Oh, For the Love of God!

It doesn't take much to rattle people's cages and get their panties in a knot. Bus ads, which are pretty easy to ignore, could even do the trick if the ads happen to be atheist messages, especially during this most blessed time of year when Christians of all stripes are on their best behavior.

But the reaction from believers has been harsher than anyone in the nonbeliever’s club expected. Some ministers organized a boycott of the buses, with limited success. Other clergy members are pressing the Fort Worth Transportation Authority to ban all religious advertising on public buses. And a group of local businessmen paid for the van with the Christian message to follow the atheist-messaged buses around town.

Because, you know, it's just all about the love of God.

The ads have incited anger in some places. Vandals destroyed two bus ads in Detroit, ruined a billboard in Tampa, Fla., and defaced 10 billboards in Sacramento. One billboard in Cincinnati was taken down after the landlord received threats.

And the local rapid transit authority in Des Moines pulled atheist ads off its buses in August last year because of complaints from local religious leaders. Four days later, however, the authority reversed its position after the local group that had bought the ads threatened legal action on First Amendment grounds.

Wait! What? What's the First Amendment shit? Sign up for God first and then you can start exercising that First Amendment right, you silly atheists! Where did you get this absurd notion that you have an equal right to not believe in a deity? Or to acknowledge publicly that others like you may be out there?

Sorry, that just poses too much of a threat so just keep your mouths shut and pretend to fit in here. You are making too many other people uncomfortable!

Some of the fiercest criticism has come from black religious leaders. The Rev. Kyev Tatum Sr., president of the local Southern Christian Leadership Conference, has called for a boycott of the buses, saying the ads are a direct attack during a sacred time in the Christian calendar.

Don't even get me stated on the sanctity of this "Christian calendar," and all those twinkling lights, decorated trees, Santa Clauses, and angry shoppers. Jesus would certainly encourage a fistfight if one of his followers failed to get that last iPad off the shelf before a hellbound atheist grabbed it!

And then things calm down a bit before moving on to colored eggs and bunny wabbits.

There is some hilarious irony in the fact that most of the atheists I know could be role models for many Christians. But that's not the point. Non-believers are supposed to sit down, shut up, and be invisible so as not spoil all the fun for the saved.


"Nobody owns December."

-- Terry McDonald, chairman of Metroplex Atheists, part of the Dallas-Fort Worth Coalition of Reason.

There Is No God. There Is Only Market Share.

A number of atheist groups are about to kick off a holiday ad campaign in an attempt to rally the troops.

The godless groups say they are mounting this surge because they are aware that they have a large, untapped army of potential troops. The percentage of American adults who say they have no religion has doubled in the last two decades, to 15 percent, according to the American Religious Identification Survey, conducted by researchers at Trinity College in Hartford and released in 2008. But the ranks of the various atheist organizations number only in the tens of thousands.

That is one reason for the multiple campaigns: the groups are competing with one another to gain market share, said Mark Silk, founding director of the Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life, which is also at Trinity College.

“There’s a competitive environment for ‘no religion,’ and they’re grabbing for all the constituents they can get,” Mr. Silk said.

Relying on the largess of a few wealthy atheists, these groups are now capable of bankrolling efforts to recruit and organize a population that mostly has been quiet and closeted.

As a society, we may vehemently disagree on Democratic policies vs. Republican policies, hard right vs. hard left, fact vs. fiction, up vs. down, top vs. bottom, over vs. under, large vs. small, gay vs. straight, and God vs. godlessness. But if there is one true belief on which we can agree, it is the importance of market share!