{"id":1247,"date":"2009-01-07T22:40:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-07T22:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2009\/01\/believe-it-or-not-atheists-who-advertise.html"},"modified":"2009-01-07T22:40:00","modified_gmt":"2009-01-07T22:40:00","slug":"believe-it-or-not-atheists-who-advertise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/01\/believe-it-or-not-atheists-who-advertise.html","title":{"rendered":"Believe it or not: atheists who advertise"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I’m not sure if atheists have a bandwagon, but they do have some buses. <\/p>\n

Ads for atheism are suddenly cropping up on public transportation.<\/p>\n

From the New York Times<\/a>: <\/p>\n

The advertisement on the bus was fairly mild, just a passage from the Bible and the address of a Christian Web site. But when Ariane Sherine, a comedy writer, looked on the Web site in June, she was startled to learn that she and her nonbelieving friends were headed straight to hell, to \u201cspend all eternity in torment.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a bit extreme, she thought, as well as hard to prove. \u201cIf I wanted to run a bus ad saying \u2018Beware \u2014 there is a giant lion from London Zoo on the loose!\u2019 or \u2018The \u201cbits\u201d in orange juice aren\u2019t orange but plastic \u2014 don\u2019t drink them or you\u2019ll die!\u2019 I think I might be asked to show my working and back up my claims,\u201d Ms. Sherine wrote in a commentary on the Web site of The Guardian.<\/p>\n

And then she thought, how about putting some atheist messages on the bus, as a corrective to the religious ones?<\/p>\n

And so were planted the seeds of the Atheist Bus Campaign, an effort to disseminate a godless message to the greater public. When the organizers announced the effort in October, they said they hoped to raise a modest $8,000 or so.<\/p>\n

But something seized people\u2019s imagination. Supported by the scientist and author Richard Dawkins, the philosopher A. C. Grayling and the British Humanist Association, among others, the campaign raised nearly $150,000 in four days. Now it has more than $200,000, and on Tuesday it unveiled its advertisements on 800 buses across Britain.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s probably no God,\u201d the advertisements say. \u201cNow stop worrying and enjoy your life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spotting one of the buses on display at a news conference in Kensington, passers-by were struck by the unusual message.<\/p>\n

Not always positively. \u201cI think it\u2019s dreadful,\u201d said Sandra Lafaire, 76, a tourist from Los Angeles, who said she believed in God and still enjoyed her life, thank you very much. \u201cEveryone is entitled to their opinion, but I don\u2019t like it in my face.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Sarah Hall, 28, a visitor from Australia, said she was happy to see such a robust example of freedom of speech. \u201cWhatever floats your boat,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Inspired by the London campaign, the American Humanist Association started running bus advertisements in Washington in November, with a more muted message. \u201cWhy believe in a god?\u201d the ads read, over a picture of a man in a Santa suit. \u201cJust be good for goodness\u2019 sake.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Australian atheists were refused permission to place advertisements on buses saying, \u201cAtheism: Sleep in on Sunday mornings,\u201d the British effort has been striking in the lack of outrage it has generated. The Methodist Church, for instance, said it welcomed the campaign as a way to get people to talk about God. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You can read more at the link<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Photo: Akira Suemori\/Associated Press<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m not sure if atheists have a bandwagon, but they do have some buses. Ads for atheism are suddenly cropping up on public transportation. From the New York Times: The advertisement on the bus was fairly mild, just a passage from the Bible and the address of a Christian Web site. But when Ariane Sherine,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":365,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ripped-from-the-headlines"],"yoast_head":"\nBelieve it or not: atheists who advertise - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/01\/believe-it-or-not-atheists-who-advertise.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Believe it or not: atheists who advertise - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I’m not sure if atheists have a bandwagon, but they do have some buses. Ads for atheism are suddenly cropping up on public transportation. From the New York Times: The advertisement on the bus was fairly mild, just a passage from the Bible and the address of a Christian Web site. But when Ariane Sherine,…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/01\/believe-it-or-not-atheists-who-advertise.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-01-07T22:40:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_0DySLTT4PWo\/SWV2kZCCOKI\/AAAAAAAAE10\/8oZHI9xSf0A\/s400\/07london-inline1-650.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"deacon greg kandra\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Believe it or not: atheists who advertise - The Deacon's Bench","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/01\/believe-it-or-not-atheists-who-advertise.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Believe it or not: atheists who advertise - The Deacon's Bench","og_description":"I’m not sure if atheists have a bandwagon, but they do have some buses. Ads for atheism are suddenly cropping up on public transportation. From the New York Times: The advertisement on the bus was fairly mild, just a passage from the Bible and the address of a Christian Web site. But when Ariane Sherine,…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/01\/believe-it-or-not-atheists-who-advertise.html","og_site_name":"The Deacon's Bench","article_published_time":"2009-01-07T22:40:00+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_0DySLTT4PWo\/SWV2kZCCOKI\/AAAAAAAAE10\/8oZHI9xSf0A\/s400\/07london-inline1-650.jpg"}],"author":"deacon greg kandra","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/01\/believe-it-or-not-atheists-who-advertise.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/01\/believe-it-or-not-atheists-who-advertise.html","name":"Believe it or not: atheists who advertise - The Deacon's Bench","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/01\/believe-it-or-not-atheists-who-advertise.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/01\/believe-it-or-not-atheists-who-advertise.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_0DySLTT4PWo\/SWV2kZCCOKI\/AAAAAAAAE10\/8oZHI9xSf0A\/s400\/07london-inline1-650.jpg","datePublished":"2009-01-07T22:40:00+00:00","dateModified":"2009-01-07T22:40:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/052b8cd86cc713feaccdc8282b03cf10"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/01\/believe-it-or-not-atheists-who-advertise.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/01\/believe-it-or-not-atheists-who-advertise.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/01\/believe-it-or-not-atheists-who-advertise.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_0DySLTT4PWo\/SWV2kZCCOKI\/AAAAAAAAE10\/8oZHI9xSf0A\/s400\/07london-inline1-650.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_0DySLTT4PWo\/SWV2kZCCOKI\/AAAAAAAAE10\/8oZHI9xSf0A\/s400\/07london-inline1-650.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/01\/believe-it-or-not-atheists-who-advertise.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Believe it or not: atheists who advertise"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/","name":"The Deacon's Bench","description":"Where a Roman Catholic Deacon Ponders the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/052b8cd86cc713feaccdc8282b03cf10","name":"deacon greg kandra","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a4e\/a4e07ce6fde3f10d4d9753243fd48d45x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a4e\/a4e07ce6fde3f10d4d9753243fd48d45x96.jpg","caption":"deacon greg kandra"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/deacon-greg-kandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/365"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}