Being Good Without God

Humanists believe you don’t need God to be good, and they’re taking ads out featuring smiling people wearing Santa hats with the words: “No God?…No Problem!”

The group [the American Humanist Association], consisting of atheists and others who say they embrace reason over religion, has launched a national godless holiday campaign, with ads appearing inside or on 250 buses in five U.S. cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco starting today. The placards depict smiling people wearing red Santa hats with the slogan: “No God? . . . No problem!”i

Humanist leaders say the $40,000 ad campaign, funded by contributions from association members, is meant to counter a barrage of religious messages during the holiday season, letting free-thinking atheists and agnostics know that they are not alone.

Morality, the humanists argue, is possible without faith in a higher power.

Some religious groups, rather than seeing this as the exercise of free speech by another philosophy, see it as a downright assault on their beliefs.

“Why didn’t they choose the summer solstice?” asked Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, a civil rights organization that puts up a Nativity scene every Christmas in New York’s Central Park.

“I guess they have no other time of the year to get out their message except to crib off someone else’s holiday,” Donohue added.

But humanists say they’re not condemning religion, just offering another point of view.

“It’s not as if we are condemning religion,” said Lois Lyons, co-president of the Humanist Assn. of Los Angeles. “We are simply saying that there is another way of looking at things. Some people seem to take offense at that. I think we should let our point be made publicly.”

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.