Atheist Groups Sponsor Billboard in Lemon Grove
Right alongside 94 East is a new bill board in Lemon Grove. It’s quite a shocker if all you’ve ever seen along freeways are commercial ads, for this one is about religion – in a way.
It states very clearly:
Atheism – A personal relationship with reality.
The new billboard is sponsored by a coalition of groups that adhere to atheism and it went up at the end of January. The billboard is east and near the Federal Blvd freeway exit off 94. The groups include The San Diego Coalition of Reason and American Atheists, who spent $4,000 on the billboard – which did not appear lit up at night.
Debbie Allen – head of the San Diego Coalition of Reason – told the media:
“Some people assume that atheism is an entire world view,” she said. “It’s not. It is an opinion about one thing and one thing only. About whether or not there are deities, fairies, goblins, ghosts, any kind of supernatural deity.”
Allen also said she would not be surprised if there was some negative reaction to the sign. Four years ago, her group put up a similar billboard and received a lot of positive response from it. The two groups have for the last 5 years been placing billboards up in communities all over the country.
There is an upcoming speech by David Silverman, the president of American Atheists, who will speak at UC San Diego on Sunday, Feb. 24th. He said that his speech’s message will be that religion demands special treatment it does not deserve.
A recent PEW study found the number of Americans who say they don’t have any religious affiliation has more than doubled since 1972.
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And what’s with the sneezing and blessing? The linings of my sinuses get irritated and I have to hear “god bless you” sometimes in another language, reminding me how delusional some people are when it comes to everyday occurrences that are simply autonomic responses to a stimuli.
I prefer saying “salud.” Which basically means “to your health.”
The gifted “scientists” of the Dark Ages thought that your heart stopped when you sneezed. So, if you were “technically” dead for that brief moment, they felt obligated to “bless you” so that Satan would not take advantage of your momentary biological death to possess your body and corrupt your eternal soul to aid and abet his nefarious plans at world domination (and corrupting all the many other religions in the world who knew nothing of either Christ or Satan).
But these heinous “other languages” you probably are hearing are most probably “¡Salud!” (as Brent mentioned) or “Gesundheit!”, which is also just “health” in German. Please consider not falling prey to the same lack of critical thought you accuse others of . . . or you might give atheists a bad name. ;-)
Hallelujah for the courage to put up the sign. Thank you San Diego Coalition of Reason.
Atheists are people too. At least the last time I looked I was a person. Though sometimes I feel alien to this country.
It’s a breath of fresh air to see that billboard everyday when I travel 94 east.
Although I do not worship Jesus as a God, I do think he had a very high sense of ethics and morals particulary when it came to money. Remember he upset the moneychangers tables at the temple, one of his few acts of violence. He said, “It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” He told the rich man, “Sell everything you have and give it to the poor.” And “Inasmuch as you have helped the least of these my brethren, it is as if you had done it unto me.” I look at the Bible as a lot of fairy tales, but it contains some wisdom as well. And it’s important for a culture to have a certain amount of fairy tales as long as you don’t take them too seriously. They provide comfort at times of great tragedy for one thing. How could you tell a mother who lost her child to a gun murderer, “That’s the end for your child. The lights went off and that’s it.” It’s much more comforting and almost necessary to make a tragedy endurable to create the probable fiction that the 20 children lost at Newtown are little angels, up there with God, in a better place who will be reunited with their loves ones some day.
Fiction has its place as all readers of it know.
God just told me to vote Republican.
Marx said “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” I think Jesus in so many words said the same thing. I think this is morality and ethics of the highest order. Of course capitalists wouldn’t think so. Jesus after all was a revolutionary. That’s why both the religious and secular authorities conspired to get rid of him. Subsequent generations made a god out of him. They did that to attract followers. Nobody had much of a following in those days unless they claimed to have a direct line to God. I guess that’s still the case today.
Now who’s taking the Bible too literally? Eric, you need to develop an appreciation for metaphor and allegory. It has nothing to do with pleasing a sky daddy. Helping the ‘least of these’ is similar to ‘to each according to his needs.’ Marx was a closet Christian.
What…where did all of Eric’s comments go? He must have crossed the line somehow. Too bad. I was having fun jousting with him, and this is a serious subject. It’s like the blind man describing the elephant – atheists see one part of the elephant which is a factual description and believers see another part which is also a factual description. Each side has part of the truth, but their truths are such that there is no way to meet in the middle.