The FFRF’s Controversial ‘Fool Me Once’ Billboard Campaign

Speaking of raising money http://www.atheistmedia.com/2011/10/pat-robertson-those-struggling.html

As an Oakland native, I can’t wait to track a few of these down.

So the probability of Judgement Day is a Poisson distribution then.

With a lambda of zero

How many people think it already happened long ago?

Wacky nutjobs raised $80 million?

Huh. Not your average nutjobs.

On the one hand, I am all for just about any atheist billboard, but on the other hand I have to wonder who the intended audience is? Camping’s followers are a pretty small number and I don’t think the billboards are worth their attention. Still, it might generate some good publicity that could be used to reach a wider audience. 

Remember the rules of modern Christianity:

1. Believing that winged scorpion horses will imminently attack the earth: totally reasonable.

2. Believing that winged scorpion horses will attack the earth on a specific date: totally insane.

This is not a healthy double standard.

If I remember my mathematics correctly the Poisson distribution is
f(k,lambda) = lambda^k*e^-k/k!
So when lambda = 0, f(k,0) = 0^k*e^-k/k! = 0*e^-k/k!
=0/k! = 0

Here’s what I love (and wait for it, it will happen just like it did back in May):
When the Rapture doesn’t happen, the Christians who don’t put a date on it, disown the Christians who do and hypocritically call them delusional.
BOTH kinds of Christians suffer exactly the same delusion, which is believing in bullshit like this.

Love this!  Can I suggest we all use this as our status on various social media on the 21st?  Would you mind?

“Every day is judgement day.  Use yours.  Use reason.”

That the best one by far.  Also, I truly wish our currency had “In reason we trust” instead of god.  I really don’t understand how it’s possible/legal/constitutional that “god” is on our money anyway.  Can’t FFRF do something about that?

Well you guys weren’t smart enough to do the research that the percentage of people who believed in the Rapture was so small (blown up by the media like always) and insignificant, that you’re wasting your time, money, and efforts placing those signs. The 10 people inside the state that believed in it might get offended, but otherwise you’re killing billboard space.

Those are metaphors, but you probably wouldn’t understand what a metaphor is either.

And you have scientific evidence of how the Big Bang (which I believe in) was conjured up? “Particles, atoms, and electrons” is not an answer. How were those things created? Did the basic elements on the periodic table just appear out of thin air?
I have also known a lot of Atheists (correct me if I’m wrong) who believe in life on other planets. That is a theory. Which is basically you having Faith in something backed by evidence, but not actually proven.
Evidence of God = The Universe, dimensions, and everything in between.

Did the basic elements on the periodic table just appear out of thin air?

Depends on what you mean by ‘basic elements’, but since you refer to the periodic table, other than H, no.  Heavier elements were/are created out of H in stars.  If you’re talking photons, electrons, quarks, etc, then if you really want to you could read some Stephen Hawkings.

life on other planets. That is a theory.

No.  That is at best a hypothesis.  

Which is basically you having Faith in something backed by evidence, but not actually proven.

Nothing outside of mathematics if ‘proven’.  You can watch person A shoot person B in the head, but you cannot prove that it was the bullet shot from person A’s gun that killed person B.  Maybe B had an aneurysm a millisecond before the bullet reached  his head.Theories are proven to the extent that you know the bullet killed B.  Theories are not proven to the extent that it could be an aneurysm.

Evidence of God = The Universe, dimensions, and everything in between.

That’s not evidence.  That’s you deciding that since science doesn’t (yet) have all the answers now that there must be a God.If you had lived in Ancient Greece you would have considered lightening to be evidence for Zeus.Science has a history of giving us answers, and correcting its own answers that were incorrect.  Religion has a history of giving us answers that science has proven incorrect.  There are still a few answers from religion that science has not yet successfully corrected, but history is on science’s side.  Religion has yet to correct an answer of science.

Well you guys weren’t smart enough to do the research that the
percentage of people who believed in the Rapture ON A CERTAIN DATEe was so small (blown up
by the media like always) and insignificant,

Fixed it for you.

The percentage of people who believe in the rapture is actually quite large.

Love the billboards. The first one may be a little too “inside joke” since it requires people to instantly remember what “family radio” was about, which I’m guessing a sizable part of the population doesn’t. The “Fool me once” and “Every day is judgement day” signs are wonderful.

I wonder sometimes about the sheer amount of anger and derision that Christians who believe in Judgement day but don’t put a date on it direct at the Christians who dare to predict a date. It seems like the latter Christians are violating a pact;

 Thou shalt never be so specific as to make our religious claim falsifiable

The fundamentalists who put a date on the end of the world are detrimental to the beliefs of the religious majority. Those beliefs have been carefully constructed as to be so vague, so nonspecific and slippery, that they can never actually be tested. In the religious worldview, the existence of no evidence in favor of your proposition is not a problem, just as long as there is no glaringly obvious evidence that frontally contradicts that claim. The Harold Campings of the world make testing the religious claim possible and since they will of course fail, weakens the position of faith. No wonder they don’t like him.

“We know that reason is the devil’s harlot, and can do nothing but slander and harm all that god says and does.” – Martin Luther, Last Sermon in Wittenberg, Second Sunday in Epiphany, 17 January 1546

These billboards aren’t really aimed at the folks who literally believe the Rapture will occur tomorrow.  But I’m sure you already knew that. 

It’s called “humor.”  Try it sometime.

There is a petition on the White House’s website to have it removed. They also have one for removing “Under God” from our pledge.

https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petitions

You will have to look for it, and there are a few other petitions worth signing too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHuqiiEnRN8

Great and appropriate song by Bruce Dickinson, singer of Iron Maiden.

God’s Not Coming Back.

Everyone thinks it’s going to happen in their lifetime *rolls eyes*

As it should be when the expected number of events is zero 🙂

Thanks.  This one seems appropriate too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKo4FMzt_hM

I think I can guess where your political affiliations lie.  

“There was no supporting evidence for either of the “proclaimed” raptures.”

No kidding, that the whole point!  There is no evidence there ever will be rapture, either.

“How were those things created? Did the basic elements on the periodic table just appear out of thin air?”

I love that fallacious argument. It’s based entirely on the faulty assumption that the universe had to “come from somewhere”. Where is it written, other than in religion, that existence had to have a beginning? Even when a religious person tries to play this “trump” card they always forget that this argument plays against them too. If everything has to be created, then your god had to have been made by something even greater, and so on so forth. It’s a logical pitfall, since the argument is “where did it come from” adding a useless step (god) is silly. What created your god? What created that which created your god? What created that which created that which created your god? etc., etc. Your is a trickle-down deity system. At least that’s what your argument opens up anyway.

 If it’s so easy to believe that the 13.8 billion year old universe was predated by an invisible being that waited over 10 billion years before even forming the earth, let alone the wait to “create” humans, then why is so hard to accept that existence just always has been?

“I have also known a lot of Atheists (correct me if I’m wrong) who
believe in life on other planets. That is a theory. Which is basically
you having Faith in something backed by evidence, but not actually
proven.”

Faith is believing without evidence, which you contradict yourself. Yes I believe that there is life out there in the universe, a notion that is undoubtedly true. You hace to realize though that beliving in alien life doesn’t equivicate to them being higher-order sentient lifeforms. It actuallity, what life we discover out there will be microbial at best. Even though mountains of evidence for water, and habitable locations, are pouring in every year. Coupled with the size and age of the universe it is faulty to assume we are the only planet with life. Will we ever meet alien life? Who knows. But that doesn’t negate the fact that alien life is statistically more likely than any single god-concept in this planet. Reason being, there is ample evidence to support the alien life hypothesis. One single discovery of a non-terrestrial microbe will be proof of alien life, proof that no religion could even hope to provide.

When you jump out of a plane would you use a parachute or hope that your god would save you? Faith is like jumping out a plane without a parachute and hoping. Atheists use parachutes, ones that we made sure were packed correctly. We don’t close our eyes as the ground rushes at our face and hope to live, we pull the rip-cord and safely land on the ground. Faith makes you go splat.

“Evidence of God = The Universe, dimensions, and everything in between. ”

This is not evidence. You claim the universe proves your idea of a god exists and I contend that the universe is actually proof that your god never existed. Neither of us can be proven correct, but the a priori when looking at the cosmos and its massive size and age is that no god was involved. You draw your own conclusions of the unfathomable cosmos and need  god to give you comfort about the fact there are objects out there larger than our solar system. You need a god to make the reality of how incredibly small we are not uncomfortable. You need a god to make death seem like a new frontier not the absolute end it is. You need these things and because of that you see god where you want to.

Your religion paints your god as an engineer, a being that “designed” an incredibly complex existence.
From Wikipedia, on Engineers “Engineers must weigh different design choices on their merits and choose
the solution that best matches the requirements. Their crucial and
unique task is to identify, understand, and interpret the constraints on
a design in order to produce a successful result.”

So, if your god is such a great engineer I ask you to solve these logical problems for me:

1) If childbirth is supposed to be painful because humans, the children of your god, sinned, then why do non-humans also experience pain during childbirth?

2) Why isn’t there a universal, built in, language that all humans can understand? If your god truly wanted to be heard and loved (read: worshiped), why did he make his words known through a human-created language?

3) Why is the universe so massive and old if only built to house a single species and its “beasts of burden”? Surely an engineer would have found a way to make our solar system all that there needed to be. Such a massive universe is a waste of energy and time if just for a single species.

4) Why are there non-biblical animals in existence, as well as, why do we keep discovering new life-forms in areas that have no use for people(deep-ocean, volcanoes, deep in the crust etc.)? ”
  
5) Why is it then we can’t eat every green plant or consume every animal? Why are so many poisonous to us if they were created for our consumption? Why do useless plants and animals even exist, if as Genesis says, they are ours to subdue, rule, and consume? 

6) How is a binary star system, millions of light-years away, evidence that your god exists? For that matter, how is Jupiter or the Moon evidence? What about black-holes? Supernovae? Nebulae? In what capacity is any cosmic body proof that your god exists?

This of course isn’t an exhaustive list of logical oddities concerning Christianity, let alone every other religion. Can you answer any of these questions with evidence or without rhetoric and hyperbole?

And the world would be in ruins.

Are you in Rapture town or something? There’s more Tea Party followers than those Rapture people.

“And you have scientific evidence of how the Big Bang (which I believe in) was conjured up?”

Your choice of words once again belies your biases.  There is no reason to think it was “conjured up” (which implies an intelligence using magic).  Just because we don’t yet have enough evidence to tell which of the probably half-dozen scientific explanations available right now is the right one does not mean your non-scientific answer with zero evidence is any more valid.

” Did the basic elements on the periodic table just appear out of thin air?”

Ignoring the fact that air is made of atoms (I think you mean “out of a vacuum”), yes, that is exactly what happened.  That event, however, happens quite a while after the big bang compared to how far back we can understand it.  In fact it is something we observe in “atom smashers” all the time.

“I have also known a lot of Atheists (correct me if I’m wrong) who believe in life on other planets.”

Many atheists and theists think the probability that we are alone in the universe, based on the evidence we have available, is small.

“That is a theory.”

No, it is a hypothesis.

“Which is basically you having Faith in something backed by evidence, but not actually proven.”

No, a theory is “a scientific explanation for a set of phenomena that is backed by an overwhelming enough amount of evidence to convince most experts in a given field of scientific study that it is the best explanation currently available”.  It has nothing to do with faith.  A hypothesis is the same, it just doesn’t have enough (if any) evidence to be convincing yet.  Science rejects the very concept of “proof”.

“Evidence of God = The Universe, dimensions, and everything in between.”

And how would you tell the difference between a universe with a god and one without.  You need to provide justification for this, just saying something like “without God the universe wouldn’t exist” without providing any evidence to back it up will only make you look clueless.