Morality without god?

Continuing on thoughts of atheists as well as John Lennox's book on the religious side, are we capable of being moral without god?

The atheists claims that religion cherry picks what they want for morality and attribute it as coming from god.

The religious claims that science can do a lot towards explaining the physical world but is completely inappropriate when it comes to establishing what is good or evil.

The atheists claims that good people do good things and bad people do bad things, only religion can cause good people to do bad things.  Their examples are the 9/11 hijackers who are university educated people thinking they are serving the Islamic god and the crusaders thinking they are serving the christian god.  They were all killing for a religious cause.

The religious claims that atheists dictators like Stalin and Mao killed thousands.

Here, the atheists rebuttal is that Stalin and Mao did not kill because of atheism but they were bad people doing bad things,  not good atheists killing in the name of atheism as the crusaders and 9/11 hijackers.

From Lennox book, I can now see that the religious claim is not that Stalin and Mao kill on theist issues but actually that it is the lack of god as the cosmic policeman and guardian of morals that led Stalin and Mao to commit their killings.  If atheism is widely accepted, then more Stalin and Mao types may be emboldened to commit killings with the idea that there is no god to punish them and no final judgment that they have to answer for.

It seem obvious that even if there is a god, Stalin and Mao were not convinced that they have to face judgment. So advancing atheism would not have made a difference there, but would it encourage more Stalin and Mao like dictators?

High minded atheists believe we should be moral for humanity's sake rather than because there is a god to make them moral.  But even they lock their doors and live in a society where there is law enforcement to keep them safe.  Not just the trust of others to behave morally like them.

Does wanting a benevolent supernatural god make it so?

Even if having an all knowing god and policeman is good for us, it does not mean this god exists.  Stalin and Mao knows this.  We may use Santa Claus to motivate a young child to behave but none of us would expect this to work on Stalin and Mao.

Should we continuing deluding ourselves with an adult version of Santa Claus in the hope of stopping more future Stalins and Maos?

Wishing just does not make it so.

Human behavior covers a wide range.  There are highly moral and independent among us as well as selfish individuals trying to take advantage of others or the system when not monitored.  We need policeman and enforcers to handle these selfish individuals but the policeman themselves need to be monitored by society as a whole.  Moral leaders can distinguish themselves with their thoughts and opinions by the democratic public.

As to whether we need a god to be a source of our morals, the Chinese and other Asian countries have had a long history of sourcing their morals and cultural values from Confucius teachings.  His disciples never claimed him to be a deity, but here is enough acceptance and government support to make this the basis of social morals for a large portions of the world population for thousands of years.

True, there is still ancestor worship for those who want special favours from the heavens but the social moral code is set on a scholar's thinking.

We can debate as to whether Confucius teachings are the right basis for morals but the example of morality without god is already shown.

It can be done,  we can have morals without a supernatural god.