An unusual holiday message began appearing this week in the nation’s capital on the sides of buses and trains.
“No god? ... No problem!” reads the ad featuring the smiling faces of people wearing Santa Claus hats. “Be good for goodness’ sake.”
Over the next two weeks, 270 of the ads will go up on city buses and trains in the Washington area as part of the holiday kickoff to campaigns sponsored by secular groups in cities around the country and abroad. If last year was any indication, the signs are likely to spark a theological war of words.
“We don’t intend to rain on anyone’s parade, but secular people celebrate the holidays, too, and we’re just trying to reach out to our people,” said Roy Speckhardt, the executive director of the American Humanist Association. “To the degree that we are reaching out to the godly, it’s just to say that you can be good without god, so their atheist neighbor down the street shouldn’t be vilified as though he is immoral.”
Signs similar to those in Washington are being placed on buses and billboards in New York, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle and near the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho, and in London; Barcelona, Spain; Genoa, Italy; and Toronto, Montreal and Calgary, Canada, Speckhardt said.
Last year, a similar campaign by the association drew strong reactions.
The head of the Catholic League linked secular humanists to figures like Adolf Hitler and serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. In Cincinnati, a billboard that said “Don’t believe in God? You’re Not Alone” had to be moved after the owner of the billboard property said he received threats. In Moscow, Idaho, a sign that said “Good without God. Millions of humanists are” was vandalized twice in three weeks.
“It is the ultimate grinch to suggest there is no God during a holiday where millions of people around the world celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ,” said Mathew Staver, founder and chairman of the Liberty Counsel, a religious law firm. “It is insensitive and mean.”
After signs went up last year in Washington, religious groups took out their own ads. Pennsylvania Friends in Christ placed an ad reading: “Believe in God. Christ is Christmas for goodness sake.”
City transit officials said they had so far not received any requests from religious groups to post their own signs this year.
In Seattle, this year’s signs say “Millions are good without God.” In Las Vegas, signs to be put up this week say “Reasons Greetings” and “Yes, Virginia ... there is no God.”
The sponsor of the Las Vegas signs, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, created a furor last year with its sign that read, in part: “Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.”
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