these practices are vilified, harassed and even threatened with physical injury by their "godly" neighbors.

Considering the persistence of religious bigotry, not to mention the history of religious warfare, it is a bit perverse to promote religion as an antidote for social disorder. Of course religious beliefs must be respected and accommodated -- all religious beliefs and the lack of them. Alliances between church and state inevitably lead to the elevation of some beliefs over others, and in public life, religion generates a particularly vicious form of identity politics.

If you imbue religion with any functions and power of the state, you had better pray that the gods will save you from their followers.