Atheists Draw Christian Followers

Ooh, I love a good parade! They’ve even got clowns and everything!

If that were really God’s response to the atheist ad, what a patronizing ass!

OMG I’m saved. Thanks anonymous business owners. …who sez us Texans cain’t learn nuthin new?

Does anyone else think it’s an absolute waste of gas for a vehicle to drive around doing nothing but countering a message on a bus? At least the bus is supplying transportation. This counter ad needs to also supply transportation or do something productive while following these buses around otherwise I have a whole new reason to think it’s stupid.

Given that one of the major passages in the Christian texts says something about not being ashamed, they’re shameless in being ashamed. Take out an ad without saying what organizations and businesses paid for it? What credibility is there in running an ad like cowards? That’s like the new kind of political ads that we had this year.

Well, isn’t that touching?

I love the picture of a round earth, given that the Bible writers are pretty sure it’s flat, with corners, and flooded once without all the water running over the edges. That creature’s love is one synonymous with the drunk who apologizes to his common law wife after beating her up and the cops show up with reality TV cameras in tow.

What the atheists are also saying with this billboard is that they are being good without dropping 10% of their paycheck into a church basket every Sunday. It’s really bad for church business if people think they can be good without paying protection money.

I agree that this is a little scary. It’s sort of the bus-ad version of stalking: these Christians are making it clear that atheists cannot be allowed even to announce that we exist without being shadowed by religionists blaring that we are illegitimate.

It’s a ridiculous misuse of majoritarian power.

Were I not already convinced that believers include the most ignorant and wasteful and arrogant of humans, this would surely convince me. Ignorant for thinking their “follow the bus” truck will do anything but increase the number of active atheists, as it gives us just another reason why rational thinking is not just another option but necessary for the health of the planet. Wasteful, because as Justin pointed out the truck is doing nothing productive driving in circles all day and adding to traffic congestion and pollution (I oppose all “mobile billboard” trucks doing any type of advertising for the same reasons, not just ones with religious messages). And arrogant because, supposing a god does exist, they presume to speak for it! Were I a deity I would strike them mute for their audacity, but of course one doesn’t exist so they’ll continue to babble on.

So now the atheists will have to buy a truck and stalk the other truck with a response?

And to think it’s the atheist community that is constantly self-flagellating over acting ‘too dickish.’

This is just one big, mobile “NUH UH.” Lulz.

They’ll love you to death.

The pastors and businessmen who don’t wish to be identified say a great deal in their silence. What are they afraid of?

Atheists: “Millions of people are good without God.”
God: “I still love you, even though you’re being good without me.”
Atheists: “Would you prefer that we’d be bad without you?”
God: “Good or bad, I’d prefer that you bring your money to the preachers.”
(That insight thanks to Alex, several comments above who nailed it with:

What the atheists are also saying with this billboard is that they are being good without dropping 10% of their paycheck into a church basket every Sunday. It’s really bad for church business if people think they can be good without paying protection money.

Come on? This isn’t bad really – it’ll get media coverage (as demonstrated by this post, and pointed out in the post) for both parties. It’s not clever. But it’s not downright stupid. Put yourself in the position of having to come up with a response to a message that attacks your product in business – and you could do worse than having your branding out an about wherever you’re being criticised.

Nathan, you said,

Put yourself in the position of having to come up with a response to a message that attacks your product in business – and you could do worse than having your branding out an about wherever you’re being criticised.

Please explain how the atheist ad is an “attack” on anyone. The ad essentially says, “Hello there, atheists exist and they are good people.” I cannot see, without a great deal of paranoid, chip-on-the-shoulder, eagerness to be a victim how anyone can conjure up an “attack” out of that.

The woman-on-the-street interviewed in the Fox News report above said, “I think it’s an insult to Christianity.” It is? How?

It seems to me, the “insult” is that we exist. The “attack” is that we’re no longer hiding. If that’s all it takes for Christians to feel insulted and attacked, then life is going to be tough.

Wait, what?

Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief has come out against the atheist ads on buses.

“I still love you and I’m going to follow you around until you love me back.” Genius. Sheer genius. Who thought of making g0d look like a whinny 14 year old boy who hasn’t got over his first crush? What next? Will a Christian rock band catch the bus and sing love songs to the passengers? Will they start phoning the bus company at night and just hanging up without saying anything just so they can hear the sound of the bus company’s voice.

How embarrassing.

so the lesson is that we can be atheist and it doesn’t matter because God will love us anyway? So, what’s the point in acting like a boring believer?

I love it. The sheer immaturity of it is hilarious. Is there media team composed of 4th graders?

I think the best thing about it is that it’s going to make more people notice the atheist sign. A bus you might miss, but you’ll notice a bus being doggedly followed by a Jesus-van. Besides, the money they spend like this is less money to persecute GLBT folks.

Seriously now, how weak is your faith that you find the very notion that other people are fine without it as a threat? Do they not realize how pathetic and weak these overreactions make them look?

What petty, trifling, immature basket cases the Christians must be!

Because there’s nothing more attractive than desperation. I doubt anyone would ever pay particular attention to these ads if the Christians didn’t throw a fit every time one went up.

i find this highly hilarious and sadly pathetic

Wow, that ad is batshit crazy! They could at least pick a few people up on the route. Then they’d be doing something other than looking nuts.

The second truck hired should say something like, “Anyone who claims to transcribe God’s thoughts is a scam artist.”

Er… not very catchy, but that’s the idea.

MikeTheInfidel, exactly. I’m flabbergasted at mkb’s statement that this isn’t stalkerish. I can’t imagine how any printed message could be delivered in a more stalkerish way than this one is.

I think its kinda funny that the atheists’ bus ad isn’t attempting to convert anyone, it only attemts to display the fact that there are millions of good Americans out there who don’t believe in god. It is not being obtrusive or crass. It’s the same size as every other bus ad in the entire city. The Christian truck, however, is GIGANTIC and draws quite a bit of attention to itself and on top of that has the EXPLICIT goal of converting people to Christianity. Even the guy who was representing the advertising company said that if “even one atheist comes to god, that’s all that matters.”

The atheists were just trying to let you know that we’re good people too and because all of a sudden they publicly make their presence known, you have to convert them? *shakes head*

What I find interesting is that the christians, who supposedly believe that their god is the all powerful creator of the universe who interferes directly in the lives of each and every individual person, think it’s just fine for them to put words in this god’s mouth. Rather presumptive of them. Don’t they think that might piss this god thing off, especially since as someone pointed out above, it allegedly said something negative about bearing false witness?

And if they really believe this god is all powerful, shouldn’t they believe it can speak for itself?

Really, these christians’ behavior leads me to think they don’t believe in their own religion.

How much of that money that was spent on the rebuttal could have been spent on doing something positive for mankind, like they supposedly say only christians are capable of doing? How many soup kitchens, homeless, down on their luck families could have been helped instead of acting like petty teenagers who feel they need to somehow one-up the competition?
It’s so easy for them to cry foul and complain that something is offensive when they feel their beliefs are attacked, yet think nothing of the rights of the atheists.
It’s sad, really sad.

The best counter message that the group could come up with is too play the emotion card.

How typically Christian.

When faced with an argument they can’t counter rationally, they try to play to base emotion.

Stalking involves harassment, intimidation, an implicit or explicit threat. It is not mere following (althoug following if you have been asked not to follow could be stalking). Just as the words “rape” and “lynch” should not be trivialized by using them out of context, the action of someone who responds to your statement with a statement of love shouldn’t be called a stalker. Despoiling the environment, yes, but stalking no. In the Lincoln Tunnel situation the Catholics could respond by putting up a nearby billboard. When you’re talking about a city bus system where only 4 buses have the ad, the only way to make sure that someone sees both messages is this. I think it’s silly. I think it’s environmentally irresponsible. I don’t see why you all aren’t laughing at them, instead of wagging your fingers at them and calling them stalkers.

I’m not an atheist, but sometimes I get so embarrassed by the idiocy of my fellow theists that I wish I was.

I guess you’re right Rieux, I must not be paying attention because I hadn’t noticed that people in the billboard truck were threatening or harassing riders of the buses. Where did you see that link because I missed it.

When billboards are vandalized, we have a right to be outraged. When bus boycotts are threatened we have a right to be outraged. When people do foolish things, we should laugh.

Give Fox credit for keeping atheists in the news. Even as they make those with negative opinions of atheists feel secure with their ideology, they are at the same time broadcasting to many others that are watching story after story and may finally realize they have not given their religious beliefs much thought.

I’m gonna weld a giant ‘I STILL LOVE YOU’ sign to my car and follow my ex-girlfriend as she drives around town. I expect mkb to show up at my trial and explain how it’s not stalking. I was just following her because this is the only way to make sure she can see my statement of love. After all, as long as I don’t make an explicit threat or harass them it’s not stalking…

I have to say… the newsreader did a pretty good job. I mean, the ‘insult to christianity’ is a pretty null ‘otherside’ statement. If anything, the reporter/editor knew they could ‘poe it up’ a bit.

Is there any coincidence? that the Christian ad is on the short bus?

Stalking aside, though I think folks point out correctly that this qualifies, I only saw one mention of persecution.

Personally, I see this as the Christians funding this idiocy agreeing with the ‘woman on the street’ that this is a direct insult to their faith and must be met directly. The old Scotch/Irish/Southern code of honor in full, ridiculous bloom.

Despite being a significant majority in the US, Christians even here have a rather scary persecution complex. While acknowledging historical and current persecution of Christians was both widespread and heinous, it simply isn’t happening in the US.

And the previous and current persecution is and has been by theists of other stripes, not athiests. There has never been a howling mob of athiests bent on killing and sacking and burning religious structures in history, ever.

Not withstanding the grotesque lies that Stalin’s and Mao’s and Pol Pot’s mass atrocites had anything to do with athiesm. They and their followers simply paid lip service to athiesm, correctly realizing that any organized religion would be a danger to their power.

The old communist Polish goverment relearned that lesson quite recently when the Catholic and Union-led Solidarity movement toppled them.

MY favorite anti-Confederate sentiment that I wish I could afford to have on my car is “You lost, get over it!” I’d say to the majority Christians in the US, “you won, get over it!”

First of all, if you’re Atheists, you’re wrong from the start…
There is only two different arguments. One is for evolution and one is for creation. Evolution cannot be proven and isnt even science. In the scientific method, it even states that something must be observed to be proven. Evolution requires the mutation of an organism into a more complex being… never been observed. Yet I do agree that there is “Genetic Recombination”, which is what darwin was “observing”. The leading Evolutionist and Atheist was even stumped over this fact… I will provide the link at the bottom to the video.
Then you have to take into consideration the odds of us being here without a God. This includes the moon’s position, the earths orbit, complexity of the human body, DNA cannot be randomized, conditions had to be perfect. The odds are 1 of 1 Trillion of this occurring. Therefore, since the only other legit argument of our existence is creation, that leaves the rest of the possibilities to the existence of a God. The odds of there being a God are undeniable. The ignorance it takes to say that there “is no God” is just idiotic.
Tell me this, did humans create math?
Nope. 1+2 = 3 whether you like it, or not. If you didnt know it, it would still be fact. And if a tree fell in the woods, then it fell in the woods… and thats why you find trees that have fallen, whether a “person” heard it or not.
So what if a few Christians say some stupid things… does it really bother you that much?
Another thing. Morals would not exist without a God that created this universe. We would be more like personality less aliens with the need to only survive without the need of one another. And atheists can’t even have an argument with that, since morals are proven existence of good and evil. If this is not true, then that means from an atheist point of view, they could kill themselves and it would mean nothing to anyone. So why would that person’s argument be a valid one when it comes to morals? It wouldn’t have a single bit of value, the same way they believe their life has no value. We all know the human race won’t exist forever… So now what? “Contribute more to society”? I know thats what you were thinking… what about those who are parylized for life? Oh well, those people dont matter… apparently you dont either. Thats why your contribution in life is to right a hatred blog about Christians. When you find the courage to be less ignorant and actually realize the odds of us being here without a God are slim to none, you’ll have a lot more purpose in life. And you will finally have the answer to the question ever human being has pondered at least once. “Why am I here”?

Here is the link to the video I promised.