The American Humanist Association has launched an advertising campaign targeted at kids who do not believe in God. This, despite a new Gallup poll released Wednesday citing that 69 percent of Americans are either “very religious” or “moderately religious.”
Dr. William Lane Craig, a leading American theologian and philosopher, says the ad campaign fails to provide any substantive reasons for their claims.
“The KidsWithoutGod.com website purports to help kids who are seeking the truth—its primary task,” Craig says, “but apparently the American Humanist Association is asking their young audience to merely take their word for it. It offers nothing else.”
According to the campaign, which was recently promoted by prominent atheist Richard Dawkins on his website: “In an effort to strengthen and support kids and teenagers who don’t happen to believe in god, the American Humanist Association is promoting its newly created website … This engaging resource offers a welcoming home for humanists, atheist, and other non-traditionally religious kids where they can find information untainted by supernaturalism on a wide range of topics.”
Craig says the group offers no reason to think that atheism is true or that theism is false.
“The site’s portrayal of theism is false, uncharitable and woefully ignorant of the relevant scholarship on the matters it discusses,” Craig notes. “Do the contributors really think that theism requires opposition to critical thinking or science, as they insinuate repeatedly?
“Are they not aware that theists, for example, have written university textbooks in logic?” he adds. “Or that science was birthed and nurtured within the Judeo-Christian tradition? Or that the biblical understanding of faith is not ‘blind faith?’”
According to the group’s Executive Director Roy Speckhardt, “Whether they already made up their minds to reject supernatural explanations, or are just questioning, it’s time to make available an online resource that’s built just for kids without God. … [The website] will be a friendly online community for kids who might be too shy to ask an adult directly what it’s like to be good without a god.”
Finally, Craig says the site rightly encourages a love for science and critical thinking.
“The problem, however, is that such attitudes are perfectly at home with theism, and thus do not help adjudicate the debate.”
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