The nation’s capital is locked in a battle over Canada’s eternal souls. OC Transpo rejected the Freethought Association of Canada’s “stop worrying” bus campaign last week, though brave and fabulous “transit committee chairman Alex Cullen had attempted to overturn the decision and pledged to bring it to city council in early March as a separate motion.”
Ottawa’s dedicated humanists will keep fighting the decision.
Fears are the ads will spark community debate. Of course, that’s what they’re intended to do. The real problem is that religious folks can only hold on to their power if no one thinks about god’s existence.
To be clear, the ’stop worrying’ ads are intended to console and inspire nonbelievers who feel intimidated andoppressed by their workplace, family, friends or society into keeping quiet about their atheism. That camaraderie is the point of the ad: “stop worrying and enjoy your life” is intended for atheists who are struggling with social isolation.
Suggestions that this is ‘hate’ are kind of ridiculous, kind of not. No, the public statement that there is no god isn’t terribly tolerant, but it’s not ‘hating’ \ on the religious; it merely points out that they’re unlikely to be right in their worldview, so don’t worry about it. Acknowledging an error in reason or information is not hate, it’s knowledge.
“A meeting in late October heard from 18 speakers, including a number of campus religious groups who defended the original wording.” I’m confused how religious groups could defend a charge that clearly asserts God’s reality. God is only real to them. Any other personal proclivity you may harbour without reason doesn’t need to be respected in a public university, so why that one?
2. Non-God bus ads hit Canada! Two different Canadian organizations are working on atheist bus campaigns.
I mean, you don’t expect a lot out of Fox News to begin with, but their editorial “slant” sometimes overwhelms. My dinner.
The inaugeration was soaked like a rumcake in God references, but a very special thing happened when Obama acknowledged that his country is comprised of 16% rational people. He said “Hey, you guys exist. And you probably voted for me”.
Fox tried to make a controversy of it, suggesting it was “offensive”. Offensive to acknowledge the existence of—is that some 48 million Americans? We exist, in massive numbers, Fox News.
It seems like everybody’s plotting an atheist bus campaign these days. Good! It’s not happening in Genoa, Italy, however—violation of an “ethics code in advertising” prevented the ungodly slogans from appearing.
“The bad news is that God doesn’t exist. The good news is that you don’t need him“, the ads were to proclaim.
Right-wing politicians fiercly criticized the message. The 1998 Catholic Almanac proclaims Italy to be the world’s most Catholic country, with 97.2% of the population obstensibly religious, so you can see why the idea was a tough sell.
The ironies in the following story are so sweet that I invite you to poor yourself a glass of Cabernet, slice up some Swiss and a tart apple, and savour this feast of Christian moronism. I’ll wait til you get comfy.
You may recall that 800 buses recently launched in London bearing the slogan: “There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” Co-sponsored by Dawkins, the British Humanist Association, and concocted by Ariane Sherine of the Guardian’s Comment is Free, the ad campaign was created in response to irritating, scary Christian bus ads warning of damnation, hellfire and other nonsense.
The ads are now being challenged by “leading Christian activist” Stephen Green, who has made a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) and is calling for their removal.
Here’s one of the sweet nuggets of irony: “truthfulness” and “substantiation” are Mr. Green’s basis for a challenge. He suggests there’s not “a shred of supporting evidence” that God is not real, and thusly the ads (unlike most advertising?) are misleading.
Mr. Green: what kind of evidence will ever be recorded that God doesn’t exist? None, because proving a negative is a flaming logical fallacy. How does one show that something isn’t there? By the fact that we never see, hear, smell, touch or taste it? And anyone who says they have can’t replicate it for anyone else?
The onus is not on atheists to prove God does not exist; we are safer in our claim, as no evidence whatsoever shows that God does exist.
Which brings us to the second, even more succulent irony nugget. Should the ASA have to rule on the truthfulness of assertions of existence of a diety, the ruling logically has to
a) affect future Christian ads and
b) weigh in favour of those who don’t need to prove their assertion, as opposed to those who’s extrodinary claim has 0 extrodinary evidence to back it up.
Truthiness was apparently already addressed when the atheist campaign was accepted for appearance on British transit. Philosopher and BHA Distinguished Supporter A C Grayling wrote, in what we hope will inform a legal precedent, that the advertising rules that insisted on the “probably” in the atheist slogan need apply just as stringently to the Christian’s hellfire advertising.
Way to go, Mr. Green! You have exposed your religious convictions for the baseless nutjobbery that they are. You have no reason to believe God exists, and neither do we. Kudos.
Go Freedom From Religion Foundation. “Imagine no religion” billboards of a lovely stained-glass design have appeared in SF to remind people that there are other, more reasonable ways of living.
“We’re taking our liberating message of freedom from religious dogma in government to show solidarity with people who have now had a taste of the power of religion as a repressive force,” said Foundation Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor.
Playboy Mexico—a licensee of the American version, who are totally not responsible for this—offended the crap out of Catholic Mexico with this month’s cover of a suggestively almost-semi-nude Virgin Mary. Avert your eyes if the side of a dirty, dirty boob offends your religious sensibilities, for there she is in all her glory. “We love you, Maria” proclaims the cover proudly—porn kitten Maria Florencia Onori, that is.
Tucking his wiener between his, legs, publisher Raul Sayrols plead wide-eyed ignorance of the resemblance to God’s mom. “The image is not and never was intended to portray the Virgin of Guadalupe or any other religious figure. The intent was to reflect a Renaissance-like mood on the cover.”
Right about now Mexicans are gearing up for a pilgrimmage to Mexico City in celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe, in one of the world’s largest religious events, so they’re extra sensitive to stuff relating to naked virgins.
It’s sad that people can’t admit that taboo is so darn sexually exciting (and religious people are the only ones on whom taboos work anymore), and while we here at Topic Agnostic applaud Playboy Mexico for trying to make money on that, we’re sorry they bowed to religious outrage and pretended they weren’t selling sex with the Virgie. Cause they were.
The few tentative atheist ad campaigns that have come out recently in London & Washington pale in comparison to the venom spewed out on the daily across America’s broad expanse of billboarded highways. Ever driven through the heartland? Over every hill you’ll see nasty demagogic anti-abortion images sponsored by the Christian right that can serve no purpose other than to make women who’ve had abortions feel terrible.
This billboard above, captured by Chairman Meow, is pretty in your face about atheists not being welcome in them parts, isn’t it? What other groups can you imagine an ad attacking publicly like that, and people letting it slide? Other colours of people? Other sexual orientations? Wouldn’t happen. So it seems there’s a ways to go yet in the socialization of our ideals.
The holiday season is fast approaching, and the fine atheists at the American Humanist Association (or AHA, a delightful acronym!) are celebrating their reason-based festivities with a fantastic new ad campaign running on buses in Washington, DC.
Hot on the heels of the British Humanist Association, the Guardian & Richard Dawkin’s god-free bus advertising in London, AHA has created a campaign to counter the common Christian assertion that one needs fearsome Sky Dad in order to behave oneself. In posing the question “Why believe in a god?” as your motive for being good, AHA seeks to stimulate some real discussion of the humanist ideal.
Because you have the conceptual ability to understand cause and effect and long-term consequences
Because you were communicated ethics based on learning experiences from your parent’s society’s collective history
Might I also add that social cooperation is mutually beneficial, that assisting others to survive and thrive will result in the same being done unto you, and that it just feels great?
This isn’t the first time AHA has been involved in social purpose outdoor creative. They’re doing great work. You can donate, and there seems to be a million-dollar matched grant challenge—which would put reason on a whole lot of buses.
Recently we wrote about Fox News’ absurdly juvenile blog post, “The Devil Is In the Details: Another Obama Connection You Ought to Know About“, in which the author attempts to tie Obama to, wait for it, Lucifer. The devil, as you may know, is totally evil, and you should super not vote for someone with an extremely tenuous connection to the lord of the imaginary underworld.
[That was sarcasm. Please vote for Barack Obama.]
We despaired for the future of America upon reading that ridiculous blog post, and hoped that was the last we would hear of politicians with so very little regard for the intellects of their constituents that they would try to fearmonger with such sad material. Alas, America, Senator Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C., thinks you’re even dumber than Faux Noise does.
It’s not entirely politician’s marketing team’s fault that they think their electorate is susceptible to being manipulated by this garbage. The Pew Forum on Religion and Politics reports that almost 70%, “the vast majority of Americans agree that it is important for a president to have strong religious beliefs”. Regardless of political affiliation,
Overall views of the presidential candidates are linked with views of their religiosity; those who perceive a candidate as being very religious tend to express the most favorable overall views of each candidate, followed by those who perceive the candidate as being somewhat religious. Those who view candidates as being not too or not at all religious, on the other hand, are much less likely to express favorable views. Notably, even people who themselves are not particularly observant have a more positive opinion of candidates they believe are at least somewhat religious.
Americans, the Pew shows, have a bias towards thinking religious people are good guys. In light of the survey results, no candidate would dream of campaigning without professing to be religious, so a) you can’t trust that they even are genuinely religious and b) they may well turn out to be Ted Haggart-level hypocrites, a self-fulfilling prophecy with a Christ complex. Not necessarily good guys, so shake that image and give the good people at Pew a straight answer next time they call.
And what of Dole’s opponent, the atheistic Democrat Senator Kay Hagan? A practicing Christian, Kay said that Dole should be “ashamed of herself.”
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