Thread: "Good without God" campaign

A billboard campaign in Chicago:

The Seeker: Godless advertise their goodness in Chicago

Naturally, the atheists presuppose the existence of God by referring to some standard as "good". Also, the discussion that follows on that site is illuminating.

I didn't think anyone thought all atheists are hiding in some dark alley waiting to stab you and take your money and molest your dog. In fact, one of my arguments against atheism is that they think this is wrong and have no reason to, ergo, as you say, they're presupposing God's standards without reason. Of course I think atheists think murder is wrong, I just don't think they have any rational reason to consistently claim that.

I think they're knocking down a straw man, but perhaps there are some people out there who think there might be atheists hanging out around the corner waiting to throw rocks at their windshield or something.

Originally Posted by Zenas

but perhaps there are some people out there who think there might be atheists hanging out around the corner waiting to throw rocks at their windshield or something.

Perhaps but I think it has more to do with sounding a battle-cry. It is completely ridiculous that they are in essence using air to prove the nonexistence of air.

Atheist ad pitch:

Mao says "Be good without God"--40 million silenced can't be wrong!

If you were to witness to someone who claims that people can be good without God, which would be the better response?

"According to God's standard of goodness, no one is good" or "The idea that people can be good without God presupposes God's existence."

The answer is simple: no one is good, not even Christians. Essentially we are in the same boat as the atheist: lost.

Matthew 19:17 "Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God."

Thanks for linking this. It is not surprising. But as I do sermon prep work for this Lord's Day (and looking to the Reformation and the question of how can a man be right with God), I have to wonder how many church folks think in much the same way. That is, that they are basically good apart from God, and it is on that basis that they are acceptable before God.

Originally Posted by cih1355

If you were to witness to someone who claims that people can be good without God, which would be the better response?

"According to God's standard of goodness, no one is good" or "The idea that people can be good without God presupposes God's existence."

I don't know if that was rhetorical or not, but I vote for the first one.

Originally Posted by cih1355

If you were to witness to someone who claims that people can be good without God, which would be the better response?

"According to God's standard of goodness, no one is good" or "The idea that people can be good without God presupposes God's existence."

I'd prefer the second and then turn the tables on the unbeliever and ask him how he determines and accounts for what "good" is. While the believer has a rationale for defining good, the unbelievers lacks this.

Define good! You can't do it without God. Define anything! You can't do it without God.

I have yet to see an atheist account for morality without God. I also have yet to see a Christian establish a necessary connection between morality and the existence of God.

From one aspect, I just find it hilarious how they scream, shout, and jump up and down about something that, to them, is not there. From another aspect, it is incredibly sad.

I can imagine few things more depressing than an album filled with deathbed photos of atheists. The horror, the horror! (And Mr. Kurtz has nothing on them!)

I remember from school in the 60's-70's there was a rating system:

poor
fair
good
excellent

Language is so confusing...or is human confusion so expressed in varying language?

Barnhouse used to say that Satan wasn't as interested in making good men bad and bad men worse so much as he wants to make all men good without God. Thus the popularity of the philosophies of existentialism, modernism, post-modernism, and the political philosophies of communism, socialism, and darwinianism (to it's logical extension - fascism and eugenics).

Barnhouse used to say that Satan wasn't as interested in making good men bad and bad men worse so much as he wants to make all men good without God. Thus the popularity of the philosophies of existentialism, modernism, post-modernism, and the political philosophies of communism, socialism, and darwinianism (to it's logical extension - fascism and eugenics).

That's funny - I remember a similar quote from a Paul Washer sermon in which the bars were all closed, there was peace on the streets and general vices had been outlawed and closed down. Society was 'perfect', but was at the government's hand (not a society of new creations in the Lord) and the Devil was gleeful over it all.

I am doubtful that the existence of moral values or moral judgments as such presuppose the existence of any god, let alone the true God. Maybe some things are just good and other things are just bad and that's the way it is.

A morality itself presupposes a standard of good as opposed to evil. That standard we know to be the holiness of God. Without that standard then every man is free to do what seems good in his own eyes, which is imminently relativistic and subjective, and therefore no morality at all, since a morality infers objective and universal application.

So a morality presupposes the existence of God and His holiness.

Wasn't it the UK, where the Atheists were advertising on the sides of buses.
This is a battle cry and many will embrace it and answer it. This is the next step in the war of relativism. Granted in America with so many professing Christians it has taken a little longer to gain a head. But with so many professing Christians lukewarm, our witness on the transforming power of the Gospel is pretty weak. Thankfully God is much bigger than us.

My Billboard will say,
Without God, Good was just be O.

friend of mine redesigned this add and put it on her blog:



-----Added 10/23/2009 at 05:45:59 EST-----

She then ask in another one of her blogs (which many atheist frequent) "What is good?"

Originally Posted by P. F. Pugh

I have yet to see an atheist account for morality without God.

Utilitarianism would be one famous and influential project. You will find that most thinking atheists, in fact, are some kind of utilitarian.

Also, some atheists (like the Canadian philosopher Thomas Hurka, one of my professors at Toronto) champion the very broad Aristotelian moral theory of Perfectionism, which aims to ground ethics firmly in human nature, what human beings are. Goodness here is 'flourishing' according to human potential... the best man would be the most physically fit, the most knowledgeable, etc., he who makes the best use of his potential, in every way, according to what he is.

There's no way to know, but I'd almost guess that the campaign will do more harm to atheism than good...they will cause people to think about whether they are truly "good" or not, and most will be convicted by their own concience;

of course, others will have to drive a wedge even further away from their guilt, by searing that same concience even further...

A million New Yorkers are good without God. And of course, we know, a million New Yorkers can't be wrong.

Originally Posted by Skyler

A million New Yorkers are good without God. And of course, we know, a million New Yorkers can't be wrong.

Especially if they subscribe to The Villiage Voice

Goodness here is 'flourishing' according to human potential... the best man would be the most physically fit, the most knowledgeable, etc., he who makes the best use of his potential, in every way, according to what he is.

Does that not sound a bit "ubermensch"-ish to anyone? Maybe I'm being hyper-sensitive on the matter, but when I hear that sort of language, with Man as his own god, fulfilling his potential where others are content to be confined by 'superstitions', my thoughts tend to go in that direction.

Originally Posted by kvanlaan

Goodness here is 'flourishing' according to human potential... the best man would be the most physically fit, the most knowledgeable, etc., he who makes the best use of his potential, in every way, according to what he is.

Does that not sound a bit "ubermensch"-ish to anyone? Maybe I'm being hyper-sensitive on the matter, but when I hear that sort of language, with Man as his own god, fulfilling his potential where others are content to be confined by 'superstitions', my thoughts tend to go in that direction.

Reading my description again, I guess it does sort of sound like that.

That's not the Aristotelian-Perfectionist position, however... and while atheistic Aristotelian perfectionists could veer into that territory with their moral theory, I have yet to read one who has.

Thomas Hurka, the 'godfather', as it were, of the retrieved theory, perhaps describes it best:

"This moral theory starts from an account of the good life, or the intrinsically desirable life. And it characterizes this life in a distinctive way. Certain properties, it says, constitute human nature or are definitive of humanity -- they make humans human. The good life, it then says, develops these properties to a high degree or realizes what is central to human nature. Different versions of the theory may disagree about what the relevant properties are and so disagree about the content of the good life. But they share the foundational idea that what is good, ultimately, is the development of human nature." (Hurka, Perfectionism, Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 3.)