Cogitatio

I am in an odd position, not knowing whether to be angry, or to laugh at the lack of logic.

See, I was just surfing along CNN one day, looking at various interesting things, as well as various not-so-interesting things, when I came across an unusual article on the CNN website. If you haven't read it, you should take a look.

At first, I just sort of scanned it over, and didn't really give it much thought. But after a while, I started thinking a bit (something at least one idiot in the article didn't do), and well, it made me sort of upset/amused.

Now, part of it stems from the fact that I am a Christian. I know I am far from the 'model' Christian, and very often, I haven't been leading the Christ-like life I have been commanded to lead, but I am very much a believer in Christ. And religion can sometimes make me a bit prickly.

But let us start with another part of this issue.

Basically, the American Humanist Association has this ad campaign for Christmas that has a tagline of "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake". And their spokesperson came out with this statement to the press.

"Our reason for doing it during the holidays is there are an awful lot of agnostics, atheists and other types of nontheists who feel a little alone during the holidays because of its association with traditional religion."

There are two things about this statement that I'll like to point out.

First of, the world is only 33% Christian. And this is including all Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox, and all those fringe cults. I'm not sure about you, but usually when about 2/3 of the world don't feel the religious attachment to the holiday, I would think it would be pretty hard to feel lonely.

Second, this sounds like something I would expect to hear from a 5-year-old. I mean, seriously. 'Feel a little alone'?

And then there's the issue of the campaign itself. Are you going to tell me next, that you'll be running a similar campaign for all those other religious holidays? Like Vesak Day (Birthday of Buddha), or Eid-al-Fitri, or Hanukkah, that there shouldn't be religion involved with those holidays as well?

This of course, leads me to my next point.

The holiday is called Christmas for a reason. I don't know about you, but I think if you look close enough, you may just be able to notice the fact that the first six letters of the Christmas spells out CHRIST. It's a RELIGIOUS holiday. You may not believe in a religion, but this holiday is there because it is RELIGIOUS. You want to take away God from this picture, there's now no more reason to celebrate Christmas, is there?

And he has the gall to say they did this for the following objective.

"...we are trying to plant a seed of rational thought and critical thinking and questioning in people's minds."

Right.. great move, Sherlock. You managed to accomplish that alright. I'm now thinking critically of you, questioning if you have the concept of rational thought in your mind.

And I'm not even saying anything about the logical fallacy of morality without God (which you can read in the article), or on what the true meaning of Christmas is.

I don't have anything against atheists. Several of my good friends are atheists, and I know I would have willingly fought and died alongside those I met in army. But this guy is just ridiculous.

There are some things I will never be able to comprehend. Like what contains the universe. Or how long is eternity. And the sheer absurdity of the comments made by this guy.

Cheerio