Joan Ball is a business professor at St. John’s University in New York and the author of Flirting with Faith: My Spiritual Journey from Atheism to a Faith-Filled Life.
For myself, I see ethics as easily separable from religion. Steve argues, if I’m understanding him aright, that we are accountable ultimately to God, and that that is the only true source of our morality and moral obligations. Without a supreme being, our actions are meaningless: ‘without moral weight’. If we are accidental, we have no need to concern ourselves with ethics.
I would argue, on the contrary, that our accountability to our fellow humans quite suffices to encourage our desire to behave in ways that ensure society functions properly. But more than that, I believe it’s in our nature as humans to want to do good (as well as bad).