I thought this article was worth the read...enjoy...

It’s the time of year when spoilsports come out in full force. You know who I mean—the kind of people who insist that people say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” or who go around suing city halls that dare to have a Nativity scene on public property. But this year, the Christmas cranks have actually launched an ad campaign to convince us that God doesn’t exist.

The Humanist Association is placing posters on buses in Washington, D.C., featuring a skinny Santa in dreadlocks and the words, “Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake.”

Fred Edwords, communications director of the Humanist Association, says that partly they’re trying to cheer up agnostics and atheists, who tend to get lonely this time of year when most of their neighbors are celebrating holy days. Pity. But he says they’re also “trying to plant a seed of rational thought and critical thinking and questioning in people’s minds.”

They never give up, do they? Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and now the Humanists—all spreading and making money trying to convince us that God doesn’t exist and that His followers are a bunch of irrational dopes.

Maybe these folks ought to take a break from decorating buses and read a book by my friend Professor J. Budziszewski. In his book—a classic—What We Can’t Not Know, Budziszewski explains why we cannot be good without God and why godless morality always fails.

You see, without God, morality itself loses meaning. Christians know we can learn about how to live from the way God designed us. But without God, we can’t think of ourselves as designed at all. In fact, the evolutionist says that “man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have us in mind.” If that’s so, then morality and human nature are mere accidents of evolution.

So instead of caring for our children, we might choose to eat them, the way guppies do. Why not? If morality is an accident of evolution, who can say that this would be wrong?

Apart from God, we have no reason to take morality seriously. Sure, we can do a few good things here and there without God. In fact, it would be great if atheists this Christmas were to give gifts to poor children or the children of prisoners like we do with Angel Tree.

But to think we can be good, that we can build a good and humane society without God, is pure folly. And it’s a folly with catastrophic consequences, as the untold millions of victims of the atheistic utopianisms of the 20th century bear witness. Or as we see today in our depleted savings accounts—the result of a subprime crisis caused by immoral actions on the part of mortgage lenders.

So if those ads make news in your town, or if you happen to see one plastered on a local bus, why not start a conversation with an unsaved friend about the impossibility of being “good for goodness’ sake”—that is, without God. And then offer your friend rational arguments for the existence of our Heavenly Father—the kind offered by C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity. You might even send a copy to your local humanist society as a Christmas present.

Who knows? They might develop rational doubts about why they are so obsessed with a God they believe doesn’t exist.

As Lewis—a lapsed atheist himself—put it, “An atheist cannot guard his faith too closely.”

Don't you just the way GOD turns things around to meet HIS will..?

Such behavior annoys me. Blatantly disrespectful towards people on such a day. Arrogant atheist are often just as bad as the most fanatical of religious types.

However I do not believe that people cannot be good without God. Humans themselves are perfectly capable of kindness. What was your professor basing this theory on? The relatively short time that major Judeo-Christian societies have been around apposed to others? A relatively short time which nonetheless has been filled with bloodshed, murder, persecution, and war mongering up to modern day, often at the order of the Church?

While religion often effects how people treat others (Either good or ill), it's absence does not suddenly turn everybody into raving lunatics (Some atheist are just really arrogant assholes). There are plenty other countries and civilizations out there who have their own religions and traditions, that function perfectly fine and have many good people.

In short. While I disagree with the behavior of the likes of the Humanist Association during this time of year, I also disagree with the thought that humans can't be at all good without God. Such thinking belittles ourselves and the grand capabilities and accomplishments of our species.

What I don't understand, and maybe this is just me, is why it is so important to the "christians" that every person on the face of this effin planet must conform to their beliefs. Why is it that when someone says "I do give a flying cr@p about Christmas" do all Christians everywhere become offended?

I mean first of all, by all best estimates Christ was born in April. So this isn't a real holiday to begin with. The origins of the ancient Christmas traditions were an attempt by the church to draw in pagan soltice worshipers (so they could get bigger collection plates probably, not anything so nobel as saving a soul). The modern Christmas, at least in America where we spurned Christmas as an English holiday in the 1700's, was invented by the Hall's who started putting out cards in the 1800's.

So I don't want to get all caught up in your buying spree and your fake goodwill (both of which will be a thing of the past in a week). If I want to celebrate this worthless holiday, I will. If I don't, I don't need you and your kind pushing it down my throat. Take you Santas, your mangers, your trees and throw them on the fire for all I care, the only redeeming thing about this whole holiday is the lights, and I've never figured out why that isn't done all year, everyone always enjoys seeing them.

There is no Santa Claus, and Bah Humbug

There is no Santa Claus because the real life Saint Nicholas died in 346.

He was just a saint, who like most saints in early Christianity was raised high and pretty much almost worshiped. Santa is merely the legacy of the legends inspired by this man.

We're getting a Prime Example of HUMANITY right now that IS going to get even worse before it's over...


Thanks, but NO Thanks....

I'll stick by what I see in the Judeo-Christian community...

I'm still trying to find the passage in the bible where it say:

All you good Christians, go out on Christmas Day and fight your petty little wars against all who don't believe like you, and dare to say so.

All I can find is:

Peace on earth.

Hmm you mean I should celebrate my way and you should celebrate yours????

Man that will never fly!!

In reality there are as many religions as there are individuals.

Religions are different roads converging to the same point. What does it matter that we take different road, so long as we reach the same goal. Wherein is the cause for quarrelling?


Everyone has there reasons for doing good in this world, i really dont care why just aslong as it gets done!!

I'll drink to that

I truly wish everyone felt like this. Why can't we all just agree to follow our own religious paths and not judge or try and convert others? Why?

People who think like this need to believe in a God!

It's truly sad to realize that there are people who actually think this way.

How pathetic.

Take the belief that there is only one Truth and that one favored group is its sole possesors, marry it with xenophobia and the imperative to convert that which differs and this is the offspring-- a Singularity that can only grow by assimilating.

-Kerry O.

Truth is Possessed by None....

But Is a Free Gift of Grace

Offered Up For All .

But of course if one rejects the gift for reasons of conscience, this 'free gift' comes with strings attached in the form of consequences.

It sure sounds like a Truth parleyed by fear so often a product of xenophobia and guilt that is so often used to collect debts not owed.

-Kerry O.

Religion Might Do That .

But Not Truth.

God is Truth.

God is Also Love.

Love is Not about Fear.

But about Peace.

Then there is no debt owed. No, my life and service for his. No, "your life is not your own for he bought it on calvary"?

No, your sole purpose for being on this planet is to serve..........??


On another note, God and certainly religion is not what makes "good" man makes "good" we decide what is "good" and what is not, history teaches this. Something like beating a child used to be accepted as a "good" form of punishment and child rearing by...........get this Christians. "Good" is defined by your culture. Human sacrifice was "good" to many because they believed it pleased the "Gods" on the same precept that the "God" of the Bible needed a spotless lamb (of a human).

Humans are all about doing what they need to survive, it is difficult to be kind to your brother when you are starving and he has plenty. When he "owns" the earth and you simply owe him for living on it. Where you work 1/3 of your life to make money, to "buy" something, that you have to pay someone else to possess, and to keep. Where the land you paid for many times over (interest rate) is actually owned by the government and you have to continue to pay them fees to live on it. Where you make your company more money than you make yourself. And that is just the American capatalist society.

Let's look at societies that have been so ravaged by war, they have no economy. They grow what meager food in soils that have little nutrients, do not have running water, and their children are lucky to live to age five..........

They are merely concerned with survival, not about ethics or morality.

Yes, some of us in this country are in such a place that we are not in need of basic things and/or are not so WORRIED about survival that we can ponder and consider.

Either way, many wars have been waged (as have been mentioned) for "God". "God" ordered the Israelites to murder women and children and steal their land.........because it was promised to them. Plain theft covered up by using the name "God".

There are many churches who do good with the donations they receive........but there are also many churches who make sure that FIRST the pastor/preist/bishop lives about 100% better than his average "sheep", that the church has to have a nice building, while some of its members are struggling to put food on the table.........the list goes on. Churches are more of a business. Example: if you don't pay tithes at many of them, you aren't truly considered a member.

Anyhoo, if you want to even believe in the God of the Bible, or any God who is all powerful, who has a plan, and his the earth is in the center of his hand where he is in control of all that goes on, is all knowing, and created everything under and including the sun.......................HE NOT ONLY MADE GOOD BUT MADE EVIL. He made us, and everything we are capable of.

We are here to learn GOOD and EVIL, and that it truly doesn't exist. It is all a matter of perception.

My children think it is evil for a lion to kill a poor cheetah and eat it, but we must do the same to survive.

In this "realm" on this planet we must destroy and desecrate to survive. In order to live we must take life from something else.........whether it be a plant or an animal. I do not give thanks to "God", but rather the animal that had to die that I might live.

Where do people get this "good" versus "evil" and that "evil" must be vanquished??

There is only what aids and what destroys, and it takes both to live in this world. You must destroy a tree to burn a fire to keep from freezing.

Too many people complicate things. Let's take it down to the basics and look at it that way.

"God" came down, or sent his son depending on ur view of Christianity, to live a life as a human (which I though being human in and of itself was a sin, but oh yeah, his "father" was perfect, but his mother was not........so wouldn't that make him HALF a sinner??) To experience human life, and to live a "perfect" "sinnless" life so that he could be killed in order to shed blood to cleans us of our humannness when "God" was the one who made us this way in the first place. And don't play the whole "eating the forbidden fruit" game........that we chose to sin. We were innocent of sin, supposedly......but not so. We just didn't know it was sin, so "God" didn't punish us for it. IT was the KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL existing that the tree gave. It didn't create it, it was already created..........by "GOD", and if he is all knowing, he knew we would eat of that fruit, and he knew that our minds would be opened.....and as a matter of fact Genesis mentions that we were "cast" out so we wouldn't take of the tree of everlasting life, because then we would be as the "us" (more than one).

Anyhoo, most probably haven't read this far, but your "Christian" God created GOOD and EVIL as he created everything. And free will doesn't truly exist in this story. You have a choice between this or that..........free will would imply that you could make any choice you wanted, and could even make up your own choices, and even make up your own rules............as it was "Gods" "will" that created in the first place.

To tell someone you either kill this animal and eat of its flessh or you will die, is not really a free choice. It is a conditional one.......so we have "conditional" will.

And as was mentioned, Christmas existed before Jesus was even born. Winter celebrations, and December 25th was actually the birth of an Egyptian God named Horus whom some (depending on the Calendar and believe held) was born December 25th. There are actually many, many similarities between the "sun" god Horus and Jesus, if interested, study them out.

Here is one link:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcpa5.htm
http://www.geocities.com/nephilimnot/horus.html


Anyhoo, if you want to be Christian, and you truly act as Christ teaches in the Bible, I say, more power to you. You'd be a loving, charitable, open hearted, helping, friend..........

But, when you go saying that without "your God" there is no good in anyone, and anyone who doesn't believe in "your God" is evil, or should give "your God" credit for their goodness though they don't even believe in him.......that is extreme for me. Especially when it contradicts natrual evidence and logic.

BTW, I hate it when some of the Christians on this site claim that using other sources or evidence, or differing logic, in an attempt to show that there is a possibility of a different explanation or different idea as "bashing" or "hating" or "trying to tear them down". It isn't so. That is like claiming that someone who believes that if they step on a crack it will actually break their mother's back being told by another to try it, that it indeed won't break his mother's back, it would make your life easier to believe so, but go ahead if you wish to go around looking for and stepping over cracks that is your right, and I wish you luck.

Christians just can't leave people alone that don't believe as they do? In the town I live in, there are about 500 churches. Everything is about the church around here. My neice applied to get help for christmas and the church she went to forced her to go there in order to recieve the gifts. I would rather do without than have to deal with that kind of crap. If you want to believe in something along the same line and santa claus, then be my guest. But keep your crap out of my life.

I loved when I waited tables on Sundays, because all of these so called 'good' people were the biggest A-holes I have ever run across. Hypocrites.

Wonderful post Plainome! I totally agree.