Should Atheist Ads Be Allowed?

The New York City subway advertisements which proclaim, "A Million New Yorkers Are Good Without God. Are You?" were funded with an anonymous donation. On many news stories about the ads people are questioning why the donor chose to remain anonymous if he, she or they are not ashamed of the ads.

I can't give a definitive answer to this because the donor or donors haven't come forward to give their reasons but a simple and pretty obvious reason comes to mind. The donor probably thinks the issue is a very important one that needs exposure but isn't willing to risk death, harm, or financial ruin to get the message out there. Fear of harm from those opposing such signs is a very rational fear. In Cincinnati the owners of a building to which an atheist positive sign was attached received death threats.

And that is the very reason the ads need to be out there. People in America need to know that there are quite a few non-believers. It will give non-believers courage to step out of the closet but more importantly, it will give those who would harm, discriminate against, harass, or vandalize a reason for pause. If they think the number of non-believers is tiny and powerless, they will feel they can do do whatever they want to them with impunity but if they see non-believers make up a decent portion of the population they might think twice. Another important thing the ad campaigns will do is increase the awareness of the population at large. Many religious people are completely unaware what is being done to non-believers in America and they will be upset to hear about it.

This question comes up a lot in comments to articles about the various signs - Why do the signs say God and not Allah?. People seem to see the use of the word 'God' as meaning only the Christian God, Yaweh.

Why would the ads be focused at a particular God instead of at just God? No, wait, God does not just mean the Christian God, that would be Yaweh. God refers to any of the myriad Gods people believe in. There wouldn't be room to list all of the Gods atheists don't worship on a sign. Without God means not having a God, any God.

It's like how the word 'cat' refers to all cats but the words 'Siamese' or 'Maine Coon' refer to specific types of cat. If I said, "I don't have a cat" it wouldn't specifically mean I don't have a Siamese, it would mean I don't have any cat at all. So the signs just use the generic word 'God' rather than the specific words 'Yaweh' or 'Allah' or 'Vishnu', etc.

This ad, put up by Iowa Atheists & Freethinkers, also known as IAF, was recently pulled from Des Moines buses. The ad was considered to be horribly offensive and thus was removed from buses.

The IAF chose the ad they thought to be as inoffensive as possible yet people still strongly objected.

Fortunately, the DART (Des Moines Area Regional Transit) has done the right thing and the ads are going back up!