When people have difficulty imagining a "moral society" without God, they are not drawing on God for moral inspiration. They are drawing on God for ultimate moral enforcement in the face of weak temporal enforcement.
A minor amplification:
If you need a god for moral inspiration, then something is wrong with you. I don't doubt that there are those who lack, if not simple empathy -- the ability to imagine that, in similar circumstances, the other feels what I feel -- then the ability or the willingness to extend that empathy and modify our behavior toward others, particularly when self-interest is involved. In extreme cases, we call that evil. In less extreme cases, we call it human fallibility. Regardless, we don't need god for moral inspiration, nor do we need god to provide the basis for a moral society. We can draw on ourselves for moral inspiration, thank you very much.
Having said that, what exactly do I mean by "weak temporal enforcement?" First, let us imagine a completely free world. I am referring to positive freedom. Imagine a world where each one of us does exactly what we please. If you lack sufficient imagination, then think of any post apocalyptic science fiction saga -- say, the popular walking dead. People have been freed from all bonds of civil society by the virus, and they are consequently free to do whatever they must or will. Several things are not surprising, and seem pretty accurate.
First, nature is no longer benign. Perhaps it never was, but in the fiction, the hordes of zombies stand in for ever present menace of the new natural world. Hunting and gathering, and even scraping out a subsistence living, is challenged by the invading threat of the predator zombie, the stand-in for a malignant nature.
Second, human nature is no longer benign. It would make rational sense for the remaining humans to stop fighting between themselves and band together, not only to resist the new natural, but to rely on combined strength. There IS some banding, but in the new world order the people revert to kinship and tribal bonds. The dictates of conscience apply within, but not outside, the tribal membership. Although there are characters that want to universalize the dictates of conscience, they repeatedly fail when other tribes do not obey the same universal sentiment. Good is within. Evil lurks without, not only in the forces of nature, but in the presence of others who are not of our "kind" and to whom no "kindness" is due.
Third, order is maintained by "power." As the fiction makes clear, simple brute strength the willingness to use it might be necessary, but it is never quite sufficient for the intermediate haul. He is some combination of Achilles and Odysseus -- brute strength and cleverness. The central character of Rick, the leader, is relatively benign. He is troubled by conscience again and again, and the fiction portrays this as a form of humanizing weakness in his leadership. As the fiction makes perfectly clear, however, Rick's weakness is his desire to draw into his own group others and the existing leadership of others who are anything but benign, whether from excess of brutality or sociopathic cleverness or simple suspicion. Rick, to overcome his weakness, must often overcome his conscience, particularly as it struggles to extend itself and include others beyond his immediate tribe.
So, by "weak temporal enforcement" I am referring to two more or less contradictory weaknesses. On the one hand, there is what might be called "the weakness of the government relative to the people" -- its inability to extend its power of enforcement universally. On the other hand, there is "the weakness of the people relative to the government" -- their inability to seek, as it were, redress against the power that does exist. We invoke a god to mitigate the two.
On the one hand, as I've implied in a previous post, we invoke an omnipotent god to universalize enforcement and the punishment that goes with infraction. As a benign leader, Rick cannot be everywhere at all times to enforce the dictates of conscience, even the single dictates of his own benign conscience, against others and against victimizing kindred tempted by self-interest to ignore them. In a religious scheme, even if Rick doesn't see, god will see, and exact punishment, if not in this life, then in the next. It is the dictates of our own conscience aggrandized into the eye of god upon us, and we abstain if tempted, or at the very least suffer guilt and anxiety as a result of failing to abstain.
On the other hand, if one is not lucky enough to have benign leadership, if one is powerless against a brutally self-interested leadership, then we invoke god as a balm. If one is Jew enslaved within brutal and extractive leadership of the Roman Empire, then naturally one imagines a day when one gets, not only one's due, but one's revenge in the next life when the malignant others, those who do not believe as we believe, are consigned to eternal damnation. We aggrandize our desire for revenge, our desire to mitigate a humiliating sense of victimization whether perpetrated by a malign nature, an unpunished other, or a malignant leadership into a universal justice exacted by god at the judgment day. They will get theirs. I will get mine. Judgment day brings reward for obedience, the punishment for disobedience, both universalized into eternity.
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