Amherst based Center for Inquiry has begun posting billboards in Wahington DC that say, “You don’t need God—to hope, to care, to love, to live.” Their president says they’re trying to correct a widely held and perpetuated slander by religious people that “the nonreligious lead empty, meaningless, selfish, self-centered lives. This is not only false, it’s ridiculous. Unfortunately, all too many people accept this myth because that's what they hear about nonbelievers." I agree with him. I for one, have known many nonbelievers who were happy, reasonable, decent people just the sort you’d like to have over for dinner. And I think it’s a tragic mistake for Christians to not realize and admit this. Look, we can believe that their ideology SHOULD lead them to be sad or frustrated, but that’s entirely different from asserting that it actually DOES lead to that for all of them. People can be confused about all sorts of things. God knows Christians certainly are! And of course, the real issue here isn’t so much whether you can be temporarily happy or hopeful with some system of beliefs. Lots of things will work temporarily. The real question is whether it will work ultimately and eternally. So in our efforts to show that atheism (for instance) doesn’t work ultimately, never make the mistake of denying that it can certainly work for awhile right now.
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