Washington D.C. buses are the front lines in a new kind of religious conflict: ad wars.  

The American Humanist Association threw the first punch by running an ad on 200 city buses reading: “Why believe in a God? Just be good for goodness’ sake,” On Faith's Under God blog reports. The ad is part of the group’s “godless holiday campaign,” aimed at raising humanism’s profile and connecting non-believers through whybelieveinagod.org.

“Humanists have always understood that you don’t need a god to be good,” said AHA executive director Roy Speckhardt in a statement posted on the association’s website. “Morality doesn’t come from religion.”

The D.C. Examiner reports that one woman is leading a grassroots effort to counter the AHA with an ad saying, “Why believe? Because I created you and I love you, for goodness’ sake. –God.”

While Under God calls the back-and-forth, “a light-hearted joust,” some are taking the campaign quite seriously. The Dakota Voice reports that Christian groups calling the ads “another attempt by those waging a war on Christmas to ban God from the public square.” In a more aggressive response, executive director of the Louisiana Baptist Convention, David Hankins, attacks humanism in the Baptist Press:

We do have some recent examples of societies that do not believe in God nor recognize a mandated divine value on human beings. They are associated with names like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, Idi Amin, and Saddam Hussein. Devoid of any sense of God or godliness, they created a social order of mayhem and evil that destroyed millions of lives. So much for the morality of godlessness.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, right? Much of the Judeo-Christian and Islamic tradition begins with that phrase. Writing for Parabola, Rabbi David Cooper suggests the creation story may not be so simple. Instead of the phrase, “[i]n the beginning, God created…” Cooper suggests a grammatically correct translation of the original material could be: “In the beginning, [it] created God, heaven, and earth.” 

This alternate translation, favored in Jewish Kabbalah teachings, drastically changes the role of God in creation. Instead of God as the creator of everything, there is a different, unnamed force connecting and transcending all things, including God.

As the divide between believer and nonbeliever grows larger, science has become a weapon used by both sides. An article from New Scientist cites the evolution of the human brain as evidence that the world’s religions are products of human imagination. Maurice Bloch, an anthropologist at the London School of Economics, argues that belief in a divine being emerged between 40,000 and 50,000 years ago, coinciding with the human capacity to imagine.

 —Morgan Winters

Albert Einstein once said insanity is going to the same conferences over and over and expecting a different result. Or at least he said something to that effect. The National Conference of American Atheists, held recently in Minneapolis, could fit neatly within this maxim, except for one thing: the audience was overwhelmingly, unexpectedly young. When the commencement speaker asked all students to stand, close to a quarter of the seats in the hotel ballroom emptied. Two high school kids sitting against the back wall (free from school in honor of Good Friday, ironically) were so animated that they would have fit in better at a hip hop show than a conference.

Many of the speakers boasted about the large turnout of young people, pointing to a recent Pew report that suggests a growing trend of skepticism toward religion in people under 50. Among the 10-plus speakers, however, only two seemed intent on engaging the younger members of the audience. One, predictably, was scientist and author Richard Dawkins, whose eloquent and erudite manner is overshadowed only by the rationality of his oratory. Dawkins is a go-to guy for atheist talking points, and there was plenty of furious note taking in the audience during his presentation, presumably to stockpile ammunition for future debates. The other was physicist Lawrence Krauss, whose lecture on dark matter and energy was informative and surprisingly accessible to the clueless layperson.

Though widely different in focus, Dawkins’ and Krauss’ presentations had one central similarity: a simplicity of argument. Simplicity is the basis of atheism, and it’s also what many rational thinkers find appealing. There is no room for ritualistic mystery in atheism. It is adherent to the laws of nature and humanism, nothing more. To atheists, the mystery of the universe is not a testament to the power of a god, but a thing to be studied and ultimately unlocked.  

Unfortunately, this simplicity was lost on most of the speakers, who were more intent on pointing out the flaws in religion than they were in making a case for the inherent rationality of atheism. The defensive vitriol leveled at the religious powers-that-be effectively muddied the waters. Using atheism as a takedown of religion makes basic belief systems complicated. It is difficult to address the many failings of the world’s religions without entering the labyrinthine, incense-scented halls of ancient mythology. Going down that road serves only to add to the confusion of people unfamiliar with what atheism really is, exacerbating the misled belief that it is a cult or a religion. In fact, atheism is the antithesis of such belief-oriented groups. Next year’s conference would do well to scrap the bathetic victimhood and pointless navel-gazing, and concentrate on nabbing more speakers like Dawkins and Krauss.  

—Morgan Winters

The gender-specific words “Father,” “King,” and “Lord” are often used in hymn and liturgy when referring to a Christian God. Feminist theologian Elizabeth Johnson, interviewed in U.S. Catholic magazine, is trying to change that. Johnson objects to more than the perception of God as a male (read: worldly and finite) being. She also takes issue with the paternalistic view of religion that the words instill. According to Johnson, the gendered language reinforces outdated perceptions of God that are straining the vital connection between people and spirituality.

This strain on people's spirituality, according to Johnson, runs through two common yet conflicting views of Christianity. Many Christians believe in God either as as a guiding parental force, or as a mysterious, supreme being. And both views are incomplete. Treating God as a parent or “Father,” with a give-and-take relationship based on maxims and obligations, can give people an accessible view of faith and duty. The problem is, according to Johnson, it reduces God to a mere idol. On the other hand, Johnson believes that worshipping a “theistic” God or “Lord,” whose involvement in our lives is minimal, is equally damaging.

A balanced view is of a God incarnate, who is present in every aspect of the world without being of it. That balance is difficult to find, Johnson concedes, but it’s necessary for a fulfilling religious existence.

—Morgan Winters