Believe in good for goodness sake!
Ads proclaiming, "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake," will appear on Washington, D.C., buses starting next week and running through December from the American Humanist Association $40,000 holiday ad campaign.
Though why believe in good? And if you are going to believe in good than was is the objective absolute you base good on, or is good just whatever you "feel" is good. If good is subjective, why not believe in a god if it makes you feel good?
Fellow ex-atheist John C. Wright also weighs in on this and makes great points.
Because, of course, rational and critical thinking is an exclusive province of the atheist camp.
In my own life, I just had a fan of secularism tell me this in all sobriety. When I produced examples and evidences to the contrary, he retreated to the posture of merely repeating himself without addressing any of the points raised. In other words, it was an dogma of faith with him, not open to dispute. Ironic, no?
Regarding the article, this is the part that gets me: "Edwords said the purpose isn't to argue that God doesn't exist or change minds about a deity."
Oh, rubbish. That is exactly your purpose, and if it is not your purpose, you are a disgrace to the cause of atheism. If you are an atheist, you believe that belief in God is false, if not morally wrong, then it is your duty, your duty damn it (does that word mean nothing to you?!), to argue that God does not exist and to change minds about a deity: because all honest men must oppose what is false, and all virtuous, what is wrong.
I must say that I did not depart the atheist camp because of my disgust with my fellows, but the disgust did make the departure pleasant rather than filled with lingering regret when it came. My fellow atheists who were reasonable, not merely anti-clerical bigots, were a small and silent minority, and the choir of yammerheads was the majority.
I still regard men of reason, men of the mind, to be my allies against the forces of unreason, whether the unreason issues from within the Church or from without it. A logical man respects the LOGOS, whether he calls it divine or not.
When the atheist movement turns into a secular form of religion, it has lost its soul.
Known as 
The election has gotten me thinking about how for some people, politics is almost like their religion. I don't want to overgeneralize, but I think that quite a few people on the far left are not religious but are secular humanists. This could account for their cult-like fervor for Obama, like he's the messiah. For them, he is, because they don't know the real Messiah.
Not all but many people who are more politically conservative are religious. So when their candidate loses, they might feel bad because it does affect our lives and how society is run. But they don't have the same kind of anger and despair--it seems to me--as some left wing persons do when their candidate loses. For them, they are losing what they think is their salvation.
I'm with Sr. Lorraine. No question that for the left, politics is their religion: it is the last, dessicated step in a process that leads from justification by faith to justification by self-regard.
As for "just being good" --every psychopath does this, in his own way. It's all about the "primacy of conscience", you know.
What Jeff said. Goodness can no more meet the standards of proof demanded by fundieathiests than God can. In other words, there is no reason why my constellation of atoms can't rearrange yours any way I see fit.
Strange reasoning behind those bus ads in DC, which show a woman dressed as Santa Claus.
So, to express skepticism about religious faith, they depict a real person dressed as an imaginary person whom nobody really believes in, and they ask us to believe in "his" made-up message of being good for goodness sake, which comes from a song that "he" didn't write.
Funny, I believe in a real person, who actually lived on this earth, whose life is well documented, and for whose life, death and resurrection there is ample evidence and rational support.
Whose credulous now?
Humanist tripe and piffle. R. Girard has brought forth from the anthropological record what the Magisterium has always known; namely, without the revealed biblical faith humans quickly revert to the "primitive sacred" - the surest sign of which is child sacrifice.
As if our western culture can do much more than abortuarial murder of our unborn children. Oh, yes, I forgot. We've just elected the most pro-abortion, pro-infanticide candidate for president in the history of the United States. Welcome to neo-pagan America with a vengence.
If you are an atheist, you believe that belief in God is false, if not morally wrong, then it is your duty, your duty damn it (does that word mean nothing to you?!), to argue that God does not exist and to change minds about a deity: because all honest men must oppose what is false, and all virtuous, what is wrong.
Why? Without a higher power to reveal the virtuosity of truth, why should any atheist care about proclaiming the truth? Removing God from the equation naturally removes virtue, as well.
Andy, I don't think that removing God naturally removes virtue (and other objective concepts) from the equation. We all have a built-in desire for virtue, justice, love, etc., and an atheist can be drawn to these truths without believing in their source. I agree that the person who doesn't believe in God has less reason to desire truth and virtue, but not none at all. I'd venture to guess that many people discover God by first discovering truth or mercy or love or beauty, they all point to their Creator.
Maybe the Archdiocese should run it's own ads in similar style with a straightforward Catholic answer to the question, explaining the flaws in the "good for goodness sake" rationale.
Um...because God alone is Good?
If you think about it, God is Goodness itself, thus saying "Be good for goodness sake" is to say "Be good for God's sake"
"When the atheist movement turns into a secular form of religion, it has lost its soul."
Talk about a sentence bursting with paradox, lol.
Tolkien,
That was my next thought, but I wasn't sure if it was correct to call "Good" and the Source of all Goodness, Who IS God, "GoodNESS." A religious philosopher or theologian (or a priest, for that matter) would be able to "split that hair", but I haven't studied this point, and can't remember having read about it. I guess the technical split I'm seeing is the active result, the NESS which is active in us because we are His children, vs the eternal source...
I think St Faustina called God "Mercy Itself", but there may be a difference. I'm too small to know. Do you know for sure if the Church has called God "GoodNESS", ever?
Ah, now this fine point has captured by brain. (Whether or not we can rightly call God "Goodness" without calling Him less than He is...Is there a Dominican in the house?