God, Atheism and Buses

And now, coming to the broad side of a bus near you, God vs. No God.

Last month, the American Humanist Association bought $40,000 worth of space on 200 Washington D.C. Metro buses for this ad: "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake." The humanists were copying a similar bus ad campaign by atheists in Britain.


Not wanting to be left behind, the Center for Family Development, a Catholic-based nonprofit in Maryland, is trying to raise $14,000 to run a bus ad campaign with this message: "Why Believe? Because I created you and I love you, for goodness' sake." The ad includes an image from Michelangelo's "The Creation of Adam."


And a group called Pennsylvania Friends of Christ plans to buy ads for 10 Metro buses to send this message into the streets of the nation's capital: "Believe in God. Christ is Christmas for goodness' sake".

In Florida, American Muslims have started a bus ad campaign of their own. Late last month, 120 public transit buses in Dade and Broward counties started carrying this message: Islam: The Message of Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. The ads include an 888 number for more information about Islam.

On the other hand, maybe Will Rogers summed it up best when he said, "If advertisers spent the same amount of money on improving their products as they do on advertising then they wouldn't have to advertise them."

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/undergod/2008/12/god_atheism_buses.html

All of them should take their money and buy something for a food bank or whatever. This time of year is hard, but especially so with the recedepression..
This "Dueling for Dieties" is getting out of hand.

walk it, dont talk it. live it, dont preach it.

(i.e. that they consider institutional churches to be aligned with the world) then one could imagine it to be the work of an atheist publication. In fact, I believe I've seen similar Soviet anti-clerical propaganda.

Still I think it would be funny if instead of engaging in a debate about the existence of God that seems to be playing out in the buses, the JW's would just roll in and start telling everyone that God was going to fuck them up.

The AHA one has two things going for it: it challenges the common (but dumb) idea that you need to be religious to be good, and it piggy-backs onto a much-loved secular Christmas song. It reads like it was written by someone who understands advertising. The CFD one just doesn't make sense. If you don't believe in God, by definition you don't believe he created you, so it's hardly persuasive. As for "Christ is Christmas, for goodness' sake", what does that even mean? For millions of people, Christmas is an entirely secular affair which bears no relation to the life of Christ, while for many Christians it's not even a particularly important festival (Easter being more important).

Gotta love those phallic deity ads.

I've never sent out holiday cards, but now I'm tempted to find some of those "Just be good for goodness' sake" ones.

What a bunch of inflammatory morons they are. They're absolutely disgusting and disgraceful. Shame on them.

How disgusting that they advocate tolerance. How disgraceful that they promote the idea that people can act ethically without the incentive of the threat of everlasting punishment.

Yes, I guess they should be ashamed for advocating such terrible ideas.

Thank you for your eloquent exposition of the evil oozing from this nefarious group.

for daring to share an idea is extremely melodramatic, and minimizes what real scumbags are.

As an atheist I am shocked by this! The Catholics have a picture of God so I have been wrong all this time! :)

though. Moses took the photo as God walked by and mooned him. It's in Exodus.