All aboard the atheist bus

The Mad Hatter

New ad: (Don't know if this has been posted elsewhere...)



(From Derren Brown's blog.I very much like how the list of bad labels includes "Atheist child.")

nozzferrahhtoo

Indeed:

BHA Special announcement.
18th November 09

"Billboard adverts will go up today in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, as the internationally renowned poster campaign which began earlier this year on London buses launches its second phase. So much money was donated towards the campaign after the bus posters had been launched that it was announced that further money raised would be put towards new adverts later in the year.

The billboards will remain up for two weeks and you can see them here."

http://www.humanism.org.uk/billboards

philologos

A good article in the Guardian today, dealing with the idea of the atheist billboard:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/nov/19/atheist-billboards-faith-schools

I'm pretty much in full agreement with her on this:

It is surely central to the role of a parent, whether committed to a religious faith or not, to want to pass on to their child the things they value most, the beliefs and world view that shape how they live. It is also consistent with that role to want to have those beliefs and world view acknowledged and affirmed as part of their children's education.

It's not going to be a battle won. Certainly nobody has a right to deprive parents of this freedom.

Another entertaining article about them -
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6925781.ece

patmartino

Jakkass wrote: »

It's not going to be a battle won. Certainly nobody has a right to deprive parents of this freedom.

Freedom based on lies?

Turtwig

Jakkass wrote: »

A good article in the Guardian today, dealing with the idea of the atheist billboard:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/nov/19/atheist-billboards-faith-schools

I'm getting really sick of people purposefully twisting the message.
We're ok with parents educating their children on their own faith.
What we do not like is parents saying "my child is Christian" when the child is barely old enough to know how to spell religion.
Would you call this child a Liberal Democrat??

Mike 1972

Jakkass wrote: »

A good article in the Guardian today, dealing with the idea of the atheist billboard:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/nov/19/atheist-billboards-faith-schools

If by "good" you actually mean completly missing the point then yeah I guess

lostexpectation

The Mad Hatter wrote: »

New ad: (Don't know if this has been posted elsewhere...)



(From Derren Brown's blog.I very much like how the list of bad labels includes "Atheist child.")

what do you call a child who has no religion, a secular child?

Mike 1972

what do you call a child who has no religion

Tom or David or Alice or Caroline or...............

philologos

Mike 1972 wrote: »

Tom or David or Alice or Caroline or...............

Pretty much the same as you call a child with a religion I would have thought

drkpower

Jakkass wrote: »

It's not going to be a battle won. Certainly nobody has a right to deprive parents of this freedom.

You are correct legally; unless something very strange happens in this country.

But this is not really aimed at the fundamentalists or strong religonists out there who indoctrinate their children from an early age and for whom religon is a central part of their lives. Its very unlikely that people like these will stop indoctrinating their children.

Its about encouraging the masses, in Ieland, the 'a la cartes', to stop and think, rather than automatically and unthinkingly force the kid to go to a Catholic school, to say his prayers at night, to go to mass on Sunday etc etc.... Slowly but surely, the pervasive nature of religon in this country will (continue to) subside. This is a slow-burn issue; its about small steps and mindset change. When the mindset changes, then the real changes can begin.

dvpower

Jakkass wrote: »

Pretty much the same as you call a child with a religion I would have thought

Just less Marys!

pH

I'm sure there is a word for when you're a smug prat and think you've outsmarted and out-thought the opposition, only to make your opponents point in a way so much better than they could have done ...

So from the Telegraph:

Children on atheist billboards 'are actually Evangelical Christians'

But the campaign appears to have backfired after a Christian community leader said that the models pictured in the poster were from a family of committed Christians whose images had been taken from a stock photo.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6617859/Children-on-atheist-billboards-are-actually-Evangelical-Christians.html

So their clever response to an ad which asks people to consider whether it is right to classify and define children using religious labels, is an article whose headline defines children using using a religious label. And somehow this means the poster has 'backfired'.

How much further could you miss the poster's point by?

Dades

This billboard ad has a bit too much Dawkins in it for me.

dvpower

pH wrote: »

So from the Telegraph:

Children on atheist billboards 'are actually Evangelical Christians'

I just object to the labelling of billboards.

robindch

Daily Torygraph wrote:

Children on atheist billboards 'are actually Evangelical Christians'

Seems to me they couldn't have chosen a better kid for the ad.

Stercus Accidit

pH wrote: »

So from the Telegraph:

The tabloid thicko's won't know any better, they have a religion to dedicate themselves to and horoscopes to read.

Bottle_of_Smoke

Would imagine its most relevant in Belfast. Should have put them in Derry/Portadown too.

Where the hell were you in 1969 Richard?

Mike 1972

Stercus Accidit wrote: »

The tabloid thicko's.

But the Daily Telegraph is a broadsheet not a tabloid. In the same way as the Sunday independent is.....Oh nevermind

philologos

Another interesting article on the billboards issue by George Pitcher. It's good to get a perspective of how theists are regarding this.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/georgepitcher/6611937/What-exactly-are-atheists-so-scared-about.html

The only group who seem to have affirmed the message of the BHA on this one is the Evangelical Alliance.

seamus

Jakkass wrote: »

Another interesting article on the billboards issue by George Pitcher. It's good to get a perspective of how theists are regarding this.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/georgepitcher/6611937/What-exactly-are-atheists-so-scared-about.html

Godwin'ed in 4 lines, impressive:

As I was leaving church yesterday, a nice chap called Andy called to see if I would go on Radio 2 to talk about a new billboard campaign enjoining us not to "label" our children with religious tags such as "Catholic child" or "Muslim child". Beside pictures of bonny toddlers (all white, as it happens), runs the tagline: "Let me grow up and decide for myself."

You may remember its genius: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." The best that can be said for it is that it got people talking about God.

*Whooosh!*

I wouldn't call that interesting in the slightest Jakkass. It's just an article full of ad-hominem, paranoid nonsense from someone whom the whole point of the campaign has clearly been lost on.

He tries to claim, for example that it's not possible to indoctrinate a child because they'll forget all about it by the time they're teenagers. Again, point completely missed (and he's completely incorrect).

dvpower

It started off with a good Jewish joke:

It's like that old joke about the Jewish mother: "Help! Help! My son, the doctor, is drowning!"

but quickly decended into paranoid rambling:

The world view of the anti-religion militants, unfortunately, is that one of us has to go. They really think, paradoxically enough, that this is their Armageddon: the forces of religious evil must be swept from the public sphere, to be replaced with a new hegemony of secularism and atheism, which from their mouths sounds remarkably fundamentalist.

eoin5

Mike 1972 wrote: »

But the Daily Telegraph is a broadsheet not a tabloid. In the same way as the Sunday independent is.....Oh nevermind

Meh, all newspapers are just social commentary anyways.

robindch

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

TV comedy writer Ariane Sherine does, so she wrote an amusing article for The Guardian suggesting that atheists club together and pay for their own.

Ten years on, Ariana Sherine has been up and down, but mostly down. Here's a blog post of hers from yesterday:

http://arianesherine.blogspot.ie/2018/04/when-nobody-cares.html

recedite

robindch wrote: »

Ten years on, Ariana Sherine has been up and down, but mostly down. Here's a blog post of hers from yesterday:

http://arianesherine.blogspot.ie/2018/04/when-nobody-cares.html

Still using the old photo.