We all know that today’s media, in its many forms, can impact society. That’s what the whole premise of advertising is based on, after all. Well, now a coalition of atheist groups is hoping that advertising will help them in their own cause. They’ll soon be posting a month-long run of ads in New York City’s busy subway stations that feature a picture of a blue sky and wispy clouds, sporting the question: “A million New Yorkers are good without God. Are you?”
Now, putting aside the debatable “good without God” premise, these ads only leave me with one head-scratching thought: What is the burr in these guys’ saddles? Why do they find it important to denigrate something they don’t even believe exists? I mean, I can’t imagine paying gazillions of bucks to make sure the world knows I have doubts about the tooth fairy.
Surely they don’t hope to change the minds of churchgoers. Atheists already think that believers are a bunch of misled idiots, right? So why bother? On top of that, the most recent American Religious Identification Survey reported that religion is actually losing ground in the U.S. So it’s not like some rising tide of God-fearers is putting a crimp on the lifestyles of the rich and faithless.
On the other hand, the organizers—euphemistically titled the Big Apple Coalition of Reason—say this isn’t an anti-religious campaign. Christians, therefore, needn’t get irked. The ads are more of a “get the gang together” sort of thing. Which still doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. They get all these like-minded irreligionists to come together and … what? Share a collective “we don’t believe” high five? Or maybe exchange nonbeliever decoder rings over milk and cookies?
I’m not sure. But methinks it sure doth sound like a lot of effort to rally around not believing in something they’re absolutely convinced was never real to begin with.
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