In fact, there is a sense here in which the will to do good deeds restores God to the universe as the fountainhead of morality, with the famous "categorical imperative" substituting for specific divine commandments. However, those who are not already convinced that moral truths are possible -- who are not already "morally certain" -- tend to find this argument circular (Palmer 259).
For the rest of us, it is a very different proposition to develop and defend a moral framework in the absence of religious certainty. We can simply reframe our notions of good and evil in terms of personal responsibility, as Kierkegaard does when he defines wrongdoing (sin) as the very absence of certainty itself. In this approach, human nature is split between conviction (or faith) on the one hand and anxiety on the other. "The anxiety of sinfulness manifests itself either as an anxiety about evil or as anxiety about good," and both can result in moral paralysis (Walsh 95). But here, too, even if we can live as the ultimate arbiters of our own morality, we can only do so by making the leap into faith and responsibility.
Otherwise, the separation of God from ethics has made ethical life considerably more difficult. The moral universe itself, alienated from any basis strong enough to tether us to the good, will inevitably drift into utilitarian pragmatism at best and nihilism at its extreme. We can then choose to embrace this amoral universe and live without any moral law whatsoever -- beyond...
The individual may have enough trouble achieving existential moral certainty, but in the presence of multiple viewpoints, an objective or "categorical" imperative -- even one based on secular reason -- is going to be even harder to derive and defend (Zagzebski 371). In the end, the absence of God leaves us forced to negotiate between the abstractions of civil law and the urges of the self as we struggle to live a justified, or at least blameless life.
Works Cited
Aldrich, C.A. (1931). The primitive mind and modern civilization. London: Routledge.
Kant, I. (2008). Kant's critiques. Radford, VA: Wilder Publications.
Palmer, M.F. (2001) The question of God: an introduction and sourcebook. London: Routledge.
Palmquist, S. (2000). Kant's critical religion Aldershot: Ashgate .
Walsh, S. (2009). Kierkegaard: thinking Christianly in an existential mode. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zagzebski, L. (2005). Does morality depend upon religion? In W.J. Wainright (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of philosophy of religion (pp. 344-65). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
