Know Jesus? - no problem too great.
Posted on 12/02/2009 12:37:38 PM PST by Between the Lines
The American Humanist Association is expanding its “Godless Holiday” advertising campaign to five major American cities this Christmas -- taking its message of a holiday season without religion nationwide for the first time.
The ads read: “No God -- no problem! Be good for goodness’ sake. Humanism is the idea that you can be good without a belief in God” and feature several people in red and white Santa hats. The new ads come on the heels of an AHA campaign last year which asked “Why believe in a God?” and featured ads on public transit in Washington, D.C.
Previously, the atheist campaign had been confined to the Washington, D.C., area, with signs and advertisements featured prominently on the city’s Metro subway trains and buses.
The expansion to four new cities – New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco – marks the first-ever national atheist advertising campaign and the first time the Humanist group has taken its anti-religious holiday message outside of the nation’s capitol.
However, the atheist group claims its campaign is designed to reach out to fellow atheists on what is normally a religious holiday.
“Our campaign's purpose is to speak out to like-minded individuals -- people who don't believe in God -- and let them know they're not alone, that there's a community out there for them,” AHA spokesman Karen Frantz told CNSNews.com.
Frantz said that while the campaign was not trying to do away with religion entirely, it was trying to break the “stranglehold” religious institutions have on public policy.
“We're not trying to convert anyone who does believe in God, nor are we anti-religious in the sense that we want to do away with religion,” Frantz explained. “However, we do want to lessen the stranglehold religion has on public policy because such matters are best decided upon by reason, not by dogma.”
The ad campaign, which emphasizes that people can be morally good without being religious, aims at stopping religious people who “enforce” their views on others, she said. “Too often religion is used to enforce a narrow version of morality onto others who don't necessarily share it.”
A pro-Christian conservative group, meanwhile, told CNSNews.com that despite the AHA’s anti-holy day message, religious Americans shouldn’t be intimidated – and have every right to continue to celebrate Christmas proudly. But Christians also shouldn’t treat the atheist campaign with contempt.
“People of faith should view the Humanist displays at this special -- even holy -- time of year, with compassion,” said Kristi Hamrick, president of the Campaign for Working Families and spokeswoman for Gary Bauer’s American Values.
“Because of the blessings of liberty we enjoy as Americans, they certainly have the right to their strident displays of antagonism to faith. But at this time of year when so many of us are thanking God for our blessings, especially the blessing of his only Son come to earth for us, we need to pray for them.”
Hamrick pointed out that the “eternal truths” of Christianity do not require validation by atheists and Christians especially should feel “empowered” to celebrate the Christmas holiday openly and proudly.
“I hope people will take a moment to pray for others when they see the (Humanist) displays,” Hamrick said. “Eternal truths are not dependent on the permission of the Humanists to be (true.) And I hope that people of faith will feel equally empowered at this time of year to express their own beliefs.”
Christmas, which commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, should be a joyous time of year for religious Americans, she said, even if the Humanists don’t want to join in.
“Christians are often told to hide their Merry Christmas greetings behind the blander ‘Happy Holidays.’ But a Merry Christmas it truly is, even without the Humanists joining in our celebration.”
Know Jesus? - no problem too great.
They say they’re not anti-Christmas. So why don’t they have their “Holiday” in August?
but isn't an atheist “holi”day a contradiction in terms?
Atheists don't have “holidays”, they have...”days”
Without God, where do they get their value system? Of course, they borrow it from God. These folks are too funny.
Chicken-egg problem. They got their value system from their society, which got it from Christianity. That is where most religious people would stop looking. However, going further back, Christianity got its value system from the society that created it. All value systems are made by man.
They probably derive moral tenets from a combination of Kantian universalism (the idea, essentially that you should only do things if everyone could do them without adverse reaction), social-benefit utilitarianism (do the most good for the most people), and good old-fashioned playground morality (play nice with others). There are a number of valid morality-based systems that don't require belief in God.
As the Humanist spokesperson says, however, they don't want to be bound by a narrowly defined moral code. Certainly there are troubling implications there. At the very least, a wide interpretation of morality makes it far harder to make societal decisions about right and wrong, opening the possibility that in the confusion, more bad and less good is allowed to occur.
Exactly!
The problem is they ARE anti-Christmas...or anything else that celebrates God. The mere mention of God irritates them no end.
Deacon Francis
Some one posted on another thread that the extend their greetings by saying with a long i sound:
Mery
Christ (with an i as in the word eye)
mas
And that it stopped people short in their tracks!
Chicken-egg problem. They got their value system from their society, which got it from Christianity. That is where most religious people would stop looking. However, going further back, Christianity got its value system from the society that created it. All value systems are made by man.
First problem is a lack of understanding the word VALUE. VALUEs are derived from belief systems. For Christianity, our value system is based on foundations which were derived from Judaism and completed in the Person and teachings of Jesus Christ. For Christians this is no mere "man-made" value system. Christians believe from the testimony of the original Christians that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, therefore God Himself. Any values Christians hold to be true are therefore ordained by God and are ABSOLUTE on all creation. Jesus Christ, for Christians, is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
On the other hand, any other values contrary to Christian values are meaningless to Christians.
What really blows peoples minds is the fact that Christians MUST replace the word VALUE with the word VIRTUE. Once that is done, then one can understand why the Christian can say...
Without God, where do they get their value system?
Virtues are moral absolutes that dictate human values.
Why do they even have a holiday? They should just go to work. It’s what Hindus and Shinto and Muslims do.
Wrongo anti.
Man has nothing at all to do with the 10 Commandments, besides being the recipient thereof.
Man, left to his own devices, gives us the social paradises of NoKo, China, Iran, and so forth. Where is the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ in NoKo?
From an objective view, the societal values of the original semitic tribes got put into the religion they created, Judaism. That progressed to Christianity as refined by a very wise man. These values have further changed through the years as the societies changed. Is there any Christian alive who would accept slavery as regulated by the Bible?
It is precisely the inability of a society to evolve beyond the commands in its holy book ("God's word") that is the reason for the Muslim violence in the world. Meanwhile, most Christians disassociate themselves from the likes of the Westboro Baptist crowd that's living with the values of a thousand years ago.
How do you have a Holy Day without God?
Except that he wrote them. Aside from the commands to worship Jehova, there's nothing it them that wasn't previously set out as societal laws. They weren't really new to society.
Man, left to his own devices, gives us the social paradises of NoKo, China, Iran, and so forth. Where is the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ in NoKo?
Ol' Kim created his own religion, which defines right and wrong. Iran's morals are based on Islam, and the morals of the Chinese society come from religion.
...signs and advertisements featured prominently on the city’s Metro subway trains and buses.
&&
I have always despised vandalism, but I would consider anyone who vandalized such signs a hero.
Without God there is no foundation for good or evil. Without God there are no objective values, only personal or social preferences - and there is no rational basis for any person to feel obliged to honor either. Without God there are only two commandments, (1) Do as thou wilt; and (2) Don’t get caught.
Apparently atheists and humanists have a lot of spare time to kill in idiotic pursuits.
I can't think of a better month. How about August 4th - Obama's birthday? I can't think of a more appropriate way to recognize a day that put our country in greater danger than it has every before faced.
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