There is much ado in some circles about a month-long advertising campaign scheduled to begin Monday. The “atheist ad”, as the Huffington Post, Associated Press and others tag it poses the question: “A million New Yorkers are good without God, are you?”

The campaign, which is funded by an anonymous donor, coincides (by design or miracle) with the Tuesday release of Harvard University’s Humanist Chaplain Greg Epstein’s book, Good Without God: What a Billion Non-Religious People Do Believe. Epstein, who will be reading from the book at Columbia University on October 28th, describes the book briefly in this video.

As an atheist, turned agnostic, turned Christian at age 37, my response to this ad and Epstein’s premise – that of pursuing good in the world without relying on or seeing guidance from God – is mixed. There are a number of people in my life who do not seek or rely upon God, yet they do good – in some cases sacrificing their lives for the good of others. I know others who claim to follow Jesus who do little more than serve themselves, their immediate families and perhaps a handful of people who happen across their path – evidence, it appears, that one can be good without God and not so good with God.

That said, I cannot deny that my experience of transitioning from non-belief to belief in a power greater than myself in addiction recovery, to an unexpected (and unsought) faith in Jesus has resulted in a transformation that may or may not be quantified using a seemingly simple, yet incredibly difficult word like “good”.

My friend Becky Garrison, a religious satirist who is working on a piece about Epstein tells me that he is interested in creating a dialog across the atheist/believer divide. I hope to attend Epstein’s reading with her to learn more.

So where do you land on “atheist evangelizing” and the notion of human beings being good with or without God? People from such a wide variety of  traditions visit here. I’d love to hear what you think…