'Why Believe in a God?' Ad Campaign Launches on D.C. Buses

The American Humanist Association is spending nearly $40,000 to place ads on busses which read: "Why Believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake."

Amazing. I'm going to start a campaign and spend about $40,000 to ask "Why believe in lucky charms?" On second thought, since I don't feel threatened by a belief in lucky charms, I think I'll save my money for something more worthwhile like, say, a lucky rabbit's foot.

I'm watching O'Reilly right now and Fred Edwords, Executive Director of the American Humanist Association, is speaking of people who don't believe in God but "who believe in goodness and have good values."

If there is no God, no eternal, ultimate source of goodness in the universe, to what is he referring? How can he decide what is goodness and what is badness and what are good values and what are bad ones? If there is no God, what is his reference point?

All the talk of goodness in the same breath as atheism reminds me of a few observations by C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man: First, "a great many of those who 'debunk' traditional...values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process." He also noted,"If we are to have values at all we must accept the ultimate platitudes of Practical Reason as having absolute validity..." Again, "If nothing is self-evident, nothing can be proved. Similarly if nothing is obligatory for its own sake, nothing is obligatory at all."