More specifically, Zuckerman's book--which focuses on in-depth interviews conducted with non-religious people--explores two main challenges non-religious folks often hear from religious believers: (1) Without God, where do you get your Morals? and (2) How do you find Meaning in a world without God?
(1) Morals: "If there is no God," goes a famous claim by Dostoevsky, "then everything is permitted." Religious people often wonder where non-religious people "get their morals" if not as part of a belief in a Deity who commands Right and Wrong (and holds us accountable in an Afterlife).
So, then, where do non-religious people get their morals? Taken as empirical question, Zuckerman replies that there's a clear, but complex, response: "I get my morals from the people who raised me, the culture within which I live, the kind of brain that I have, and the lessons I have learned from things I experience in life" (page 36).
At this point, the religious person might have a follow-up question: "But what inspires a person to do the right thing, if not a love for God and His Commandments (or, perhaps, the fear of Judgment in an Afterlife)?"
Well, Zuckerman (and the non-religious people he interviewed) would answer, how about a love for other people, inspired by the basic experience of empathy for others? "[M]orality--to paraphrase philosopher Emmanuel Levinas--is based on the faces of others. Our moral compasses flicker, calibrate, and adjust themselves in relation to the suffering we may or may not cause in other people. We soberly acknowledge the subjectivity of others, and try to treat them the way we would like to be treated. This Golden Rule requires no leap of faith. It is simple, clear, and universally intelligible--probably as a result of our neurological capacity for empathy and our biological evolution as social animals over so many thousands of years" (page 221).
From such a wellspring--the basic psychological experience of empathy--conscience and moral behavior flow quite naturally. Zuckerman and his interview-subjects elaborate on this idea to explain why non-religious people don't become selfish cynical materialists (Chapter 1), how they can form loving relationships and communities (Chapter 5), and how they pass empathy-inspired values on to their children (Chapter 4). Zuckerman also points out that, contrary to the predictions of some American conservative Christians, non-religious societies (Scandinavian societies, for example) get along pretty well--often having fewer social ills and dysfunction than more religious societies (Chapter 2).
(People who are interested in the question of how non-religious people and societies get and practice morality, see Zuckerman's earlier books, Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us about Contentment and Faith No More: Why People Reject Religion).
(2) Meaning: Religious people often wonder how non-religious people find Meaning in life without a story weaving one's life into some larger Divine Story. Without God, religious people wonder, how can anyone see life as anything other than Shakespeare's oft-quoted "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" (Macbeth)?
Well, why not repeat the same answer we gave to the first question? Non-religious people find meaning in the same place they find their morals: In sympathy with, and love for, other people: "It all boils down to our connections with other people," observes non-religious therapist Hilary Wells, "We derive comfort, meaning, and love from those around us, the people we are connected to in our social environment. That's where secular people look when life is hard, or when they are suffering" (page 161).
Here, the religious person might have a follow-up question: Yes, but what's the capital-M Meaning Of Life as a whole? What's the Cosmic Big Picture? Or, as Leo Tolstoy famously asked (in My Confession: "What's it all FOR?!"
On one hand, many non-religious people freely admit agnosticism: "Life, this world, existence... [t]he depths of the infinite, the source of all being, the causes of the universe, the beginnings or ends of time and space--when it comes to such matters, we don't have a shred of a clue. And perhaps we never will" (page 200)
Such an admission might be jarring to some people--it's difficult for some religious people to just "[d]eal with it...[a]ccept it...[l]et the mystery be" (page 201). But Zuckerman (and others profiled in his book) would testify that such a Way of Life can be a happy one, in the truest, fullest sense of the word Happy: "A lack of belief in God," Zuckerman insists, "does not render this world any less wondrous, lush, mystifying, or amazing. A...secular orientation does not mean that one experiences a cold, colorless existence, devoid of aesthetic inspiration, mystical wonder, unabashed appreciation, existential joy, or a deep sense of connection with others, with nature, and with the incomprehensible...One need not have God to [have all this]. One just needs life" (page 212).
Phil Zuckerman's wonderful book is insightful and inspiring--an attempt to explain the psychology and sociology of the Moral, Meaningful, and Fulfilling life without religion. And, through its personal interviews, Zuckerman's book allows us to experience inspiration right alongside those non-religious, but richly spiritual, people.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1834671073
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