For the city’s organized atheists — here’s hoping that doesn’t sound oxymoronic — the rotten economy would seem in one respect to be Heaven-sent.

“You got it,” Kenneth Bronstein said. Mr. Bronstein is president of New York City Atheists, whose name should be self-explanatory.

For the last month, his group has run 12-foot-long advertisements on the sides of city buses in Manhattan. You may have seen them, though perhaps not.New York City Transit has 981 buses assigned to Manhattan, and the atheists could afford ads on only about two dozen.

The message, in white lettering on a sky-blue background, is nonconfrontational by design. It doesn’t attack religion or say there is no God. It simply says: “You don’t have to believe in God to be a moral or ethical person.” Hard to gainsay that thought. Most of us know nonbelievers who are pillars of rectitude. We also know pious types who are as honest as a Siberian winter’s day is long.

Mr. Bronstein said that the ad campaign, scheduled to end this weekend, was a resounding success that prompted donations and requests to join his organization. “We don’t announce our numbers,” he said, “but we say we have hundreds of paid members.”

Religious people have contacted him to say they agree with the message, he said. More meaningful to him are calls from fellow nonbelievers. “Many, many atheists were so proud that we finally put a sign up,” he said. “We announced to the world that we’re around. We’re here.”

In some respects the strategy echoes that of the gay-rights movement, by persuading once-closeted people to come out. Polls show that atheists’ numbers are growing around the country. “I got phone calls from people who said, ‘I’ve been an atheist all my life, and I was afraid to tell anybody,’ ” Mr. Bronstein said. Because of the ads, he said, those people now feel, “Hey, there are others of us out there, and I’m proud to be an atheist.”

To get back to the point raised earlier, the poor economy has been something of a blessing for the nonbelievers. “We probably could not have gotten this poster program in New York City if the financial times were very good,” said Mr. Bronstein, who is 70 and retired from I.B.M. “But people are looking for business.”

More than 100,000 Britons have recently downloaded “certificates of de-baptism” from the Internet to renounce their Christian faith.

The initiative launched by a group called the National Secular Society (NSS) follows atheist campaigns here and elsewhere, including a London bus poster which triggered protests by proclaiming “There’s probably no God.”

“We now produce a certificate on parchment and we have sold 1,500 units at three pounds (4.35 dollars, 3.20 euros) a pop,” said NSS president Terry Sanderson, 58.

John Hunt, a 58-year-old from London and one of the first to try to be “de-baptised,” held that he was too young to make any decision when he was christened at five months old.

The male nurse said he approached the Church of England to ask it to remove his name. “They said they had sought legal advice and that I should place an announcement in the London Gazette,” said Hunt, referring to one of the official journals of record of the British government.

So that’s what he did — his notice of renouncement was published in the Gazette in May 2008 and other Britons have followed suit.

I guess we have arrived!

SEATTLE ATHEISTS LAUNCHES METRO BUS OUTREACH CAMPAIGN

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Seattle Atheists will begin its bus outreach campaign on Wednesday, April 1st, 2009, on King County Metro buses in the downtown Seattle area. The campaign will run for two months and will feature three brightly-colored interior signs featuring quotes from important and well-regarded historical figures: a founding father, a civil rights leader, and a scientist.

“Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.”
- Thomas Jefferson

“I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.”
- Susan B. Anthony

“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.”
- Albert Einstein

The signs are intended to educate people in Seattle about the rich American legacy of skepticism and critical thought, and to provide a rebuttal to religious fundamentalists who have spread the fallacy that the United States was founded as a Christian state.

The statement, “We believe in you!” proclaims that Seattle Atheists has confidence in the ability of human beings to be ethical and compassionate without reliance on a deity or religious faith.

We have ironically embraced the date of April 1st as the unveiling of this bus sign campaign, as many American fundamentalists have disparagingly called for April Fools’ Day to be regarded as an atheist holiday.

Seattle Atheists is also launching a fundraising campaign to expand our outreach efforts to include signs on the outside of buses as well.

——————————-

Seattle Atheists is a 501(c)3 organization dedicated to serving the atheist community in the Seattle area. We strive to promote understanding and respect toward all freethinkers by providing information, creating a sense of fellowship, actively opposing discrimination, and above all, emphasizing reason and critical thinking over belief in the supernatural.

For more information, please contact:

Seattle Atheists
www.seattleatheists .org
(206) 826-0770
P.O. Box 283
Seattle, WA 98111-0283
president@seattleatheists.org

Thanks to Seattle Weekly and Neil Estep for a very nice story on the signs.

In contrast to the holiday hubbub caused by those signs in the state Capitol building last December (“Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds”)—which were put up by an out-of-town group and arguably backfired—Seattle Atheists is trying an approach that’s more nuanced and less confrontational.

The Olympia sign “was a shit storm for us,” says Paul Case, a representative of the group. “Someone drops a sign and takes off, and we ended up getting a lot of complaints, even though it wasn’t us. That sign wasn’t pro-critical thinking and it wasn’t pro-questioning the status quo. That’s not who we are.”

Case wants these new signs to have an opposite effect. “We’re not trying to draw any lines,” he says. “We want to have a positive impact on the community.” The ironic choice of April Fool’s day as the launch date is a throwback to a running joke about it being the “atheist’s holiday.”

Because the signs will be displayed on the interior rather than exterior, passengers will have more time to read and contemplate the messages.

Seattle Atheists President Case will be talking about the new Seattle Atheists bus sign campaign on Valerie Tarico’s SCAN TV show, Moral Politics, on Friday the 20th at 8:00 p.m. Watch live at http://www.scantv.org/.

The Seattle Atheists advertising campaign begins April 1 (yes, this is as a snide commentary on Christians who say we need our own day and that that day should be April Fool’s Day), on King County Metro buses, and will run for about one month. The brightly-colored signs will appear on the inside of the buses, and will feature quotes from Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.