Why Believe in a God? - A Humanist Ad Campaign
Nov 13th, 2008 by Nathan White
You may have noticed a news story this week about the advertisement campaign seen below. Posters just like this one are going up in buses around Washington, DC in a $40,000 holiday ad campaign promoted by The American Humanist Association:
So as Christians, how should we respond to should the opportunity presents itself?
First, we shouldn’t consider it an insult or a direct attack on the freedom and rights we have in the area of religion. This is simply a group expressing their own opinion –they have every right to do so. Now, as we’ll see below, we by all means *should* consider this an insult and/or attack on our intelligence and ability to think rationally, but we shouldn’t be overly surprised or offended that someone wants to express their foolish opinion.
Secondly, we shouldn’t be surprised at such an ad slogan given that most of this country already lives as if there is no God, no matter what is confessed from the mouth. The unrestrained sin and decadence of our culture bears perfect witness that the majority of Americans live as though God doesn’t exist. For if people really believed God existed, we certainly wouldn’t see the rampant sexual immorality, abortion, theft, murder, deception, etc., that permeates our culture (and even our entertainment). Thus, in a way, consider this ad as an attempt to get people to profess what the majority have already chosen to live like: that there are no such standards of right and wrong, good and evil.
Next, forgive me for stating the obvious, but we should have some pity on the poor soul who attempts to define what is ‘good’ after denying the only source and fountain of any logical rationality? Also, “Be good for goodness’ sake”? –that’s a very true statement in that they are being honest in saying that there is no real reason why anyone should be good. Therefore, go out and do good (whatever that is) for the sake of goodness (whatever that is)!
In other words: if you think adultery is good, then go for it! If you’d be happier and your family better off by being $10,000 richer, then for goodness’ sake, go steal it from someone who doesn’t need it as bad as you do, or do whatever else is necessary for the survival and goodness of your family!
‘But you’re misrepresenting us’, the humanist will argue. ‘We do not advocate doing those things harmful to society.’ Well then, let’s go to the website of this ad campaign and see what they have to say:
“We can have ethics and values that aren’t set in stone. Our ideals and principles can evolve over time to reflect our ever-changing and increasingly complex world. Yet, we can be confident of the decisions that we make, not because someone told us what to do but because we relied on our own careful reasoning and emotional reflection. We can live a life that accepts and appreciates the world as it is, without needing to see supernatural explanations behind every event. This is a positive and uplifting way to live.”
So in other words, however it is that you define ‘good’, just be sure that the rest of the crowd agrees with you. If that’s the case, then you’re in the clear.
Thus, if you live in a society where pedophila is deemed ‘OK’ by the careful reasoning and emotional reflecting of those around you, then you are doing ‘good’ in practicing your positive and uplifting way of living.
Thus, if you lived in Nazi Germany, where the entire culture and nation around you was united in creating the perfect human race, and exterminating those who they considered as ‘base’ or ‘inferior’ humans was an end to what was deemed ‘good’ by time-tested society, then your agreement to this and participation in the murder of millions would be considered ‘good’ in practicing your positive and uplifting way of living.
Let’s take a look at some more stuff from this website:
Without a god, why be good at all?
- Because you know you want to, anyway. Unless you were born a sociopath or had your natural sensibilities destroyed in childhood, you have the same general sense of right and wrong, fair and unfair, just and unjust, kind and mean that people have all over the world.
There you have it, folks: Be good because you want to anyway. We can give you no definition of good, no rational behind the concept, no argumentation to convince you that it exists, and absolutely no rewards/consequences for acting one way or another, but be ‘good’ because we say so!
But have you considered, if the paragraph quoted above is true, that all people just ‘want’ to be good anyway, why run such a campaign that encourages people to be ‘good’? Doesn’t that defeat the argument? Are people, maybe by the corruption of religious beliefs such as ‘love thy neighbor as thyself’, rebelling against this good that they want to do anyway? This paragraph kind of undermines the campaign, does it not?
[And isn’t it funny how children don’t just pursue good on their own? Those of you with small children, like myself, will understand that kindness, sharing, patience, manners, unselfishness, etc., must be relentlessly taught to children by discipline, punishment, reward, etc. Only a fool would argue that children do good naturally.]
My friends, the Bible says that “the fool has said in his heart, ‘there is no God.‘” And one piece of evidence that proves such a statement is true can be so clearly seen in the beliefs expressed above.
This ad and the message of this group make absolutely no sense to those who have a brain. Without the Christian God, and I do emphasis the Trinitarian God revealed in scripture and in the Person of Jesus Christ, we have no ability to define right from wrong, good from evil, order from disorder, etc. Furthermore, without the Christian God, we don’t even have the ability to define logical from illogical, rational from irrational, or sense from nonsense, given that nothing is absolute, nothing is fixed, and there is no standard whatsoever to determine anything from
So do me a favor, all you humanists and atheists: why not run an ad campaign that says: “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may die.”? At least then you could keep your main objective, which is to promote the breaking of God’s law written on your heart –thus silencing your conscience that terrifies you about the coming judgment, and then, with this slogan, you wouldn’t be contradicting yourself and insulting the intelligence of those who actually believe that rationality exists.
Lord, sanctify them with you truth. Your Word is truth.
You mean we don’t have to raise our children to do good, they just do it naturally? How Spockian.
Only a fool would argue that children do good naturally.
The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” (therefore)
They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds,
there is none who does good.
What happens when they throw a temper tantrum? Well, I guess they’re just expressing their innate goodness???????
The very necessity of instilling a sense of goodness in children is proof that we are all born natural psychopaths unless trained not to be. “What a world, what a world, I’m melting…Who would have thought that a good little gril like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness…” Or something like that. The flying monkeys seemed to recognize what the atheist cannot. From whence comes goodness? As with Dorothy, goodness comes from without and not from within, it is inculcated not birthed. The moral of the story: If you put out the strawman fires that the atheists start, eventually they can only respond, “I’m melting, ain’t it good!”
I suppose what they mean by natural sensitivities being destroyed is when a Christian teaches a child religious morals. If we just wouldn’t tell them about God, they would be angels, doan yano.
Great post, Nathan.
It dumbfounds me that some professing Christians continue to call America a Godly nation. The ad campaign you referenced in your post clearly supports the fact that no matter what Americans profess, the vast majority of them live as if there is no God.
You know, if I didn’t believe in God’s absolute sovereignty, I would be worried. But a careful study of the Bible tells us that there is always a remnant, the true Israel, among all of the unbelievers. So I’m not alarmed by this because Scripture tells us that this is the way it is.
Nathan, what do they really say about the societies of the past, like early America and slavery, Nazi Germany, and ancient cultures that endorsed pedophilea. I mean, back then you were considered a wierdo if you did not embrace those things. So, do they say it was moral in that culture? I’m really curious.
Josh–
I hear you, brother. Without the sovereignty of God I’d be holed up in some underground bunker praying for fire from heaven! But we certainly do have a king who is on His throne, ruling with a rod of iron, and setting up His enemies as His footstool. What comfort! What assurance of hope! –Especially in the light of all that is going on around us.
Davide asked:
I’ve heard several Atheists try and answer this question, but mostly I’ve seen them avoid it. But regardless, I wouldn’t say that they come up with anything definite. I’ve heard them throw out arguments such as:
-any society that doesn’t respect life is obviously wrong (such as Hitler, but they forget their approval of abortion)
-everybody else in the world knew the Nazis were evil, thus society didn’t approve of their values
-we have evolved since then, and we are continuing to evolve in our ethics/morality
-we just innately know that Hitler and the Nazis were evil.
Ultimately, of course, they all come back to the last point. We should just know how to be good, just because. It’s really an unwritten code of morality, except that they get to subjectively define it, without actually communicating it objectively.
To put it another way: the atheist can identify evil when he sees it, but he cannot define what is good. That is, they cannot even identify something as evil until it has happened and they’ve had time to examine the effect on society. And the same goes for defining good. Good is whatever is popular, after much study and contemplation of its effect on society as a whole.
All of this breaks down eventually, as any rational mind can see. This especially so in light of evil and consequences: there is no sense in refraining from anything, no matter how evil, if I can get away with it, and if it makes me or others around me happier. There are no consequences if I want to shoot up the school and then kill myself, so as long as I can define what is good, my subjective happiness is of first importance.
I must play the devil’s advocate here a bit and ask whether the understanding of right/wrong and good/evil has changed on a number of issues within Christian thought as well.
Thornton Stringfellow wrote a very literate and thorough analysis in favor of slavery (http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/string/string.html):
Later, most Christians have come to the conclusion (despite of all the previous truths) that slavery is an injustice against man and a betrayal of human dignity.
What about what is moral in terms of how to deal with contrary beliefs in society and the use of torture? It was common in Calvin’s Geneva (as well as obviously in Spain) to use physical pain to attempt to coerce people into rejecting their beliefs or statements that ran contrary to the accepted theological positions of the leadership within those communities.
This isn’t an attack on Calvin or the Catholic Church: it was just accepted as a moral norm that torture is good and useful in converting those believed to be “dangerous” to the common good.
Christians later rejected this as well as an affront to man and God.
Hey Jim–
Let’s not confuse the issues here. Yes, Christian morals tend to ebb and flow with the changing of cultures, but ONLY so in some secondary matters where scripture isn’t crystal clear. But that’s the key: we always have the scriptures as foundation for right/wrong, truth/error, even if scripture is better interpreted in some cultures, more than it is in other points of history.
Atheism, however, has absolutely no foundation whatsoever for morality. They cant account for the existence of morality, and furthermore, even the existence of rational thought. Without a foundation, a solid underpinning, nothing can ever be affirmed for certain.
So it isn’t the fact that some small matters of practice change from generation to generation, but that there is absolutely nothing but a subjective, postmortem analysis that dictates right from wrong, truth from irrationality. The atheistic worldview cannot even promise you that its standards of morality will last until tomorrow given that research, subjectivity, and evolving cultural standards might declare sin today as perfectly OK tomorrow.
So, with the scriptures we have truth, and with the Triune God we have an ultimate standard of truth that we can derive rationality from. Atheism, unfortunately, is for people who prefer not to use their brains…
Ultimately, Nate, you’re correct. The atheist has one of two reasons to “be good”: empathy (they feel “bad” when they do bad) and fear of some sort of social payback, whether it be mere ostracism or actual punishment. Of course, empathy is not reliable as human emotions come and go with the wind. There is not always a guarantee of getting caught, either. So what tethers them to do what is right in a reliable way? I’m not certain. This doesn’t mean that atheists don’t often do what is right or that they have no empathy: many of them do, and I don’t think you’re arguing otherwise.
Still, for Christians, discerning what is “right” is not always easy. This is why I’m quite satisfied with my lot in life in that I do not have to make difficult decisions that affect a multitude of people. I will thankfully never have to send troops to battle or make decisions that impact the pocketbooks and lives of thousands. There are simply too many competing goods and greater/lesser evils to have to contend with: I often wonder if one has to be a bit mad to actually want to be a politician.
Jim–
Let’s remember that there are two dilemmas here. One of them, of course, is doing, as in behavior. Here I think it could be argued that generally speaking, atheists live fairly upstanding lives in many respects.
But the second problem here, and the most dangerous, is more than just action, but is belief. As I said above, atheists cannot prescribe what is evil and good. They simply lack any foundation to tell you what is good and what is evil, except that previous experience/contemplation/research/cause-and-effect are taken into account. So I would argue that it isn’t doing that we should be chiefly concerned with, but the believing, which will ultimately (eventually) lead to dangerous doing. Follow my point?
And from the Christian perspective, we should also realize that the Bible places much more stress on what we believe than on what we do. You may disagree with me here (I say this based upon our previous disagreements), but I firmly believe, following the biblical pattern, that we should strive to get people to believe the right things before doing the right things. Thus, I’m much more lenient on how others live than on what others believe (when teaching, discussing the Christian faith, etc.). That’s what this blog is all about: right doctrine is worth fighting for; right living, though we may not agree on it now, will eventually come when right beliefs are in place.
So to conclude with the thought on Atheism: if they think this discussion is about living the best life, the most upstanding, good life, etc., then they’ve missed the point. The point is that wrong beliefs, or in this case, no substantial beliefs whatsoever, will always (eventually) lead to evil and a destructive lifestyle. –Especially when in rebelling against a holy God.