Polly Toynbee on moral values

Let's have another look at what those famous atheists had to say in the Huffington Post.  Polly Toynbee:

[P]lacing moral laws and rules in the hands of a book written by some external creator, judge, father, law-maker, infantilises us and makes us less responsible for creating a society around us that benefits everyone.

Goodness is a social value, the effect you have on all around you and the wider society, not a secret personal matter for the sinner to be privately weighed in the scales by a God after death.  Humanism is not a mere absence of religion but a positive value that puts people and their societies at the heart of life.

Interesting stuff.  I think Toynbee makes a good point when she talks about goodness being a social value rather than a private matter.  Christians have sometimes emphasised the importance of recognising one's personal sin and seeking God's forgiveness to such a degree that they have overlooked social sin.  When the Rana Plaza building in Dhaka collapsed, killing well over 1,000 people, it was not just a private matter between the building's owner and God.  And it was not just Mr Rana who was at fault; clothing companies which traded in the developed world had chosen to have their products manufactured in Bangladesh in order to benefit from cheap labour.  Part of the reason for the low price of goods manufactured in places like Rana Plaza was the questionable health and safety practices which had caused workers to be ordered back into the building even after cracks had appeared.  And when we in the UK bought items manufactured in Rana Plaza, we too were implicated in the whole sorry situation.  Toynbee is right to say that goodness - and, I would argue, sin - is a social  matter.

While I have the utmost respect for humanists like Polly Toynbee, I find myself asking whether they have too optimistic a view of human nature.  Humanism seems to me to depend upon the idea that humans are fundamentally good; able to know the right thing to do and to do it.  Christianity depends upon the idea that we cannot do this without help.  In a sense, Toynbee is right when she says that that infantilises us - Christians look to their Father in heaven for guidance and for the strength to do the right thing.  And ultimately they look to their Father for forgiveness when, time and again, they fail.  Becoming a Christian is in a sense becoming a child once again.  And why is that such a bad thing?