11.12.08
Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake
This apparently is the wording for an ad that is due to show on the side of buses in Washington, DC next week: ”Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake“ The ads are sponsored by the American Humanist Association and seemingly are timed to counteract some of the Christian frenzy about keeping Christ in Christmas. Just a few weeks ago a similar slogan appeared on buses in London: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” This one was paid for by the British Humanist Association.
The interesting part about this for the purposes of this blog appears in the article: http://wwrn.org/article.php?idd=29550 where the president of the American Family Association, Tim Wildmon who was quoted as saying “It’s a stupid ad. How do we define ‘good’ if we don’t believe in God? God in his word, the Bible, tells us what’s good and bad and right and wrong. If we are each ourselves defining what’s good, it’s going to be a crazy world.” This is a typical Faithful level person speaking. He can’t imagine that anyone has an internal moral compass that tells them what is good and what is bad with any degree of accuracy.
Virtually all of the Rational level people whose stories I am using in my book mention the realization that they DID have a reliable internal moral compass as part of the leap they took away from their organized religion. That apparently was part of the growth step - they saw that they did not need the Bible or any type of religious leader to tell them what was right and what was wrong.
SO - it would appear that the Humanist Association is made up of people who are mostly at the Rational level. They have moved beyond the need for the pre-set external rules of a traditional church to govern their behavior. They can and will just “be good for goodness’ sake!” (and probably don’t understand why religious people can’t do the same?)
AND Mr. Wildmon’s comment shows that most people of the Faithful level DO need such rules as they either do not have that reliable internal moral compass or they feel they cannot (yet) trust it. They can’t just be good for goodness’ sake. They need either the threat of punishment or the promise of some type of reward to keep their behavior in check. Which only lends credence to the main premise of this blog - that there are real differences between believers and non-believers and that there are many non-believers who are good people - contrary to what the fundamentalists (Faithful group) might say.