.jpg)
How would you like to tell your story of how you are "Good Without God" and win $1,000 for doing so? Well, here's your chance. Margaret Downey posted the following on Atheists Nexus explaining the purpose and guidelines of the contest:
The United Coalition of Reason is delighted to announce an essay contest as part of our upcoming Good Without God campaign tied not only to a social movement but to a book that’s being published in the fall. Please forward this message as widely as possible and help us unite the millions of voices of reason across the country.
The contest is simple. Please tell us your personal story, in 500 words or less: what does it mean for you to be Good Without God? How do you live out your positive values as a Humanist, atheist, agnostic, secularist, or freethinker? Please write in the first person.
We highly encourage you to share specific examples about your god-free involvement in service to country or community; how your non-religious approach to life helped you to get through a difficult time; or how it transformed your relationships with your family and the people you care about.
The author of the first-prize essay will receive a prize of $1,000, courtesy of the United Coalition of Reason. The first twenty five submissions will receive a signed copy of the upcoming book by Greg Epstein, Humanist Chaplain of Harvard University, entitled Good Without God: What a Billion Non-Religious People Do Believe, when the book is released in October courtesy of William Morrow/HarperCollins Publishers. Many entries will be published by the UnitedCoalition of Reason as part of our upcoming nationwide Good Without God Campaign. For more information about the UnitedCoR, please see this recent article from the New York Times front page:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/us/27atheist.html
Along with your essay we require that you send a high-resolution photo of yourself that represents you. (Let us know who took the photo so we can credit them if we publish it.)
Please also include your:
*Email Address
*Phone number
*Mailing address
Essays must be submitted by June 23, 2009 to be considered for the $1,000 prize. Essays submitted after June 23 will not be eligible for the prize, but may still be eligible to be included in our national Good Without Campaign coming this fall.
Please send your essay, photo and details, by email to:
UnitedCoRGoodWithoutGod@gmail.com
Thank you in advance for joining us and for working to make your community a better place!
Warmly,
The United Coalition of Reason
http://unitedcor.org
Legal Notice
By submitting information to the United Coalition of Reason (UnitedCoR), you grant UnitedCoR a perpetual, royalty-free license to use, reproduce, modify, publish, distribute, and otherwise exercise all copyright and publicity rights with respect to that information at its sole discretion, including storing it on UnitedCoR servers and incorporating it in other works in any media now known or later developed including without limitation published books. If you do not wish to grant UnitedCoR these rights, it is suggested that you do not submit information to this website. UnitedCoR reserves the right to select, edit and arrange submissions, and to remove information from the UnitedCoR website at any time at its sole discretion. No image from this site may be used for any purpose without expressed written authorization, with one exception; you may post one image as a link to this site.
Margaret Downey
UnitedCoR Member
Comments
I'm learning more about atheism and humanism every day. I'm glad we have a resource here on examiner.com . I plan to enter this contest, so wish me luck.
John
Salt Lake City Literary Examiner
To John W,
There is no such thing as luck, so you should ask God for His blessing!
Hi Trina!
Thanks for the notice on this important offering, I'll pass it along as well.
Steve Schlicht
Biloxi MS
This is not a new theme. Archbishop George Carey Rtd gave a lecture at the University of Kent entitled 'Can we be good eithout God?' his answer was yes, but his conclusion was that as we are all made in the image and likeness of God anyway, even if we do not actually have a specific faith, we are therefore naturally potentially good. It's s no-win argument.
I don't know about me being good but I can think of many ways in which Atheists are "good without god".
Think of organisations such as Medecins Sans Frontiers that are able to do work that religiously motivated groups cannot, being compromised by not only their their convictions but by the sectarian perceptions of those they are trying to assist.
But on the other hand I'm not sure we have anything to prove in this matter.
Is this essay supposed to just include responses to the two questions asked? Is that what the personal history entails or does it our history on why we are an atheist?
Here is a thought of an essay:
Since there is no reason to belive in God, all religions shoud be ebolished. Since there is no reason to love your nearest, let's just nuke them all, so we can have more space and provisions. Since love has no reason either, let's ebolish that as well. In fact, let's ebolish reason for the same reason, since there is no reason for being reasonable if there is no God to punish us for being unreasonable in the first place. Now there is an essay topic for all of you who are evolved from monkeys and thus not made by God.
I hope Americans can separate Church from State, so they can steal and kill eachother without being punished, feast themselfs on another man's wife, seduce the father of another woman's child, beat up the elderly or just hand out free euthanasia pills, burry retards at birth or put them in a basket and let them float in the Mississippi. While you're at it, you can all have sex with eachother and then stay at home looking after your 6 or more children, untill there is no one left to work for the social system supporting those stay-at-home moms and dads. Then, when you get tired of your wife, you can feast your self on your sons and doughters, the younger the better. And finally.. But wait, you already have all that in America, ever since you started changing the law which is based on religion by writing new laws to separate Church from State. Never mind then, carry on!
Dear Persp,
Please name one religion that does not support Docters Without Borders (your 'Medecins Sans Frontiers') which is an international organization formed by religious people to help others. Unfortunately it is now being used by non God fearing people to let docters from rich countries practice on people in poor countries. Most students in medicine who want to make it in 'the business' go to Africa for an internship. Do you know what the death rate is of the people they 'help'? You wouldn't, since they do not have lawyers like the patients in the States. But then again, I remember seing a women die in the waiting room and nurses passing her buy like she was furniture, so I guess it happens in the States as well. Only then we get to see it on television. I guess it's more interesting seing a black woman die in the States, then seing 20 Africans die in poverty, although they are all 'helped' by those same docters.
Got something to say?
Examiner.com is looking for writers, photographers, and videographers to join the fastest growing group of local insiders. If you are interested in growing your online rep apply to be an Examiner today!