While the new billboard campaign from the BHA at first glance seems to be a final attempt to squeeze a bit more publicity out of the Atheist Bus Campaign, on review it’s quite a remarkable idea – they’ve only actually paid for four billboards and from it have generated a wealth of publicity, that’s rational thinking in action.
The Freethinker published a good news story on the event quoting several religious figures reacting to the news. While it would be easy for me to have a go and those that use it as an opportunity to attack humanists the comment that really draw my attention was this one.
One positive thing that could come from this is if it opens a debate on faith. I am not offended by it, but perhaps the money used for it could have been channeled better into a humanitarian cause.
At first it seems like a harmless, even supportive comment. But of course it isn’t. It’s a grasping desperate attempt to reclaim the higher ground from the bottom of the cesspool religion has found itself in.
Think about what has just been said here – you should stop wasting your money on religious issues and give it to charitable causes. The church, the Catholic Church no less says we should stop channeling money into religious issues and start giving it away to better causes!
From the church who has it’s own sovereign state containing streets lined with gold comes the message that we should stop wasting our money and use it to feed the hungry, build shelter for the poor and help the downtrodden. What a beautiful, humanist message.
This is a much wider issue of course – have you seen how much churches rake in these days? Tithing, the donation of 10% of your salary is still common practice and with the average salary in the UK now being £26,000, that means the average church patron is giving £2,600 a year to church! That’s more than I bet you spend on food.
Luckily though there is a salvation. The figure won’t actually be that high on average because atheists are statistically more likely to be on above average salaries which will drag the average up a bit though not much. But more importantly atheists are earning large amounts, they are more likely to he charitable with it. Just look at the stats on Kiva.
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 at 10:07 am and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.