What is faith without God?

• guardian.co.uk, Monday 4 October 2010 10.01 BST

If people believe in neither God nor social democracy, where will social action come from and how can we have faith and hope?

A car parked illegally in a disabled space. But how do we stop such irresponsible behaviour? Photograph: Garry Weaser for the Guardian

The central problem for any society is how to make people behave unselfishly or for the general good. This can't just be a matter of force, or else North Korea would be the ideal state. Nor can it be a matter of entirely rational calculations of self-interest. If everyone behaved like the economist who worked out that it was cheaper for him to pay the occasional parking fine than to observe the restrictions on disabled parking lots, society would also come to an end.

What's needed are a set of social norms, simple prohibitions that everyone observes without stopping to calculate whether it would be better to cheat. Traditionally religion provided these, and also balanced and strengthened its prohibitions with hope. When Christianity faded in Europe, for much of the 20th century, social democracy seemed to promise both hope and common decencies.

So, if people nowadays believe in neither God or social democracy, where is social action going to come from? How can we have faith and hope without God or socialism? This is not a polemic question, but a practical one, which will become increasingly urgent in the next few years.