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'Why Believe in a God? Ads Set to Run Next Week Through Christmas on D.C. Busses

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Dan:
You better watch out. There is a new combatant in the Christmas wars.

Ads proclaiming, "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake," will appear on Washington, D.C., buses starting next week and running through December. The American Humanist Association unveiled the provocative $40,000 holiday ad campaign Tuesday.

In lifting lyrics from "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," the Washington-based group is wading into what has become a perennial debate over commercialism, religion in the public square and the meaning of Christmas.

"We are trying to reach our audience, and sometimes in order to reach an audience, everybody has to hear you," said Fred Edwords, spokesman for the humanist group. "Our reason for doing it during the holidays is there are an awful lot of agnostics, atheists and other types of non-theists who feel a little alone during the holidays because of its association with traditional religion."

To that end, the ads and posters will include a link to a Web site that will seek to connect and organize like-minded thinkers in the D.C. area, Edwords said.
Edwords said the purpose isn't to argue that God doesn't exist or change minds about a deity, although "we are trying to plant a seed of rational thought and critical thinking and questioning in people's minds."

The group defines humanism as "a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism, affirms our responsibility to lead ethical lives of value to self and humanity."

Last month, the British Humanist Association caused a ruckus announcing a similar campaign on London buses with the message: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

In Washington, the humanists' campaign comes as conservative Christian groups gear up their efforts to keep Christ in Christmas. In the past five years, groups such as the American Family Association and the Catholic League have criticized or threatened boycotts of retailers who use generic "holiday" greetings.

In mid-October, the American Family Association started selling buttons that say "It's OK to say Merry Christmas." The humanists' entry into the marketplace of ideas did not impress AFA president Tim Wildmon.

"It's a stupid ad," he said. "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."

Also on Tuesday, the Orlando, Fla.-based Liberty Counsel, a conservative Christian legal group, launched its sixth annual "Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign." Liberty Counsel has intervened in disputes over nativity scenes and government bans on Christmas decorations, among other things.

"It's the ultimate grinch to say there is no God at a time when millions of people around the world celebrate the birth of Christ," said Mathew Staver, the group's chairman and dean of the Liberty University School of Law. "Certainly, they have the right to believe what they want but this is insulting."

Best-selling books by authors such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have fueled interest in "the new atheism" — a more in-your-face argument against God's existence.

Yet few Americans describe themselves as atheist or agnostic; a Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life poll from earlier this year found 92 percent of Americans believe in God.

There was no debate at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority over whether to take the ad. Spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said the agency accepts ads that aren't obscene or pornographic.
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The Brack Hussein Obama sphere of influence in Washington D.C. has begun earlier than scheduled!

jaime:
"Our reason for doing it during the holidays is there are an awful lot of agnostics, atheists and other types of non-theists who feel a little alone during the holidays because of its association with traditional religion."



then go get a puppy or go to the corner bar if you are lonely.  i suppose this group is backed by big money all in an attempt to break down our traditions and family values.  it is another attack on the resurgence of conservatism and the republican party.  it is subtle in its statement these people feel alone but that is just one more lie to pile onto the destruction of the republican party.  all it is, is an excuse to give us one more problem to deal with.  there are plenty of conservative democrats that will be affected by this assault on religion.  a cross had to be removed about a year ago that is part of the logo "welcome to los angeles."  the cross has always been there but there was a group (probably the ACLU,) that forced the city to remove the cross.  there is a large population of Jewish people in L.A. that considered that cross part of the limited culture we have here and are just used to it.  it always existed and now it is gone.  i don't care about crosses, but if it's been there forever, let it be.  all of this is an effort to break with tradition, faith, family values, etc.

NRAJ:
Can we get a link?

Americanhero1:

--- Quote from: NRAJ on November 12, 2008, 12:04:31 AM ---Can we get a link?

--- End quote ---
http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/us/2008/11/11/D94D1RTO0_rel_godless_holidays/index.html?source=rss&aim=wires

muman613:
The following article is copied from IsraelNationalNews... I think this story is appropriate considering the topic.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/8360
The LHC & Maimonides’ Microscope
Cheshvan 11, 5769, 09 November 08 09:15
by Rabbi Avi Shafran

(IsraelNN.com) In its purest form, the human spirit of inquiry is a holy thing. According to the renowned 12th century Jewish thinker Maimonides, nothing less than the Biblical commandment to love G-d is fulfilled when a person investigates nature and, struck by its intricacy and beauty, is filled with awe and gratitude to the Divine.

And so it is exciting to ponder the new aspects of physical reality that might be revealed by the Large Hadron Collider - the 17-mile-circumference particle accelerator that, over 15 years and at a cost of some $8 billion, was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) underneath the French-Swiss border.

Subatomic physics is already a wonderland of strange beauty (not to be confused with “strange” and “beauty” - fanciful names physicists have, at one time or another, given to types of quarks), having revealed that the seemingly mechanistic, clockwork universe we experience in daily life hides astonishing oddities, uncertainties and incomprehensibilities. Those microcosmic bafflements complement the more readily accessible wonder of the world we experience when we simply look up at the stars, or down into the grass, or at a sunrise, or at a newborn baby. The Standard Model - the current theory of how subatomic particles interact - reminds us that not only do the “heavens relate the glory of G-d” (Psalms 19:2), but that “to His wisdom there can be no comprehension.” (Isaiah, 40:28)

An ultimate understanding of the universe will likely always evade the mortal mind. But new revelations the LHC might yield - when its gargantuan magnets accelerate streams of particles in opposite directions at nearly the speed of light, so that they collide and release their until now unexamined innards - make the mammoth machine a most promising engine of scientific advancement.

Some cheerers-on of that advancement, however, are not exactly motivated by the Maimonidean quest to gain inspiration through a new glimpse of G-d’s subtle wisdom. To the contrary, they look to whatever new knowledge the LHC may grant as just further justification for denying the Divine, forklifts with which to pull themselves up onto the pedestal of omniscience. They hope that the LHC will confirm the existence of particles predicted by the latest theories - one such beastie, the Higgs boson, has even been labeled by some the “G-d Particle,” for its potential to lead to a grand unified theory of the universe - and thus show that the human mind can fully grasp the totality of creation, and is therefore its intellectual master.

And so, while there are many scientists (like astrophysicists Fred Hoyle, Paul Davies and Arno Penzias, to name a few of the most famous) who maintain their human sense of wonder at the world and see purpose in nature, others, like physicist Steven Weinberg, choose to see the cosmos as fascinating but ultimately meaningless. Commenting on the LHC’s expected informational yield, he opined that “as science explains more and more, there is less and less need for religious explanations.”

Such conceit recalls another technological project, one whose promoters’ focus was on the macrocosmic. The builders of the Tower of Babel, the Torah tells us, sought to erect a structure whose top would pierce the heavens, the better to assert their independence from the Divine and “make for ourselves a name.” Their plans, of course, were dashed; their arrogance did them in.

The LHC was supposed to have already yielded its harvest of new particles by now. On September 10, proton beams were successfully circulated in the main ring of the structure. Nine days later, though, operations were halted, as an electrical fault caused liquid helium to leak into the tunnel, damaging dozens of the LHC’s superconducting magnets and contaminating the collider’s ring. Physicists say it will take until next summer to make the necessary repairs.

“Man contemplates, G-d laughs,” goes the Yiddish expression (and in that language it nicely rhymes). I don’t know if G-d laughed as the glitch rained on the LHC parade. I certainly didn’t; I was deeply disappointed. My thoughts, thought, did go back to the builders of Babel and to how, in monumental projects, success or failure may ultimately hang on intentions.

Will the LHC in fact come to function as planned and allow us to see deeper into nature? It might just depend on why we’re looking in the first place.

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