Seems former president of the AHA Edd Doerr doesn’t like the AHA adverts that say “No God? . . . No problem!”. He not only had a letter in the New York Times he also got one in the LA Times today.
Re “Humanists launch a holiday campaign,” Dec. 7
As a former head of the American Humanist Assn., I am embarrassed by the organization’s rather puerile “good without God” campaign.
Advertising what humanists are for is more important than stressing what is not included in our beliefs. Mere nonbelief is negative — and emphasizing the negative invites blowback and hinders mutual understanding and respect.
In essence, humanism is about ethics, compassion, civil liberties, religious freedom, separation of church and state, peace, women’s rights, protecting the environment, social justice, reason and science and democracy. Importantly, humanists are all for cooperating and working with Catholics, Protestants, Jews and others who share these concerns and values.
Edd Doerr
Silver Spring, Md.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/letters/
Of course Edd ignores the actual innocuousness of the advertising message. It wasn’t childish and nonbelief is *NOT* negative it is one of the primary principles of a secular philosophy like Humanism. Ignoring nonbelief ignores the reason secular humanism is different from theism.
I thought it was ironic that Edd shares the concerns and values with religious leaders who also stated in the article that the ad was offensive and an attack. He is one Humanist leader who has tried to brush nonbelief under the rug so we can be just like believers as if that would “grow” Humanism. I prefer the small secular humanism tent down the street than Edd’s “big tent” that requires me to hide and belittle my nonbelief.
I like this quote from referring article:
“Why didn’t they choose the summer solstice?” asked Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, a civil rights organization that puts up a Nativity scene every Christmas in New York’s Central Park.
“I guess they have no other time of the year to get out their message except to crib off someone else’s holiday,” Donohue added.
Another letter writer wrote that Donohue forgets that “Christianity has long been the Microsoft of religions — gathering up existing traditions and re-branding them under its own banner” and it ripped off the Roman Saturnalia holiday for Christmas.
Here is a link to the December 7th LA Times article on the ads that Edd was responding to.
