DangerousTalk

Yesterday, the Friendly Atheist posted a story about a new bus campaign going up soon in Washington State. Here is what the ad will look like:

Hemant thinks that this is an “inaccurate” ad and that religious people will use it “against us.” I take issue with this. First, it is not inaccurate. As a point in fact, there is no god. Unless someone can show some credible evidence to the contrary, there is no god. Is it possible that there could be a god? Sure. It is possible. Almost anything is possible. Pigs could fly out of my ass too, but I am reasonably certain that they won’t. I don’t have to say that gods probably don’t exist. I can simply say that gods don’t exist. The “probably” is implied; just as it is implied in the statement about Santa Claus’s existence. I mean really, how can anyone “know” with 100% certainty that Santa doesn’t exist? Someone would need to know everything in the universe and then see that Santa is not part of that set to claim to “know” that Santa doesn’t exist, right? This is of course bullshit.

The fact is that many Christians will be critical of any atheist ad, no matter what it says. This has been demonstrated time and time again. Sure I wish that the Freedom From Religion Foundation would have gone with the message that UnitedCOR and FreethoughtAction have been using, but they didn’t.

The fact is that atheism isn’t a religion. All atheists don’t have to hold the same dogmatic line. In fact, even Christians don’t all hold the same dogmatic line and they are a religion. So why do atheists think that all atheists have to hold the same line with all other atheists? This goes back to my blogs about the media manufactured war between atheists. It’s bullshit.

If Hemant doesn’t want to defend these ads, then he shouldn’t. He could just say that he “disagrees with those ads, but FFRF are free to promote their organization and their ideas in their own way. We all don’t have to agree, atheism is not a religion.”

But the smarter strategy in my opinion is to defend these ads by calling attention to some Christian ads which are much much more offensive. We have all seen them and I have created the Billboard Wars Project as a way to highlight the difference between atheist and Christian ads. So again, I will ask all of the Dangerous Talkers out there to take a photo of any particularly offensive Christian Billboard or bus ads they see and send it to me with the city and state that it was posted.

Filed under: atheism, Atheism NOT Religion, billboards, culture war, People of Reason, Religion