Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Consider Humanism: The Largest Atheist Ad Campaign In History


From Friendly Atheist:
Today, the American Humanist Association is launching the largest atheist ad campaign in history. It challenges Biblical morality and fundamentalist Christianity and it’s bound to get a lot of attention.

There will be a TV commercial during Dateline NBC this Friday night.

There will be billboards in Idaho and Philadelphia and bus ads in Washington D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

There will be ads on cable TV, ads in magazines like Reason and The Progressive, and ads in newspapers in places like USA Today, the Seattle Times, and the Village Voice all “demonstrating that secular humanist values are consistent with mainstream America and that fundamentalist religion has no right to claim the moral high ground.”
...
Read more about the campaign and see the ads at FriendlyAtheist.com

23 comments:

  1. Thanks Cynical C for introducing me to Ingersoll

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  2. Humanism isn't necessarily non-religious. I don't like this campaign because it paints humanism (and atheism by association) as another competing religion. That's not what humanism and atheism are about.

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  3. Humanism is non -religious. You can't just claim that it somehow isn't. There's nothing worshiped. No dogma unless you call 'logic' dogma. And because you're wrong, then you use that straw-man to say it's just another competing religon-an even bigger leap than your first problem with the ad.
    That's pretty irrational of you.

    The ads are trying to crack through the brainwashing in the nice way so many people on both sides whine about insisting on. They're just trying to show religious moral dogma is utter crap and logical thinking (under basically a brand name of Humanism, but the generic version is always available and just as effective) is easily better and just saying things people probably already somwhat or mostly agree with.

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  4. Marriage should be equal and 'sacred'? That's a litte oddly put. Wish it would have been worded without religious wording. Also a 'perfect' partnership? What's 'perfect'?

    I'm only ok with this becaue the religous versions are so much worse and those people like their moral shit to sound like 'magical' and simplistic rules...like the Humanist here presents in a one-liner.

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  5. Also, I didn't realize Robert Ingersoll was a chick? hehe

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  6. Have to agree with azryan here.

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  7. man_kills_everythingNovember 10, 2010 at 7:45 AM

    Azyran, Per... IT'S A QUOTE!

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  8. As an Objectivist I find Humanism just as off-putting as religion.  It always struck me as the teachings of Jesus without God.  If Jesus was not divine then he was a wacko, and should be ignored if not actively mocked.  Marriage is not 'sacred' and why not allow consenting adults to engauge in polyamorous relationships and call it marriage?  I'm not interested in trading one set of arbitrary moral standards for another, or in trading these "One God" crazies for the "One World" crazies.  Secular Humanism can shove it.

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  9. Some might say that humanism is essentially worshipping one's self and is the ideal religion for narcissists. Why is it that atheists and humanists feel a need to campaign against people of faith and always choose to do so by taking statements out of context and distorting the truth? What happened to live and let live? Why is it that these ads especially target Christianity instead of Hinduism, Islam, Judaism etc...? Out of all the problems this nation and the world face, these people choose to spend their time denigrating faith and promoting intolerance. Thank God most people don't agree. Though I know some people will type a nasty response to what I've said rather than try to engage in a dialogue and that no one here is going to take the following statement good naturedly, I'm going to say it anyway....God bless you all. 

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  10. Sophia,
    Cowardly rebels without a clue always atack the religion that they know will turn the other check. These ads are put into full gear around Christmans time and are attacking Christianity exclusively. These narcissistic parsites get to live in the free and civilized world that Christianity created. America's constitution is the greatest the world has known because it has God in it. You will never hear one of these ads for the Godless quoting verses from the Koran or atacking Hinduism. These are angry rebels without a clue. How about doing something about the 5000 honor killings a year committed by Muslims or the mass killing in DArfur commtted by Muslims. No these Godless cowards will stick to insulting the religion that defends and protects all people, that is Christianity.

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  11. "some might say" is pure bullshit. Why are you hiding behind an insipid line like that 'sophia'. Why not just make the claim yourself that you think humanists worship themselves and then have a couple of neurons to rub together to put forward some evidence of that retarded claim.
    If anything, some dimwit might be able to make a case that humanists worship nature and earth and people in general, but certainly there's nothing to the idea that they worship themselves -especially when ads like this point out how humanist believe in equality.

    Then you make a deceptive and utterly false claim about what atheists always do and ask why they do it!?

    They DON'T do the crap you damn them with doing.

    What happened to 'live and let live'!? The religious are trying to give equal time to creationism in the year 2010 in American schools. And that's only after they've failed to eliminate the Therory of Evolution altogether!
    They put their religious symbols and phrases on our money, in our government practives. They get tax exempt status. They demand special respect nothing else gets. They damage children's minds and bodies and warp their understanding of reality. They shoot doctors. They scream at funerals of gay kids. They fly planes into goddamn buildings.
    THAT'S WHY there's no 'Live and let live'.

    Why do they target the Abrahamic religions you stupidly ask?
    Because they're all demented and the main cause of these problems I just outlines for your ignorant ass. They also make up the majority of the religious on Earth today. And the Hindus don't cause nearly as much of these sort of problems.

    They're promoting intolerance of the intolerant and the harmfully and willfully ignorant. It's like calling me a bigot because I'm bigoted against bigots (which I am). It becomes retarded circular 'logic'.

    And congrats for guessing that someone would type a 'nasty' response seeing as you wrote one so insulting and demented (note though... I DID actually explain in detail why you were so wrong as well as call you a fool so don't ignore that part).
    It would be like a white guy swearing a room full of black people and then saying- 'See... and I bet you people are all going to just call me a racist aren't you!?'

    Take your 'god bless you' and shove it. You say that crap to feel superior and as if your powerful, magical and imaginary 'god' is speaking through you because you're special.
    You're insane.

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  12. Yes. From Ingersoll. What's your point?? Mine was that it was an oddly put turn of phrase and shouldn't have been used. Did you not understand what I wrote??

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  13. That's ironic because far more people have called Ayn Rand's Objectivism a religion, and her the head of her own dogmatic cult than Humanism -which doesn't have a specific dogmatic doctrine or one 'all-knowing' leader. Not that Ayn Rand formed a cult exactly, but it was pretty similar.

    She always swore that was the opposite of her intent, yet managed to build a cult-like flock of rabid followers who hung on her every word anyway. And she allowed and took advantage of it. They were also trashed severely for EVER disagreeing with her.

    Objectivism is mostly right IMO, because it's just largely rationalism just like humanism. But Rand's logic was flawed and ruthless when it came to some key issues. Atlas Shrugged is a perfect example of how over the edge she was. She imagined that the CEOs of the World are actually the prime workers and inventors who create and grow civilization, when it's almost always the people down the ladder who are doing that and getting the shaft from those above.
    It's the fever dream of the modern child-like Neo-Con Libertarian.

    Humanism is not the teachings of Jesus. If any of the same concepts match, they are also found in far older non-religious teachings like the code of Hammurabi or the Golden Rule, etc.
    Nothing sensible and rational that was claimed to be the teachings of Jesus was original. Nothing.

    You seem to be sort of quoting C.S. Lewis's thoughts on Jesus? Odd for an Objectivist.
    Lewis of course forgot to add any other options. Such as 'That Jesus was a fictional character but you still might manage to get some tidbits of moral rationality from some of the crap he is claimed to have said without feeling any need to worship him at all.

    Hey, I learned something about power and responsibility from Spiderman's Uncle. That doesn't make it untrue even if the source was fiction.

    And though it has nothing to do with anything else here, you ask about polyamorous relationships and if it should be called 'marriage'? Well then it would be the word polygamy not polyamorous. That's the first answer.

    The second is... 'if' (and it's a BIG 'if') the people involved ARE all consenting adults who have not been pressured OR manipulated by religious dogma (which is almost always the case in polygamy even if it doesn't have to be)....then such things should be allowed. But like it or not you can't ignore the fact that such relationships are frequently problematic for inherent psychological reasons -for the adults involved and often many, many, children who did NOT have a choice in the matter.

    Also 'marriage' has only two meanings. One is religious which is pointless and out-dated. And one is legal which is might create practical issues with parental rights and things like that in a polygamous set-up.

    Morals are NOT arbitrary. There are huge similarities pretty much all humans match and build a rational morality from. You should read Richard Carrier's Sense and Goodness without God. He lays out a lot of rational concepts that you should follow because they make sense not because you're commanded to follow them.

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  14. To hone in on a single point.  How would one know id somebody is "manipulated by religous dogma?"  The view of marriage is as much cultural as it is religious.  Even if I do believe that an adult is under the sway of a religious cult, I can not set up society in such a way as to forcibly impose 'normal' values on them.  Otherwise any voluntary collective I join might be like-branded and similarly dispatched.  (Look up the Onieda group for a prime example of this).

    Also, polyamorous was the correct word, as it applies to any 3+ relationship where polygammy is specificalyl one man many women.  And the case for Jesus being entirely fictional is rather weak (though constantly promoted by humanists who don't wish to see him for the crazed end-times prophet he was.)

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  15. Polygamy does NOT mean 'one man and many women' -DESPITE that almost always being the way it plays out in real life (because those examples stem from, in nearly all cases, religions/cultures that are male dominated).
    One woman married to many men is also polygamy.

    You have a VERY bad problem with pretending words mean whatever you choose them to mean. Poly- means many. -gamy means 'forms of marriage'.
    Just like monogamy means 'marriage with on partner' and applies to same or opposite sex no matter if you were to hate or love the gays.

    No wonder you so badly confuse what words define a religion or not.

    And HOW would one know if they were manipulated by religious dogma you ask?? Well... you'd see them acting in an irrational way that is specifically defined of derived from the dogma of the religion they are. In some cases it might very well be debatable if it's happening, but often it's VERY obvious and a simple to make the case. Hell, they usually flat out tell you where in their dogma that derive their crazy behavior.

    No doubt some people will claim this can't be done, just like you claimed that morality is simply relative or how clearly defined words mean something else because you feel like it.
    You're just intellectually giving up and childishly allowing yourself to make any rules you choose apply without rationality.

    <span>"-Even if I do believe that an adult is under the sway of a religious cult, I can not set up society in such a way as to forcibly impose 'normal' values on them.-"</span>

    Wrong. It can be and in some ways has been done. They're called laws. Stopping creationism in schools is one example of forcing religious dogma to shut the hell up in society.

    And your claim that the case 'for Jesus being entirely fictional is rather weak.' is once again you claiming something and backing it up in no way at all. That's FEEBLE.
    The claim FOR Jesus being a real person is on the people making the claim. It's their case that then has to be made and there's no contemporary evidence. His story is heavily mythological which must logically be fictional. The words put in his mouth were all things other people had already said. Nothing original. His story is riddled with contradictions in the only source of his existence -the . Many elements of his story had to be either fiction or the word of a god because they were written by people who weren't there at his suposed birth or death, etc...

    At BEST someone could say... 'well yeah, but it's likely that it was all based on some actual real guy."
    And THAT would be a feeble case for his existence. And it would be like saying a magical Santa Claus is REAL because he was very loosely based on a real guy. And he was based on a real guy. And to think that guy was at all what we call Santa Claus is insane.
    Same for believing Jesus was the real son of a god OR a crazy dude preaching insane stuff. Neither is likely -though the latter is certainly more likely.

    Remember I'm not a 'Humanist'. I just call myself a rationalist (though that's 99% the same thing really). And it doesn't matter at all to me if bits of Jesus's story were real and he existed and walked around being crazy. If it were proved he as a person really existed -say in the 30 yr. old crazy prophet form... that'd be fine by me. Fictional person or not...I still judge the meaning of the content and moral reasoning the same way.

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  16. Is 'Julie' really 'Sophia' perhaps?? heh

    Sadly, you are so massively wrong in basically everything you've written that it makes me sad to see people like you actually exist and think this poorly.

    The rationality of secular 'Humanism' counters ANY religious Dogma. Christianity happens to most pervade the modern world so a couple of ads target it more specifically with bible quotes but the message can reach anyone with similar religious dogmatic books -like Muslims or Hindus, etc....

    Meanwhile Christians have been targeting any non-Christian since the Church began. And that was fall of the Western Roman Empire and the rise of the Dark Ages! NOT a good time in history.

    'God' is NOT in the Constitution other than the vaguest reference to the creator which does not specifically define Christianity AT ALL.
    While the 1st Amendment specifically calls for the separation of church and state and has been upheld for only about 250 years or so to have that meaning.

    Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Paine. These people were NOT Christians. Many other Founding Fathers were only mildly religious yet made SURE we didn't form a State Church or Religion AT ALL.
    And this was all LONG before Darwin gave us a radical new way to understand how life began -since proven by mountains of evidence from many fields of Science. Before Darwin is made more sense to imagine some kind of 'Creator' but certainly NOT to endorse the Christian Bible AT ALL in the founding of America!

    America and Democracy are derived from ancient Greek and Roman laws and governments. The thinkers of the Age of Reason. Look at all our political buildings. White and Greek collums. None look like cathedrals. The influence is visually obvious and obvious in the actual documents and laws we created.

    The concept of Democracy, an elected leader and senate/congress and supreme court is NOT from the Bible you crazy person.

    America and European Age of Reason was the DOWNFALL of Christianity being the dominant political power in the European world. It was also the downfall of Monarchy in general. And the Christian God is still commonly called the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings. That's DARK AGE talk.
    America was founded on saying 'To hell with Lords and Kings!'

    It's also your insane imagination that it's Christianity rather than a secular American Government elected by people of all faiths and NO faith that works to fight Islamic suicidal radicals.
    And it's your dogmatic Christianity that makes it all so much HARDER to fight, by making it look like a goddamn CRUSADE between competing dogmas!! That only helps keep the Muslim's own religious insanity going strong!
    You're helping make the world a MORE dangerous, insane place. THAT'S why I fight idiots like you. NOT to make myself feel special or superior.

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  17. Unfortunately, your response exposes your own ignorance. "Profanity is the attempt of a lazy and feeble mind to express itself forcefully." If you ever have the opportunity to take a a philosophy class, you will see that your response is full of fallacious arguments and deeply flawed logic. As for your grammatical errors, I'll assume those are just mistakes rather than representative of your language abilities.

    You obviously have no interest in having a real debate and are content to berate anyone who dares to have a different opinion. This kind of narrow-minded attitude will not only limit your intellectual growth but also your moral growth. You have shown yourself to be as hyopcritical and fanatical as the extremists you talk about in your rant. I do not think I am superior to you or anyone else. You really need to take a hard look at yourself to understand why you think you are superior to those who choose faith and why you have such intense hatred and intolerance for people like me. I don't have any ill will toward you and I meant it when I said "God bless you."

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  18. Not ONE specific reply to a single thing I wrote. Glad everyone can see that here.

    'Faith' is a belief devoid of or antithetical to reason or evidence. THAT'S why I think rationality and evidence-based reasoning is worlds better than faith-based.

    You people literally make the world stupider and more dangerous. That's why I don't like you. And I'm honest about it.
    You trash me with baseless claims and then say you mean me no 'ill will'. You are a liar.

    Faith more than anything demands a narrow and closed mind. You have to refuse to look at or accept ANY contradiction or evidence that shows you're are wrong.

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  19. To ALL who want the facts about Christianity and the creation of America please read -Christianity Was Not Responsible For American Democracy -By Dr. Richard Carrier.

    http://sites.google.com/site/thechristiandelusion/modern-democracy

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  20. On the contrary, I pointed out that all of your arguments are fallacious. You've got nothing but ad hominem attacks, appeals to ignorance, appeals to ridicule and on and on... The things you say are so absurd and the manner in which you say them is so juvenile that there's no point in taking them seriously. Everything you accuse me of you are practicing. I didn't trash you with baseless claims. I said you used profanity and that it is a sign of a weak mind. You did and it is. I said your response is nothing but a list of textbook fallacies and it is. I commented on how you exhibit the same dogmatic fervor and intolerance that you accuse others of and you do. Are you actually denying this when the proof is in your own words?

    You have a right to your opinion about faith and unlike you I'm not interested in changing it or ridiculing you for it. What I am interested in is understanding why you and others like you have so much hate for people who have different beliefs and think it makes more sense to personally attack them rather than to try to reach some mutual understanding.

    Unfortunately, you proved me right. You are not interested in having a civil dialogue, only in silencing those who do not agree with you. I was being honest when I said I mean you no ill will. I don't wish for anything to harm you. Why would I? I don't hate people who don't agree with me. Perhaps it would make you feel better about the things you've said to me and about yourself if I did. No matter how cruel you are to me, I will not respond in kind and I will not harbor bad feelings toward you.

    That's the kind of person I choose to be, not based on evidence that shows me this response is the most logical but because it's part of what I believe is right. I don't have a need to call you names or belittle your intelligence or anything of the sort, but for some reason that's what you feel you have to do maybe because you're lacking in some way. You've shown what kind of person you are. If you want to stick to your fallacious arguments to support your belief without considering any alternatives, that's fine with me. What disturbs me is your unwarranted cruelty that you justify by saying I'm a fool for disagreeing with you therefore I deserve it. If you didn't have a computer screen to hide behind, I wonder if you would still feel justified in behaving as you have.

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  21. I can't bring myself to pretend that what you said made any sense at all.  Have fun arguing with somebody else.

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  22. Sophia I would commend you for your patience with this sort of hatemongering. Remember those who claim to be tolerant will not tolerate anything but absolute submission to their demands for tolerance. Julie could not be more correct about the cowardly acts of attacking a religion that is full of grace and forgiveness. A Muslim (now with more followers worldwide than the Catholic church by the way) would slit their throat for saying anything negative about the Karan and its oppressive demands on women so they choose to take one verse from Timothy out of context about women not teaching men in church and of course ignore the verse in Ephesians that demands men love their wives more than they love their own life. It is what it is though see Romans 10:1-3. Sorry to interrupt your conversation.

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