27 June 2011

Is the slogan "Good Without God" controversial?

The series of billboards around Columbus showing the smiling faces of friendly neighborhood atheists doesn't seem to have generated any notable controversy until just now.  It turns out that one of the billboards happened to go up on a church's property on the East side; it appears that the church was leasing the land to the billboard company, and must not have been aware of the new content being displayed there this month.

The church didn't take kindly to a billboard on their premises proclaiming that people don't need what they're selling, so they complained to the billboard company and the ad was moved to another site.
To be fair, a steakhouse probably wouldn't want an "I'm good
without beef" billboard displayed in their parking lot either.

So, a billboard got moved.  Not censored, not stolen, not vandalized, just moved.  I have to say that it's an improvement over what's befallen similar ads in other places (and I must give thanks to Hemant Mehta for diligently calling out such acts of sabotage).  If this is the worst thing that happens, then I'd say this was a pretty successful campaign.  People know that we're here and they seem to be wising up to the fact that we're not evil.  I sincerely hope that one day atheism will be such a non-issue in public life that we won't need to announce our presence like this; perhaps these billboards and even atheist-themed blogs will one day be a thing of the past because they've served their historical purpose.

On a related note, I decided that I'm not sure how well I like the "Out of the Closet" banner that I made previously on the FFRF website, so I made a new one:

I'm still not a big fan of the font they use for these, but eh. ~shrug~
I think that I like the new one better, but the old one has its merits too.  Any thoughts, my tiny band of loyal casually interested readers?

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License