Atheist Bus Ads in Italy Are Back… Again

First they were deemed too offensive. But a slogan change means that Genoa, Italy will be seeing an atheist bus ads next month!

Just on one bus, though.

The old (supposedly offensive) slogan was: “The bad news is that God does not exist. The good news is that you do not need him.”

The new one reads: “The Good News Is There Are Millions of Atheists In Italy; The Excellent News Is They Believe In Freedom Of Expression.”

I like it 🙂 It’s not really taking a side, but it informs people that there are atheists out there, and isn’t that really the point?

[Advertising agency] IGP Decaux said the message would be carried by a single bus in the northwestern Italian city, ”probably” from the middle of February to the end of the month.

The secretary of the Italian Union of Atheists, Agnostics and Rationalists (UAAR), Raffale Carcano, said the UAAR was working to get the original message approved in cities where IGP doesn’t control advertising.

”We aren’t offended if someone writes that God exists,” Carcano said.

”But the (Genoa) Curia demanded a halt to our bus and hailed its banning”.

”It would be nice to be able to run the campaign all over Italy,” he said, adding that a Facebook group in favour of the UAAR’s drive had drawn 4,000 members.

(via Atheism Examiner)

"Grandstanding for imaginary beings is so much easier than doing something to help real people"

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Felicia Gilljam

Haha. That reads as a barb against the people who nixed the first ad. I guess that’s the point, considering Carcano’s words.
Claudia

I think the church has, once again, fallen flat on it’s face on how to handle this issue. If they had utterly ignored it and not made a fuss, many many fewer people would have seen the ads and very likely there would have been fewer of them.

They made a fuss, and hence the media saw a story, and so the story, and the ads, got to millions of people whereas the bus ads would have only reached thousands. In Spain the story of the ads made it on to our highest-traffic news sites and when the archbishop called the ads a “blasphemy” they only became more famous. Additionally, atheists who might not know about it or have cared were induced to donate towards the ads as a way of fighting the shutting down of our free speech.

The same thing happened with the DaVinci Code and that horrible movie, the golden compass. The church made a huge fuss and made the movies that much more popular.
«bønez_brigade»

The “They” in the 2nd half should be underlined or boldified. (in their ad, that is; not necessarily in the blog post)
blackskeptic

very brilliant and tongue in cheek. i didn’t get it at first, so i thought it was lame and sterile, but once i realized that it’s a jab against them not being able to put up their original ad, i thought “AWESOME!!!”