Starting Monday, New Yorkers will have a new ad to look at on the way to work:
NEW YORK (CNN) — Some New Yorkers may want to reconsider exclaiming “Thank God” when arriving at their destination subway station beginning next Monday.
Or at least that’s what a coalition of eight atheist organizations are hoping, having purchased a month-long campaign that will place their posters in a dozen busy subway stations throughout Manhattan.
The advertisements ask the question, written simply over an image of a blue sky with wispy white clouds: “A million New Yorkers are good without God. Are you?”
On October 26, a dozen bustling New York City subway stations will be adorned with the ads as “part of a coordinated multi-organizational advertising campaign designed to raise awareness about people who don’t believe in a god”, according to a statement from the group, the Big Apple Coalition of Reason.
New York City’s subway system is one of the busiest in the world with over 5 million riders per day and over 1.6 billion total passengers in 2008, according to the Metro Transit Authority.
Recognizing this, the Big Apple Coalition of Reason decided the “best bang for the buck” was to place posters in popular subway stations to capitalize on the amount of potential viewers, says Michael De Dora Jr., Executive Director of the New York Center for Inquiry, one of the associated atheist groups.
De Dora says the ambitions behind the advertisements are threefold.
First, the coalition hopes the promotion will enhance awareness of New York City’s secular community. He explained that the coalition also hopes to encourage “talking and thinking about religion and morality,” as well as support involvement in groups that encourage a sense of a social community for non-believing New Yorkers.
John Rafferty, President of the Secular Humanist Society of New York, another member group of the coalition, said the ads are in no way an anti-religious campaign. They are looking to reach out to more people who have similar feelings, but might not be aware of an outlet to express their beliefs, he said.
Rafferty and De Dora cite the American Religious Identification Survey, released earlier this year, as evidence of a shift away from organized religion. Those checking “none” for religion rose from 8% of the population in 1990 to 15% in 2008, effectively making “no religion” the fastest growing religious identification in the United States.
De Dora said that the “million” New York nonbelievers mentioned in the advertisements is the result of an extrapolation based on the survey’s findings. With over 8 million residents living in New York’s five boroughs, the organization projects over a million potential atheist New Yorkers.
De Dora said individuals “don’t need religion to be good people and productive members of society” and ultimately he feels that groups of nonbelievers are “adding to cultural life of NYC.”
Expect the controversy to start in 3, 2, 1…………
If I was still a believer, I would respond by saying that Jesus died for everyone’s sins, not the select few in that part of the world who believed he was the son of god.
I do believe we have free will, but also that we are programmable creatures that modify our behaviors and beliefs as we interact with the world around us. If you have a daughter who starves herself to death to try to look beautiful, do you try to remain blameless by saying “she has the free will to eat healthy but doesn’t choose to”, or do you recognize that modern culture brainwashed her into thinking that she has to look like a celebrity and it isn’t really her fault?
I’d argue that being programmable creatures, children can be taught pretty much anything and they’ll take those beliefs with them for the rest of their lives. Racism, slavery, and sexism are all ideas that have been perpetuated through many generations, but people today would agree that they’re all immoral. These ideas didn’t get reversed until our entire culture decided they were wrong, and we started teaching our children differently in schools.
I’m trying to argue that if a person is brought up as a child in a particular culture with certain beliefs, it’s not reasonable to expect them to change their worldview just because they have free will. Most religions have a clause that says “if you don’t follow these beliefs, you will automatically go to hell”. Children spend the first twenty years of their lives being taught that switching religions is enough to literally damn them, and attend weekly sermons that reinforce that. If you were considering converting to Islam or Buddhism, wouldn’t that fear be the main reason that stops you? Or would it be fear of rejecting of your family’s beliefs, the culture you grew up in, and the risk of ostracizing yourself?
I have a lot more on this line of thought but I’ll cut it off so it doesn’t get too long. The point I’m trying to make is, saying that someone can change because they have free will is technically true, but it ignores the influence our environment has on us.
You are correct when you say Jesus died for all of us BUT it’s the individual responsibility to accept Jesus as their own personal savior. Needless the culture or the environment they were brought up in. The environment for most atheists doesn’t even come into play as your debating about cultures.
I will agree it may not be easy but is required. It comes back to Jesus died on the cross to take away the sins of the world, all you need to do is accept him as your own personal savior, everyone was created with a free will, different religions know about Jesus but choose to either to ignore him, or not believe in him, It’s simple we all have minds and we are accountable for what we do with them. Someone looking at Christianity from a different religion thinks I’m wrong and I’m going to hell, who is right and who is wrong? I’m putting all my eggs in one basket. Boy this is getting way off the subject.
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