A sweary—and expertly punctuated—weblog.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

For goodness' sake

As my wife will tell you, I love Christmas time. I love the little-kid nostalgia, cold weather, Christmas music, even the occasional trip to an over-crowded mall. I'm convinced that fir trees and Christmas lights generate palpable joy and good cheer that bring out the best in humanity.

But, good cheer or no, it wouldn't be the holidays without an argument over the secularization of Christmas. I recently found this article describing two Christmas "protests".

The first is a placard placed at a nativity scene in Olympia, WA by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. It asserts that religion is a mind-ensnaring myth and (correctly, but trivially) complains that Christmas celebrations intrude on the ancient celebration of the winter solstice. Both the placard itself and its surrounding drama are sufficiently unremarkable that I'll only say this: c'mon, guys, it's solstice time! Don't stomp on people's festivities just so you can make a trite, predictable statement.

The second "protest" is more unusual and much more interesting. In Washington, D.C., the American Humanist Association launched an ad campaign featuring bus posters with the tagline "Why believe in a God? Just be good for goodness' sake". Even though I believe in God, I think there's a wonderful germ of truth to be harvested from these ads. They aren't arguing that people shouldn't believe in God (although I'd wager they tend to believe that). They're saying that there are better reasons to be good than the threat (or reward) of eternal consequences. That you don't need a belief in God to live a happy, moral life. (This last point should be particularly relevant to the believer; we should have better reasons to believe in God than because we think our lives are happier that way).

Humanism gets knocked around in religious circles because of its agnostic associations, but I imagine that if you asked a humanist, he'd cite this idea--rather than agnosticism--as the fundamental unit of humanism. That each of us has a innate spark that drives us towards goodness and greatness. That we reach a purer form of goodness when we do more than just respond to the threat of punishment or promise of reward. And I'm convinced it's an idea that even--or especially--the God-fearing can adopt as their own.