Can a Free Society Survive Without a Spiritual Foundation?

Can a Free Society Survive Without a Spiritual Foundation?

By Lawrence W. Reed

(The following is adapted from the author’s opening remarks at a panel discussion with Syed Kamall and Florian F. Windberger at LibertyCon Europe in Madrid, Spain, April 24-26, 2026. The question put to the panel is, “Can a free society survive without a spiritual foundation?” My friend Syed’s website is here.)

What does it mean to have a “spiritual foundation”? Can we think of it as completely independent of any notion of an intelligent Creator?

There are many pretenses to spirituality, to be sure. The human mind is a fertile thing. It conjures up all sorts of seemingly spiritual stuff including witches and witchcraft, haunted houses, voodoo, hallucinations, and illusions. Some people climb rocks, close their eyes, extend their arms, and chant or hum as if they are communicating with spirits of one kind or another. Much of that reveals either mental illness or a rebellious nature, that is, a desire to reject the real thing and put some cooked-up, man-made substitute in its place.

We should go deeper than that and avoid delusions. After all, if some people insisted they can fly on their own, the rest of us wouldn’t give up on gravity. 

What could possibly be the basis or source of genuine spirituality if human beings are nothing but accidents, designed by nobody for any purpose, nothing more than random collections of atoms that popped up purely by chance, that possess no soul, and that have no possibility of any kind of life after death? (Collective abstractions such as “society,” by the way, don’t actually have spiritual foundations because they are not living, breathing, acting entities. Individuals, however, can indeed possess and support spirituality because individuals are real. My treatment of our question acknowledges this truth.)

If you assume there is such a thing as a spiritual foundation, then I think you must assume you’re here by intelligent design, that there is or was a Creator. You’re not a random accident, a chemical fluke, or a unplanned mistake. To seek a relationship with that Creator is the ultimate spiritual issue.

People have always questioned whether God exists. I did myself at one time, years ago. But I eventually got over it—“grew out of it” is perhaps a better way to express it. Skeptics kept telling me, “Oh, God is nonsense. Where’s the evidence? Why doesn’t God just appear in the sky each morning with a booming voice and demand obedience? Then he would settle the matter.”

But if he did that, he would leave no room for free will. Faith would have no meaning because we would have no choice. How could anybody deny him if that’s the way he showed himself? We would all be robots, or so frightened into compliance that we would possess no sensible opportunity to say, “No thanks, God. I don’t believe you exist, nor can I believe you ever did anything for me or anybody else.”

As I thought about this question, I began with an open mind and hoped I could find actual examples in the present-day, or in the past, of free societies in which people possessed no spiritual foundation, that is, they all believed that nothing is real unless you can see it, or touch it, or smell it, or hear it. They were certain there was no God, no such thing as spirituality, and yet they lived free.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I could not come up with a single example. Ayn Rand—someone I have a lot of appreciation for and agreement with, except for her arrogant atheism—never came up with such an example either.

Rand claimed that if our human senses don’t perceive it, then it doesn’t exist. What about a man in a coma? He can’t see, touch, smell, or hear anything. Does that mean nothing exists, not even him?

An atheist goes beyond a humble, agnostic position of “I don’t know” and tells us, “I DO know that God does not exist!” The atheist argues that believing all this stuff about spiritual foundations, and souls, and a God, is an unjustified “leap of faith.”

But science is increasingly pointing in this direction: The greatest and most unjustified leap of faith is the notion that EVERYTHING CAME FROM NOTHING. The sheer probability that EVERYTHING CAME FROM NOTHING, that the universe’s intricate and finely-tuned conditions that permit life on Earth are random and accidental events, is so remote as to be absurd. It’s like walking through the woods, stumbling upon a laptop computer and saying, “Wow, how amazing that this thing evolved on its own from primordial sludge. I wonder how it ever learned to swim?”

Why do I capitalize “EVERYTHING FROM NOTHING”? Because that is the gargantuan leap of faith every atheist embraces while he claims that I am the one wallowing in “faith” by claiming that the laptop in the woods came from someone, somewhere, with a purpose in mind.

Ayn Rand might say, “There’s no evidence for a Creator.” In response I would ask her, “Are you blind? The world is full of evidence. You are so caught up with yourself that you refuse to notice it.” (See my critique of Rand’s atheism in Science is Affirming Creation, Not Accident and also The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult by Murray Rothbard.)

“If you could have a moment with Ayn Rand to ask her one question,” an old friend inquired of me at this very conference in Madrid today, “what would it be?” My response went like this: “Ayn, if I asked you if there is life on Venus, you would likely admit, ‘I don’t know.’ But why would you give me a definitively categorical NO if I asked you if God exists? That strikes me as irrational, blind faith in nothing more than your prejudices. You decided for whatever reason that you hate him, so you then rush to the conclusion that he doesn’t exist. You may think that’s some logical extension of your philosophy, but it comes across as willful ignorance motivated by animosity.” I don’t know how she would reply but given her infamous, cult-like behavior toward those who harbored even the slightest disagreement with her, I’m sure she would ostracize me from the human race.

It’s common for atheists and agnostics to point to the evil that goes on in the world as evidence that God doesn’t exist. But I look at the good that happens in the world as evidence that he does. And I am horrified at the thought of how much more evil there could be and would be if God didn’t exist and never intervened. I am grateful for the moral law he gave us. I am not surprised at the evil that erupts because mankind often chooses to reject that moral law.

Some of the atheist’s objections to faith reduce to this: “God didn’t create the world as I would have created it, so therefore I don’t believe he exists.” That’s like looking at a painting and saying, “I don’t like that painting, so I don’t believe there was a painter.” Or a clay bowl objecting to the potter, “I wanted to be a vase, not a bowl, so now I don’t believe any potter actually made me!” The bowl ought be grateful that if there hadn’t been a potter, he would have been nothing at all.

A self-governing society must consist of self-governing individuals. If you do not govern yourself, you will be governed. A breakdown in the moral fabric of society has dire consequences. Where does morality come from? If it comes from humans, then what makes one human’s conception of it superior to another human’s conception? Personally, I’ve concluded that both morality and spirituality make the most sense when connected to a Creator and the moral code he recommended but gave us the free will to reject.

Once the overwhelming evidence convinces you of an intelligent Creator, you must then decide matters of his nature and your purpose. I personally accept the Bible as the best source on these questions. I believe furthermore that Jesus Christ was who he said he was, that he rose from the dead, and that Christianity—as he taught it, not always what flawed mortals claim it is—is true. I would NEVER seek to impose any of this on anybody by force because to do so would be an assault on liberty and profoundly anti-Christian.

My friend Syed is of the Muslim faith. I am of the Christian faith. That represents our free will, our free choice. Despite the differences we have, neither of us declares there is no God, no Creator, no designer of the Universe. Both of us encourage all of you to consider these matters of utmost importance. Don’t be a bystander in some of the preeminent issues mankind confronts.

So back to the question our panel is to address: Can a free society survive without a spiritual foundation? I cannot categorically say NO. I cannot rule out the possibility that somewhere, at some time, people who believe in freedom and deny God can retain their freedom. I just think it would be the very first such society in world history. The odds against it are incredibly long. To deny the existence of a Creator and the consequent spiritual aspect of humans is to deny truth itself, and that is one supremely slippery slope. Perhaps the question our panel is to deal with should be restated as “Can a free society survive if its individuals spurn the one truth crucial to understanding all others?”

One last thought: This is of great significance to all of us here today at this conference because, regardless of your personal faith or lack thereof, we are united on the need for human liberty. LIBERTY is what God made us for. And as a Christian, I must take it one step further: Jesus himself advocated liberty. He was no socialist! He never called for central planning of the economy, forcible redistribution of wealth, dependency on the state, government ownership of property, compulsory charity, or any of the other coercive, man-concocted nonsense peddled by socialists.

If he asked us today, “What did you do for the poor?, the one answer you could give that would be worse than worthless is, “I voted for the politicians who said they would take care of that.” Jesus would likely rebuke you for passing the buck, and hiring the government to steal from Peter to give to Paul. If, however, you answered his question by saying “I hired them and paid their wages and pensions” or “I invented life-saving medicines” or “I manned a soup kitchen for the hungry” or “I provided scholarships to get their kids out of lousy government schools and get them educated in a good private school at half the cost,” he would likely praise you for showing compassion from your heart instead of from some other taxpayer’s wallet. For more on that critically important perspective, I provide some links below.

Thanks for listening, and for thinking.

For additional information, see:

Science is Affirming Creation, Not Accident by Lawrence W. Reed

No, Jesus Wasn’t a Socialist by Lawrence W. Reed

61 Quick Facts on Jesus, Socialism and Wealth by Jon Miltimore

Did Jesus Despise Money? by Lawrence W. Reed

Did Jesus Tell Joe Biden to Cancel Student Debt? by Lawrence W. Reed

The Compatible Teachings of Christ and Confucius by Lawrence W. Reed

The “Jesus was a Socialist” Heresy (video) by Lawrence W. Reed

Jesus, Pigs, and Private Property by Lawrence W. Reed

Give FREELY to the Poor by Lawrence W. Reed

Ayn Rand, Jesus Christ, and Charitable Giving by Lawrence W. Reed

Christ, Christmas, and Capitalism by Lawrence W. Reed

Was Jesus a Socialist? (book) by Lawrence W. Reed

Liberty, Christianity, and Latin America by Lawrence W. Reed

C. S. Lewis Saw Government as a Poor Substitute for God by Lawrence W. Reed

How Christianity Changed the World (book) by Alvin J. Schmidt

Was Jesus a Socialist? (speech) by Lawrence W. Reed

Indians, Property Rights, and Ayn Rand by Lawrence W. Reed

What Gibbon Got Wrong (In Blaming Christians for Rome’s Decline) by Lawrence W. Reed

The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult by Murray Rothbard

Did Jesus Support Self-Defense? by Lawrence W. Reed

Fine-tuning and the Existence of God by Christopher Reese

(Lawrence W. Reed is President Emeritus, Humphreys Family Senior Fellow, and Ron Manners Global Ambassador for Liberty at the Foundation for Economic Education in Atlanta, Georgia. He blogs at www.lawrencewreed.com.)