A billboard nonbelievers can believe in

[SecularMotion]

I am happy about the whole thing. God gets bandied about shamelessly by politicians, ballplayers, pop singers and true believers of all persuasions.

There is no way – in this God-fearing, God-loving, Lord’s-name-invoking America – that atheists will ever get equal time. But, given the uncertainty of an afterlife – if you want to get discouraged, just poll some scientists – it is nice to see nonbelievers stand up. Which is not to imply that they were kneeling.

Amherst’s Center for Inquiry pumped up the nonbeliever volume this week with an I-190 billboard near Niagara Falls Boulevard. Extending a secular campaign from other cities, it delivers a message to drivers of all denominations: “You don’t need God – to hope, to care, to love, to live.”

Given God’s predominance in our culture, I say: Bring it on.

http://www.buffalonews.com/city/columns/donn-esmonde/article561110.ece

[Nye Bevan]

1. This is such an American thing.

In the UK, two of the three major party leaders are atheists, and nobody cares. Religion is viewed as a private matter there, that is really none of anybody's business. Somewhat ironic given that in the UK there is *no* separation of church and state.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Religion used to be private here. I was taught never to ask about nor talk about religion.

[haikugal]

6. That was before the egovangelsts

Now it's all about showing off.

[AmBlue]

3. There is a natural lack of "fervence" in atheism...

...and with good reason. There is no holy diety demanding proselytizing and evangelism at every turn. No religious dogma to defend and debate, no agenda to push, no guilt for "sin." There is a simple and quiet nonchalance about atheism that comes most literally from the fact that there is no one to impress. No threat of hellfire and damnation (or rewards of virgins!) to goad us into acts of terror against fellow human beings either. No reason to look upon that guy next door in judgment because he wanders out in his PJs and slippers on Sunday morning at 11:30am to get his newspaper instead of attending Sunday morning services. Atheism is the epitome of the "live and let live" philosophy actually and, ironically, to me it seems the most logical reason to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." It is freeing. If all were so free we could turn our collective consciousness to problems like what we as a species can do to help this planet that we all need to live on.

Indeed we do not need any god-- to hope, to care, to love, to live-- so I am glad to see someone is saying it from the rooftops. To me, it seems somehow much more noble to do these things from the natural flow of goodness in (most) all of us as human beings, rather than acts we must do because we've been "commanded" to do under threat of punishment.

Atheism deserves serious consideration among the possible choices of how to live a life, philosophically speaking. What's not to like? In those iconic words...

Imagine there's no heaven.
It's easy if you try.
No hell below us.
Above us only sky.

Imagine all the people
living life in peace.
You may say I'm a dreamer.
But I'm not the only one.
I hope some day you'll join us,
And the world will live as one.

[socialshockwave]

7. Society of the Godless, League of Militant Atheists. Nope. No fervour there. n/t

[Goblinmonger]

8. Are you going to hold modern athiests

to the "sins" of past groups that also had no religion?

Just making sure of your standard before I give you the next response.

Because if you aren't making a broadbrush bigoted statement that all atheists are alike, then stop posting this bullshit.

And if you are making that broadbrush:
1. your post should get deleted.
2. you have to be ready to defend and be lumped together will all people of the past of your religion. You ready for that?

[socialshockwave]

9. I have no problems letting go of the sins of the past. Jesus taught forgiveness.

But many atheists today are not willing to do the same. They blame us religious for the mistakes and failings of the past.

I condemn the crimes committed in the name of God just as much as any Christian does and should. Christian pastors have helped the poor, the unemployed, the hungry - just as Jesus commanded us to do:

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven" - Matthew 5:1-13

"But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind" - Luke 14:13

[JNelson6563]

4. The comments at link are hilarious

All the classic elements of believer vs. unbeliever.

I daresay we unbelievers are scarier to some certain believers than a scary black man!!1!

Julie

[David Sky]

5. Yeah, I read a few, comparing atheists and Bible skeptics to

Al Qaeda?? That's a bit much! I have never known of any atheist to engage in terrorism, suicide bombing, or flying planes into skyscrapers.

[rug]

10. The Red Army Faction.

Wait, they were not true atheists.

[onager]

11. Yawn. Up to your usual B.S., I see...

I just checked my copy of Stefan Aust's Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the R.A.F. Over 450 pages, written by someone who personally knew the founders of the R.A.F. and eventually got on the wrong side of the gang. (It was Aust who retrieved Ulrike Meinhof's 2 kids and returned them to their father - when she was trying to take them to a PLO training camp in Jordan. Of course, the PLO were all atheists...)

Aust's index doesn't mention "atheism" once. Or for that matter, religion. Neither do entries for the main R.A.F. players, like Baader, Ennslin and Meinhof.

Using Google, I mostly found the R.A.F. linked to atheism on right-wing sites. Which seems to be where you get most of your comedy material about atheism.

If I wanted to throw your own simple-minded guilt by association right back at you, I might mention the family background of Andreas Baader's main squeeze, Gudrun Ennslin, and suggest that it drove her over the edge:

...Her father, Helmut, was a pastor of the Evangelical Church in Germany. Ensslin was a well-behaved child who did well at school and enjoyed working with the Evangelical Girl Scouts, and doing parish work such as organizing Bible studies. (Wikipedia)

Overall, the R.A.F. was incredibly muddle-headed in its political views and I don't think it had any brain cells left for religious philosophy, or the lack of it.

And they were apparently dupes right from the beginning, in 1967. From a review of the excellent 2008 German movie The Baader-Meinhof Complex:

Most astonishing of all, perhaps, in May of this year (2009) it was revealed from the same files that Karl-Heinz Kurras, the twitchy cop who shot Benno Ohnesorg on June 2, 1967, thus igniting the whole train of events, was all along an informer for the Stasi and a card-carrying member of the East German Communist Party. (Herr Kurras, now 81, was interviewed and made no bones about it.)

This doesn’t necessarily prove that the whole sequence of events was part of a Stasi provocation, but it does make those who yelled about the “Nazi” state look rather foolish in retrospect. (Rudi Dutschke, it now turns out, left a posthumous letter to his family stating his fear that “the East” was behind his own shooting. Dutschke’s family has called for an investigation.)

What this means in short is that the Baader Meinhof milieu, so far from providing a critique of German society, was actually a sort of petri dish in which bacilli for the two worst forms of dictatorship on German soil — the National Socialist and the Stalinist — were grown. It’s high time that the movie business outgrew some of the illusions of “radical” terrorism, and this film makes an admirably unsentimental contribution to that task.

I know you'll want to read the whole thing, since it's from one of your favorite writers - Christopher Hitchens:

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/08/hitchens-guerrillas200908#gotopage2