Posted on 11/27/2010 9:05:56 PM PST by Coleus
Drivers approaching the Lincoln Tunnel this holiday season will be the targets of an atheist advertisement that its sponsors describe as a strike against Christmas. A billboard sponsored by the American Atheists and posted in North Bergen, on the New Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel, reads: 'You KNOW it's a Myth. This season, celebrate REASON.' A billboard scheduled to be displayed near the New Jersey entrance to the tunnel until the end of the holidays shows a silhouetted manger scene with the message, You KNOW its a Myth. This Season, Celebrate REASON.
The $20,000 campaign, sponsored by a national organization called American Atheists, is timed to preempt annual accusations that liberal groups are waging war on Christmas by asking church adherents to question their holiday traditions, American Atheists President David Silverman said. If the religious right wants a war on Christmas, this is what theyre going to get, he said. If they want a war on Christmas, were going to make sure they know what one looks like. The campaign is one of several atheist media blitzes scheduled this holiday season. It joins a $200,000 national television, newspaper and magazine advertising campaign sponsored by the American Humanist Association and the Stiefel Freethought Foundation meant to challenge biblical morality and fundamentalist Christianity.
Those ads juxtapose passages from religious texts selected because they appear to advocate for fear, hatred and intolerance, with quotations from humanist scholars that promote love, equality, peace, freedom and reason, according to a press release. The American Humanist Association sponsored a 48-foot sign erected on the New Jersey Turnpike in 2008 that read, Dont Believe in God? You are not alone. The campaigns come on the heels of studies reporting that rising numbers of Americans identify themselves as non-religious 15 percent in 2008 compared with 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the Trinity College American Religious Identification Survey. The Pew Forum on Religion in Public Life reported in April, however, that of the 5 percent of its survey respondents who said they do not believe in God or a universal spirit, only 24 percent actually identified themselves as atheists.
Silverman said his group interprets such numbers as a sign that the country is on the verge of an explosive growth in secularism. Many of those potential secularists live in the New York-New Jersey area, Silverman said. The Lincoln Tunnel billboard, one of several the organization plans in the next year, was placed where it thinks generally affluent and highly educated commuters will have plenty of time to think about it as they inch their way through one of the most chronically clogged roadways in the region. The message is meant to address what Silverman described as closet atheists: people who attend religious services during the holidays without believing in them. Stay home, Silverman said. Dont give the church money. Dont give the church power. Tell the truth to your friends and families.
Such campaigns have already received one public response from a prominent Christian organization. The New York-based Catholic League reportedly sent statues of Nativity scenes to the governors of all 50 states, asking them to place them in their rotundas in response to atheists out in force this year trying to neuter Christmas. Catholic League spokesman Bill Donohue could not be reached for comment. Newark Archdiocese spokesman Jim Goodness said he is aware of the billboard his son passed it on his way home from a family Thanksgiving meal Thursday night and that he isnt impressed. He added that the archdiocese declined an offer to buy a rival billboard, stating that it has more constructive ways to spend its money. The message of Christmas is too resilient to be threatened by a sign, Goodness said.
Were looking at well over 2,000 years of this message being part of humanity, Goodness said. One message on a billboard thats going to be there for a month isnt going to change that.
I would say Yes
All religions proselytize. I suppose Atheism's adherents do to get others to share their wretched, meaningless lives.
Pray for them. It will do you good. It may do them some good. Any way, it will irritate them.I know, that's not a very Christian attitude. I'm working on that.
The problem with atheism is that you almost have to believe in evolution to be an atheist, and everybody pretty much knows by now that evolution is a bunch of bullshit.
I’ll never understand the insistence of athiests having to make an issue of others being Christian. If they don’t feel/think/reason that God/Christ are actual entities then why can’t they just think that and not raise an issue.
I think it’s because deep down, in their psyche they have this creeping doubt that they can’t quite understand and it scares them in a way they cannot describe....
And if they do not believe in God, then why do they hate him? They are in rebellion, like a child that "talks back" to a parent.
Attention whore alert. Do these freaks know how pitifully small and rude this behavior is? Will they do the same on Romadon? Why do I doubt the snakes will do that?
They want to take the place of Christ in our society and they are not going to. The cowards know Allah is a fake and his followers would chop their attention whore heads off if they acted this aggressively billigerent to Islam.
Will the atheists be out there with picket signs when the Ground Zero mosque opens?(Or would they picket a military funeral—what would the signs say, “Nothing Loves Dead
Soldiers”?...”Thank Nothing For 9/11”?)
Placemark for pingout tomorrow.
Was thinking about you lately - wondered if you were still posting on FR!
I ran into the herb coleus in one of my books. It does a lot of things!
They don’t seem to put so much effort against Islam.
I think they lack confidence in their convictions.
A valid distinction. A newborn child with no concept of a deity is the only true atheist.
They were too busy at the ‘Atheists for Palestine rally’ throwing bottles at the Jews.
It's simpler than that. People drawn to organized, militant atheism are jerks; assholes if you will. They get satisfaction from figurative thumbs in the eyes of those around them.
I worked with one once that just loved the look on people's faces when they noticed the comic strip on his cube wall that had Boy Scouts wearing Klan hoods. He was the only one ever talking about religion in the office, which seems peculiar for somebody apparently without a faith. Being known as the guy that doesn't give a damn about your sensibilities is important to him, and gives him some twisted sense of self-importance.
If God doesn’t exist, why be bothered if people believe in Him? That shouldn’t matter more than what you’ll have for dinner tonight. Yet atheists are bothered by the beliefs of people they dismiss as ridiculous. That is in itself a statement about them, not about the people they try so hard to get to join them.
President Bush said it well in his book “It is not possible to prove God exists, but that cannot be the standard for belief. After all, it is equally impossible to prove He doesn’t exist. In the end, whether you believe or don’t believe, your position is based on faith.”
The irony of Atheist is that they must have faith that God doesn’t exist because they have to use the word “believe” in order to say I don’t believe.
As for their willingness to offend everyone by shoving their views forcefully down someone’s throat, all the while crying that it is being done to them.....hypocrites will enjoy their time with me in Hell. At least I know I will. ::evil laugh::
Psalm 14:1 The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God...
Proverbs 14:16 A wise man feareth, and departeth from evil: but the fool rageth, and is confident.
Proverbs 1:7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
God bless and Merry Christmas
It would be reasonable to assume that among atheists there would be two types, those who prefer not to believe in God and those who hate him. In other words, some atheists do believe that there is a God but they just hate his guts.
Tell me about it. The militantly godless have no problem likening Christian practice to Islamic jihad, but won’t ever actually criticize Islamic jihad itself.
And her son rightly perceived that this was just nuts. Why put so much energy into destroying a purported nonentity?
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