I saw one again today—an atheist billboard on the metro. The first time I saw one (back in the spring, I think) it made my blood boil, but by the time I had gotten off the metro and walked to the office the relative sanity of the city streets had blotted out the words from my mind.
“You don’t need God—to hope, to care, to love, to live.”
So it reads; and there’s a nice soft-focus image of three smiling people, man, woman, and child, all pale Caucasians with dark hair, all smiling in a dreamy way. A family—how cute. One notes briefly that, while apparently it doesn’t take God to love, it does take him to have more than one kid.
I regret the admission, but my first impulse was to damage the poster. (Does this make me wrathful? Or just righteously indignant?) My second, slightly more benign impulse, was to pull out my rosary and pray it ostentatiously from my seat by the offending words. I didn’t do either; but I did look up now and then and glare at the poster, until I realized that one of the other passengers was watching me. I quit glaring. Guess I’m a coward as well as wrathful.
But that raises a point. Despite daily Mass and Communion, frequent Confession, a good spiritual director, a supportive circle of Catholic friends, a strong Catholic upbringing (including a degree from this school, which Joseph mentions here (in addition to fits of wrath and cowardice, I’m also subject to attacks of vanity))—despite all these advantages, I still manage on occasion to be fairly rotten to my fellow human beings. This is with God’s help. Would you want to see me without it?
There are probably people in the world so endowed with natural strength of character that they don’t need to subscribe to a religion in order to behave with a tolerable semblance of decency. I’ve met a few—I recently played Trinculo to a nice young Stephano who just so happened to be an atheist. He was friendly as anything—and a darn good actor—he just didn’t believe in God. But I suspect people like this are the exception rather than the rule. I suspect our friends at CFI who funded those cheery posters are rather too optimistic than otherwise.
Incidentally, this whole question of whether or not one needs to believe in God in order to behave well is a foolish one. No one ought to decide what to believe based on the practicality of the belief. That’s like deciding that water is dry because we can all drink milk anyway. Maybe we can all drink milk—maybe only some of us can—maybe milk is just water in disguise—but the mere fact that milk is drinkable (even if true) doesn’t change the nature of water. The mere existence of happy, ethical atheists (if genuine) doesn’t prove God’s nonexistence. The practicality or practicability of a theory or philosophy is not proof of its truth. And anyone who chooses to believe or disbelieve in God for any other reason than a persuasion that the content of his belief is TRUE gets no respect from me.
But then, as I’ve admitted above, I’m not a very nice person. I’m one of those who do need God to be good. You atheists should count yourselves very, very lucky that I do believe . . .
Sophia, I enjoyed this particularly. Thank you. A couple of lines, especially: “I’m one of those who do need God to be good. You atheists should count yourselves very, very lucky that I do believe . . .” I can relate! Also to enkindled wrath, self-conscious cowardice, and of course, that ever-present vanity of which you speak. I wonder–If I were an atheist, would I never be subject to wrath, cowardice, or vanity? Hmmm.
And does it take a believer to recognize illogic, I wonder? “The mere existence of happy, ethical atheists (if genuine) doesn’t prove God’s nonexistence.”
Well, the billboard would have you believe that
you don’t need to believe in God in order to be a good person. That’s its message.
But the rational reader can only respond: So? Indeed, in dialogue, I would have passed its point to ask “What’s your point?’ The only point here is an implication that believers think they must believe in God in order to be good, and by extension, that is the only ‘reason’ to believe. That’s absurd. A total misuse of the very term ‘belief.’ Heard any believer lately encouraging fellow believers: Okay, everybody, come on, now–we’ve got to believe–otherwise we’ll turn into bad people.
Is there some kind of inverse relationship, I wonder, between Logos and the illogic of non-believers ….
Recent Convert, Dena, –thanks both!
“You atheists should count yourselves very, very lucky that I do believe . . .”
HAHAHA! That is a good line Sophia!
Don’t pay too much heed to those lame atheist recruitment ads, they are there mostly for two reasons:
1) To tell the world atheists are ‘out and proud’
And perhaps even more so
2) To tick us Religious folk off