I won’t argue that.

But without religion, a reason for being moral is gone. And the degree to which one is moral is more easily diminished.

With the NFL playoffs underway, consider this analogy.

Every season, teams start the year with hopes of a division title and a championship run.

Ryan Comer, Standard-Examiner

Except the New York Jets and the Las Vegas Raiders.

Because of those hopes, great effort is given.

What happens during the course of a season when a team is no longer in contention for a playoff spot or no longer has championship hopes?

Chances aren’t small that the team will perform worse. It’s understandable when a key source of motivation suddenly disappears.

Does that mean that a team that is no longer in contention can’t try hard and perhaps play really well? Not at all. But it means that it is more likely that the opposite will happen than it was previously.

Do all teams that are in contention play well all the time? Of course not. Weakness is a reality, and sometimes, teams simply don’t meet expectations.

For religious people, the end goal isn’t a playoff spot or a championship but a return to God’s presence. For me, personally, that goal helps inform the decisions I make from day to day.

What do I say when I see someone say something on social media that I don’t like?

What do I choose to watch on television?

What music do I choose to listen to?

What do I teach my kids?

How do I communicate with the people around me?

These and many other questions are answered in no small part based on my ultimate goal, which is to return to God’s presence. There’s an eternal perspective.

If I didn’t have that as an ultimate goal, would I still make enough good decisions to consider myself a moral person? Perhaps. Would I make the same amount of good decisions I make now or more? Almost assuredly no.

In the spirit of honoring Jeffrey R. Holland, the apostle in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who died on Dec. 27, 2025, I’ll share some words he wrote in the Liahona Magazine on July 29, 2021.

“It has been principally the world’s great faiths that speak to the collective good of society, that offer us a code of conduct and moral compass for living, that help us exult in profound human love, and that strengthen us against profound human loss,” he wrote. “If we lose consideration of these deeper elements of our mortal existence–divine elements, if you will–we lose much, some would say most, of that which has value in life.

“In fact, religion has been the principal influence that has kept Western social, political, and cultural life moral, to the extent that these have been moral. And I shudder at how immoral life might have been–then and now–without that influence. Centuries of religious belief, including institutional church- or synagogue- or mosque-going, have clearly been preeminent in shaping our notions of right and wrong.”

Elder Holland quoted historians Will and Ariel Durant, who said “There is no significant example in history … of [any] society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.”

Elaborating on that quote, he said:

“If that is true–and surely we feel it is–then we should be genuinely concerned over the assertion that the single most distinguishing feature of modern life is the rise of secularism with its attendant dismissal of, cynicism toward, or marked disenchantment with religion.”

He noted the increasing “minimization of–or open hostility toward–religious practice, religious expression, and even, in some cases, the very idea of religious belief itself” and pointed it back to a prediction made by Elder Neal A. Maxwell, a former member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, over 40 years earlier.

“We shall see in our time a maximum … effort … to establish irreligion as the state religion,” he quoted Maxwell as saying in 1978. “[Secularists will use] the carefully preserved and cultivated freedoms of Western civilization to shrink freedom even as [they reject] the value … of our rich Judeo-Christian heritage.”

The quote continued:

“Your discipleship may see the time come when religious convictions are heavily discounted. … This new irreligious imperialism [will seek] to disallow certain … opinions simply because those opinions grow out of religious convictions.”

Elders Holland and Maxwell truly were the best with words.

Some examples immediately come to mind for me as I ponder the fulfilling of Elder Maxwell’s prediction.

As for me, I can guarantee I won’t be allowing my opinions to be disallowed simply because they “grow out of religious convictions.” I owe my sense of morality to those opinions that “grow out of religious convictions.”

Contact Standard-Examiner editor Ryan Comer at rcomer@standard.net.