I hate people telling me how I should think. Whether it is an atheist or an evangelical Christian. These people come across as so arrogant. They somehow have figured out all the answers and feel the need to bestow them on the rest of us ignorant people.

I think everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, I personally love Jesus Christ, and would have a sad life without him. He gives me strength and courage to do things I never thougth possible. He guides me when I feel lost. I turn to him when I am troubled and need someone to walk beside me and make me see things in a different light. I will never again be lost and not know Christ as my savior! Once you experience the power of Jesus you too will never turn back!

Ever read Ann Coulter’s book “Godless”? If this ad campaign doesn’t prove her primary premise – that those who claim not to believe in God and not to have any religion do have their own religion, then I don’t know what does. I think this is sad. While I certainly believe people can do good, make moral and ethical decisions, etc. without professing a belief in God, I believe that inner desire to do good comes from God. Just b/c the person doesn’t realize that yet, doesn’t make it not so. There is nothing positive that can come from this ad campaign — well, unless God decides to use it for His good. What Satan means for evil, God works for good!

Jannette: I have not read Coulter’s book, but I do believe that people do seek likeminded people whether in or outside a faith tradition. The notion that all good comes from God whether people know if or not is an interesting notion. I will have to think about that.

What makes human beings “good” with or without God (or in my case, a fair number of them), is spiritual and emotional maturity. For people such as Joan, that can happen with a genuine Christian conversion because it calls the person into awareness of others and a sense of duty beyond themselves. In my own case, the call came from God and Goddess. In my own case, I never had the certainty to call myself atheist before that, but agnostic certainly would have been fair, and I was probably a bit of a nihlist as well.
So what would a hardcore unreformed lifelong atheist have to draw on to make them “good”? The conclusion that all we’ve got is seven or eight decades on this rock and each other, so we might as well make the best of it. If a person can develop a sense of empathy and humility from whatever source, they will tend to be good people. Many evangelical sorts will insist that people can’t be good without a fear of God or hell, but I’ve found that the most spiritually immature and hypocritical people are the ones driven mostly by such fear. They may follow their commandments or pastor out of fear, but they will never develop a deep sense of morality or do more than the bare minimum.
In addition, they usually approach the whole thing with a lawyer’s eye for loopholes in the letter of the law and contempt for its spirit. That said, there certainly are many immature atheists out there, and the movement in general seems to be getting as shrill and militant as the fundamentalist Christians they oppose.
I support their right to put up these ads and I tend to support things like ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Not because I’m an atheist, but because I want a truly secular and pluralistic state.

Recently, my efforts to move forward in a path towards greater Christian faith have resulted in encounters with extreme “Godly Christians” (self-described) who have used the word of God to perpetrate “not good”, or even “evil”, action. This has given me pause in my search — will I have the judgement to discern “good” from “evil” in my own actions, or will I twist the Word of God to my own ends? These recent encounters with the misguided are warnings for me to proceed with caution against arrogance. The Bible is only as good as the individual who reads/interprets/uses it…and there are countless evils perpetrated by individuals who cite Biblical text to justify their malevolence. While this might fly in the face of an evangelical Christian viewpoint, my belief at the moment is that all good action, all lovingness, comes from God — whether acknowledged formally through religious practice or not.

It’s a good thing to discuss faith because it helps one at least clarify his own position on some issues. By bringing his thoughts out into the open and throwing them to the lions, he gets to see aspects of his thoughts he never noticed before – confirmations, or contradictions, or new insights.
The problem only sometimes is that many of us tend to pigeon-hole each other into camps. Instead of healthy discussion, there is a headbutting of egos — my God versus your God, my religion versus your religion, my way of thinking versus your way of thinking. There’s always strife. It’s human nature, true. That said, though, there are some religions whose followers tend to manifest more agression than others. Something always has to be won, and the rest go to some deep dark pit and are doomed forever. That is a very sad thing, I think.
I think I’ll stick to my meditation. My God has a name he calls himself, and who am I to even mention it, or to claim that I know him and his business.

janette, coulter in “goddless” characterized evolution as “bogus science.” you sound like someone who would agree. and that’s fine with me.
joan, there may be “much ado” in your circle about doing good without god, but not in mine. that your belief in the supernatural helped you overcome drug and alcohol addiction and an eating disorder is ‘good’ news.
the ‘bad’ news is that it is incumbent on you to make sense before reasonably educated people can take your views (about religion or anything else) seriously. the same goes for janette and coulter.

I think the spelling you want is “donor”

Yes Pat, thank you for catching that. I am a terrible speller. Not sure what I did before spell check.

@kenneth writes:
“I support their right to put up these ads and I tend to support things like ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Not because I’m an atheist, but because I want a truly secular and pluralistic state.”
Do you sincerely believe the ACLU and Americans United want a pluralistic state?
credis writes:
“the ‘bad’ news is that it is incumbent on you to make sense before reasonably educated people can take your views (about religion or anything else) seriously. the same goes for janette and coulter.”
Why would that be “bad news”? I have not found it difficult to make sense of spiritual views when I am dealing with reasonably educated people.
Of course, it becomes more difficult if they are not educated and not willing to enter into true dialogue.

greg, “[the accent of]” elision is a diacritic mark called the single apostrophe that performs different functions in different languages, but usually disambiguation. feel free to interpret ‘good’ and ‘bad’ as you please.
“good” and “bad” convey a completely different meaning
janette and joan, enjoy the video.

Yes, I do believe these organizations, especially ACLU, want a society that’s safe for religion, not from it. They have gone to bat many times on behalf of Christians. http://www.aclu.org/religion/26526res20060824.html
Going back to the 1970s, the ACLU, many of them Jewish lawyers – defended the rights of Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois, a town full of Holocaust survivors. Would they have done that if the whole thing was driven by an extreme left-wing agenda?
I can speak of Americans United from some personal experience.
They were instrumental in a long and difficult legal battle to force the government to honor pagan veterans with a proper grave marker, an effort which had been actively disparaged by the president who sent these men and women to die for their country. AU is headed by a guy who’s a Christian minister of some sort. Not a pagan on his staff for all I know and they may think we’re all loons, but they took the case on principle.
The Glen Becks and Bill Donoghues and Rush Limbaughs of the world are making bank on the myth that a Christian can’t get a fair shake in this country but it doesn’t wash with the facts. The fact is some Christian sects have gotten so used to absolute deference in this country that any assertion of rights by other groups seems like an assault on them. With the exception of some of the most radical militant atheists out there, nobody wants to stop anybody from being Christian. What we are saying is they don’t get to have 100 percent ownership of the public space anymore or to be the only ones to be considered “real Americans” before the law.

it’s for you, too, kenneth.
relax and enjoy.

@credis
Yes, I know I can interpret “bad” however I choose. However, I was trying to understand what you meant.
It seemed you were saying it was difficult to make sense before reasonably educated people. It seemed you were contrasting “bad” news with “good” news as in the Gospels. (??)
I am very relaxed and enjoying myself so don’t feel there is any pressure to clarify. Was just curious.

@Kenneth
RE the ACLU and Americans United I had observed the opposite. It seemed to me that in the preponderance of cases they had worked to limit views and not allow greater pluralism.
In other words, they were not championing the ability of the unheard to make themselves heard but rather were working to close down expressions.
The example of the Nazis in Skokie is a well-noted exception. That was some time ago, however, and in recent years it appears there has been a pretty extreme tilt away from insuring minority speech toward limiting speech, i.e. away from pluralism.

I suppose these are exceptions too?
http://www.aclufightsforchristians.com/

Yeah, I made the other trip, from faith to unbelief, and my basic values are unchanged. I still work tirelessly on behalf of my foster and adopted kids (all of whom were adopted well after I no longer believed).
Anyone can be a good person, and you sure don’t need a deity to do it.

Some of them are very valid exceptions and should be acknowledged.
A number of the items on the list, however, are dubious. Perhaps the list should be culled to represent the best examples.

People are not good without God. The prison population has increased in direct proportion with the increase in atheists.

Dear interpreter,
People are not good without God? And atheists have increased as the prison population has increased? You have no basis in fact in either statement. As wrong as it is to condemn all believers, it is just as wrong to condemn people who do not believe in a supreme being. Why not learn to respect others’ beliefs? Why should that be a threat to you? Drop your arrogance.

People can be good, or bad, with or without God. As morality evolved independently of a divine creator, God is not needed to instill us with goodness.
If God were proven not to exist tomorrow, you would not suddenly become immoral, or even amoral. You would still be you, and you would still behave the same as you do today.
As far as atheistic evangelism goes, I don’t have a problem with it any more than I have a problem with religious evangelism or political evangelism. I am all for putting all the ideas out in the marketplace (of ideas), and letting the best ones come out on top.

@patrick oden
i agree completely.
the main goal of all of this exercise is to generate joan new business.
the million dollar question is how to she plans on converting her beliefnet fans, twitter followers and facebook friends into book-buying customers.

I had hoped that Belief.net would post a more educated and nuanced item on the Big Apple Coalition of Reason campaign, instead of repeating other sources and identifying it as “Atheist.” Did you actually visit our website? Did you follow any of the links to individual organizations? If you had, you would read that our emphasis is “non-theism” which promotes neither theism nor atheism, but rather personal choice and integrity. Let the fundamentalists on either end of the religious spectrum duke it out; most people try to lead good lives and give those lives meaning.
Dr. Anne Klaeysen, Leader (clergy), New York Society for Ethical Culture, member of Big Apple Coalition of Reason

the person who runs this blog isn’t educated. sorry. but she is very passionate about her miraculous conversion and belief in god.
byt, she’s selling a book, if you are interested, or you can sign up for ‘coaching.”
you get what you pay for at beliefnet, so thanks for dropping by.

Dr. Klaeysen: Thank you for stopping by and for your comment. This post was an observation of the conversation in the popular press rather than an expose on the organization. I would love to learn more about what it is that you are doing and what is driving it. Perhaps a guest post?

Credis: You have been busy in the past few days. You have made clear your contempt for me and your view of me as money-hungry, book-pimping, etc, etc. We have communicated on more than one occasion about agreeing to disagree about matters of faith and I had thought we had come to a point of balance in that regard. I hope we can return to a more reasonable conversation about these differences in the spirit of dialog. Otherwise this space becomes like so many other spaces on the Internet – exhausting and less than productive debate and sniping.

Patrick: Thanks for stopping by. I respect, and perhaps envy, your assurance that morality evolved independently of a divine creator. I, on the other hand, have many questions about how morality evolved. I know what my faith says about it and I know what my friends and family – many of which do not believe in or abide by belief in a divine creator – say. Both “sides” have interesting arguments and make valid points. For now, I don’t have an absolute notion of how my own morality (or lack of morality) has evolved, not to mention that of the whole human race.

Dear interpreter: Thank you for stopping by and being part of the conversation. As Joe mentioned, I hope that, agree or not, we can find a way to converse without being accusatory. Having a place where people with wildly different opinions and belief systems can discuss them in a safe place is a key aim of this blog.

Thanks Gina: Your journey away from faith is an interesting example of how these are not simple questions. Would love to know more about how your journey played out…

“I, on the other hand, have many questions about how morality evolved independently of a divine creator.”
I don’t know why? Everything evolved independently of a “divine creator,” as well as supernatural powers, or fairy tails. A simple portal into understanding the origins of the planet as well as human beings would be to take an intro to Earth Sciences course at a university. There are also many excellent text books on Geology which delineate the the creation of planets and life itself. Because we have evolved intellectually over time, our ability to think cognitively enables to understand complex reasoning as opposed to simplistic stories of morality as explanations of truth. Accordingly, I encourage anyone who can read, and would like to utilize their evolving mind, to engage with modern science rather than prehistoric myths.

Thanks for stopping by Daniel. It appears from your post that you have the impression that I either do not engage with or deny science, something that could not be further from the truth.

It would be great if atheists, agnostics, and professing Christians all took the time to read sociologist Rodney Stark’s book, The Triumph of Christianity.
Stark (who, last time I read, is an agnostic) describes daily life for everyday folk, Christians and others, during much of the Greco-Roman era, how Jewish and Christian doctrine differed from the beliefs of the philosophers, and how this affected the way people conducted their affairs. It’s a fascinating, enlightening read.
One of the most interesting observations made is that during the various epidemics, it was common for pagans to flee, while Christians stayed and nursed the sick. (From the chapter, “Epidemics, Networks, and Conversion.”)
So, it’s odd to hear Westerners proclaim that they can be good without God, when they’ve been exposed, indirectly if not directly, to many of the underlying premises of Judeo-Christian beliefs their entire lives, such as mercy.

Joan, thanks for writing about this, particularly from your atheist-turned-Christian viewpoint. I actually wrote a post about this ad campaign last night. In general, I am all for raising awareness and encouraging conversation and thought. I can see how the atheist position has been too quickly dismissed–we can all learn and grow from questions like “are you OK without God?”
The problem, I think, comes from the black-and-white position both atheists and Christians tend to take. We draw a line in the sand, ask people if they believe in God or don’t, and leave it at that. I suggest, in my post, that there are many questions we should be asking, and many categories we should allow people to be in–at least for now. As your own story demonstrates, faith and belief are a journey.
In that spirit, I’ve written a series of ads that I would love to see along with the “atheist ad.” (They’re on my blog, if you’re interested or would like to add your own ideas!)

I have personally submitted a response to this ad to more than fifty members of the Big Apple CoR. It can be viewed online at my website: http://increasinglearning.com/Documents/There%20Is%20None%20Good%20but%20God.pdf

@Daniel “Accordingly, I encourage anyone who can read, and would like to utilize their evolving mind, to engage with modern science rather than prehistoric myths.”
Nothing wrong with science, as far as it goes.
The problem with using science to bash faith, however, is that science does not understand a) mind or b) evolving. Thus the idea of utilizing the “evolving mind” poses a problem.
This doesn’t even touch on the huge problem presented by the fact that the premise of materialistic or naturalistic science is based on blind faith.
I have found that most people who go about stomping on faith with science as their cudgel have not done much inquiry in the area of science but rather have fallen prey to propaganda.
You may be the exception. You may be able to explain how naturalism escapes being blind faith. I have not found anyone who can do that — including top physicists and mathematicians and Dawkins admirers — but you may be the first.

Coming and Going: Thanks for the suggestion. The Triumph of Christianity does, indeed, look like an interesting read. Do you find that the agnosticism of the author to be less biased than a Christian or atheist author may have been?

Yes, because people are naturally good, people can be good without God. What I think many people miss is how much better they can be with God as a part of their lives on a daily basis. They’re missing out on it usually because they’ve never had the chance to experience the feeling of faith. Through the power of prayer, meditation and reading of scripture, our understanding of what “really good” means comes to life. Through this relationship with God, we’ve become dissatisfied with simply being “good”. Thanks!

My sisters believe that they can do good and do it without God, they claim to be completely satisfied with their life without God. Sometimes I pray that God would drag them through something not so good, so that they wouldn’t miss it. I’m sure they would be devastated or maybe disgusted if they knew that…