Lately these billboards and bus ads have started to spring up around New Zealand. If you live here, you know the ones I mean.
These billboards / bus ads have been brought to us by the Atheists of New Zealand.
Hey, thanks for that. As if coke ads and movie posters weren't bad enough. Now I've got to read your personal beliefs as well.
I could really care less about the overtly contentious nature of the billboards. I know it's supposed to spur me into action ("WHY YES! I AM AN ATHEIST AFTER ALL!") but all it really does is irritate me.
Couple of things to the folks at nogod.org.nz
1. The use of the phrase "There's probably no god" indicates agnosticism, not atheism. If you're going to put up massive billboards with big annoying bold-faced type on them, try not to be so fucking wishy-washy in your wording. You're atheists, for god's sake. You're trying to offend religious types here. Put some backbone into it. Imagine a cola ad: "This is probably a good soda you might like, or not". It doesn't work. Take a page out of the advertiser's handbook: grow a mo and stand by your convictions (product), not wobble near them.
2. Whoa. Color choices. Clash city. Obviously a man made these ads. No self-respecting woman would toss around green, pink, red and orange with such utter lack of good taste. It's like a clown college was consulted for the site design (say THAT ten times fast). Tone it down. You don't believe in God; it's okay to believe in good taste.
3. I hate to break it to you guys, but religious people don't worry if there's a god or not. They "know" there is a god. They don't sit around worrying about it. They have faith. For the agnostics of the world, I can't speak for all of us, but I don't lie awake at night, sweating and crying into my pillow over this. I do enjoy my life. Maybe over in AtheistLand you enjoy life oh-so-much more. Perhaps your pancakes taste better, your booze gets you drunker, your laughter is so much more laughy than mine is. Who can say? But I doubt it. I reckon you were just being smug, self-important jerkoffs.
4. On your website (as pink and red and green and orange as their tacky billboards. MY EYES!), you can find out more about Atheism / Humanism. Okay, so I went to find out more. This page is nothing but a link to Wikipedia. Cheap asses. Atheists don't believe in God OR copying and pasting. Also, there is a link to the "Atheist Manifesto" (didn't that word die with Karl Marx and the Unibomber?!), which seems to say little more than "Bad shit happens in the world, and God doesn't do anything about it, so there is no God". It's basically a lot of sour grapes against Jehovah. That was the whingers manifesto as best I could figure it.
Look, I've seen this crap before. As much as none of you will admit it, you're a cult, a church, a religion. In America and here, religious groups put up these kinds of posters, show up at your house, smile and ask if you've heard of this or that, and otherwise attempt to lure you into their cult / church / mosque / wikka circle / tackily-coloured website. And that's what we're talking about here, isn't it? A religious group. Sure it's the religion of No God, but that's what these people are about.
I know atheists who are perfectly fine with being atheists and don't need to bug the rest of us about it, just as I know religious people of the same bent. But they come few and far between. Then there are the fundamentalists, the proselytizers in all their annoying forms. People who are so insecure in their own beliefs that they have to try and lure the rest of us into their whatever it is to feel good about their choices.
Atheist, Christian, Muslim, Jew. Ultimately, if you're bothering me with your belief system in a public space or at my house, then you're a pest. I don't care if you believe in God or not. What the hell do I care?! What I do care about is you eye-soring my public spaces with your tacky signs and shoving your belief systems down my gullet. Piss off.
STOP BUGGING THE REST OF US WITH YOUR CRAP AND LET US ENJOY OUR LIVES
Shame you missed the point, but why let facts get in the way of a good rant, eh?
ReplyDeleteThe use of ‘probably’ is a strength of the campaign. No one can say for certain that any gods exist or don’t exist – that would require blind faith.
You can’t disprove unicorns, the tooth fairy, Zeus, or any gods but what you can say is that there is no solid evidence to think they exist. This campaign uses ‘probably’ to say that although you can’t disprove things like unicorns and fairies, you can say there’s not a shred of evidence for the thousands of gods that humans have ever worshipped.
Atheism is a positive statement about the limits of knowledge. Rather than taking a religious-like leap of faith and saying that there definitely is a god or definitely isn’t a god, atheists just say that there’s as much evidence for the Christian God as there is for Zeus or any other supernatural thing. That is, zilch.
Atheism lacks every one of the characteristics of religion. At most, atheism doesn’t explicitly exclude most of them, but the same can be said for almost anything. Thus, it’s not possible to call atheism a religion. It can be part of a religion, but it can’t be a religion by itself. They are completely different categories: atheism is the absence of one particular belief while religion is a complex web of traditions and beliefs.
The campaign intends to promote debate on issues such as God, religion and religion’s influence on society. Religion should not be a taboo subject that no one brings up at dinner parties – we should be discussing what we believe and why. While New Zealand has a different religious environment than say, the United States, there are still issues to discuss and be aware of. For example, we have recently seen the rise of the radical Destiny Church, the deadly side of exorcisms, and there is the on-going debate of the validity of the tax-free status of modern churches.
PS I see Real Groovy have to go back to court to defend being prosecuted at the end of this month. Their crime? Not adhering to "christian-derived" shopping hours by opening on easter Friday. When religion stops dictating laws to unbelievers, and allows people to make personal choices, these billboards will become obsolete. Until then, provoking debate has to be a good thing. Even if it uses garish colours!
ReplyDeleteMichael,
ReplyDeleteA good rant of your own. You should start a blog.
Unfortunately, as well-meaning as your =arguments for the rationality of atheism, lies the reality that fundamentalism, in all it's forms, does not obey anyone's rules, not even rationalism. The ads are not an attempt to stir debate and dialog. They are a none-too-subtle jab at religious groups. I am not a religious man (not in the traditional sense of the word...does zen buddism count as traditional?), but I am a person of conscience. I am insulted by these billboards not because they stir on dialog but because they attempt to insult people while pretending to be innocuous. Not to be too harsh, but this is a characteristic I've seen too often from New Zealand society. One is allowed to be insulting as long as it is done in a polite way.
You are incorrect on one point: atheism has one of the fundamental characteristics of religion: belief. Atheism has belief in the tenant that there is no god, derived from science's lack of evidence. It is stating "Because there is no evidence to the contrary, then I will take as fact that there is no god". Is this NOT the basis of atheism?
What I see here is not an attempt to create dialog and debate, but instead an attempt to provoke something they see as silly, little minded and out-of-date. Atheists often state that they aren't allowed to discuss their beliefs at dinner parties for fear it will be considered taboo. To be fair, when was the last time you were at a dinner party and heard a Christian or Muslim or whoever openly discuss their beliefs? I'll answer that: unless you're having dinner at a church meeting, never. I don't know about you, but at a dinner party, I'm more interested in wine and the food than someone's personal beliefs about the nature of the universe.
Ultimately, I was criticizing what I saw as a group's willingness to fling mud and yet push their own belief system on others. You may like the ads because they line up with your personal beliefs, but would you be so forgiving of the ads if they were discussing Jesus, or Islam, or worse yet, the failures of atheism as a real system?
Michael,
ReplyDeleteIn regards to Real Groovy, I fully agree. Stupid law. How is this still one the books when my own country (religious crazyland that it is) banned these laws back in the 1960s?
I think you are one of a very few number of people who actually use your head. I am sure you believe all atheists are like you: I have plenty of personal proof to the contrary. Oftentimes atheists are just zealots in a different coat. They fervently "know" that there is no god and anyone who believes such a thing is an idiot. They "know" this because science has "proved" it. Another prison, just like the one formed by religion.
As someone great once said "Oh how the world still dearly loves a cage."
I like the ads because they DO provoke a response, as evidenced by your blog entry, and they manage it with pleasing wordplay. Without the humour, they would not have the same impact. Still, if you're posting a blog entry about them then they have to some extent achieved their aim - we're having a discussion about them and their purpose.
ReplyDeleteThe lack of evidence for something is indeed valid evidence for the lack of something. That is not a belief-based statement, but a rational one. To put it another way, I see no evidence for giant inflatable pink rabbits living in Karori - it takes a *huge* stretch to therefore define the lack of belief in giant inflatable pink rabbits living in Karori as a form of faith or belief. Atheism has the same standard - this is fundamentally different to religion.
So your final summary is that atheists are just normal people like everyone else, with the full range of rational people to fervent nut jobs. That's not really news is it?
Indeed.
ReplyDeleteI will point out one thing you've missed: there is no valid evidence for the existence of love. Do you refute it?
I agree that debate on any topic is good. But I will point out:
ReplyDeleteYes, they do provoke a response, but so does a rash. I don't know if provoking the response I had (fucking ugly things!) was what they were after. And I'm not sure if I'd classify what they say as "humour".
When I say belief based, I mean that to believe in something you cannot prove is ridiculous, but to hold a firm opinion that "because it has not been proven, therefore it must be false" is taking Occam's razor to your own throat. Because science cannot 100% prove there are black holes (they have only relational proof, no actual proof), then do I not believe this exists? Science has not proved the existence of alien (non-terran) life, and yet I am capable of extending my mind beyond the scope of what science has proven.
The classic story of the ball and the tree comes to mind: you throw a ball at a tree. According to scientific rules, the ball MUST travel 1/2 the distance before travelling the 2nd 1/2 of the distance to hit the tree. And after travelling the 1st half, it must travel 1/2 of 1/2 the distance (1/4) to reach the tree. And then again (1/8, 1/16th, 1/32nd the distance). So, according to these rules, which do apply scientifically (every distance can be forever broken in half), the ball can NEVER hit the tree.
And no, people being normal nutjobs, irrespective of their beliefs is not news. But that never stops me from poking fun at the fact.
There's plenty of evidence for the existence of love - in the way that it changes the behaviour of those who have caught it. We see an effect. This applies to other species too, not just our own. That's not parallel to the *claims* of religion. It's a sideline argument - I'm not disputing the existence of religion. People in love are not evidence of a godhead or any such equivalent. Rather, religion can cause the same effect as love - perhaps a case could be developed that religion is in itself a mega development of the emotion of love? Interesting.
ReplyDeleteYou appear to have mistaken my word "evidence" for the word "proof" when I said:
"The lack of evidence for something is indeed valid evidence for the lack of something."
It doesn't prove lack of existence, but it is part of the balance of argument to be taken into account when deciding a position i.e. it is part of the evidence.
In reality science never proves anything 100% and freely admits this. It constructs a working hypothesis, which remains in force until it is found to fail, which then provokes the development of a new working hypothesis. To be otherwise would be dogma. Science has always looked for a way to test its theories and those that fail the test fall by the wayside.
There is very strong evidence for the existence of black holes and quite a few have been identified. The nearest is 6000 light years away and was the subject of an amusing bet between Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne. I'm not sure why relational proof is a problem for you. Our ability to map out the algorithm that defines the future movement of the planets in our solar system was discovered on that relational basis... and having theories like this were responsible for costing Galileo his freedom. Actually, this part of the discussion reminds me of Laplace and Napoleon.
Science has not found any evidence of sentient alien life, but a very very very small percentage of possible places to look have been explored. If we've expanded our search to cover a great percentage of the possible places and still find no evidence, then we'd have to consider otherwise. I'm not otherwise sure why such a parallel is being invoked and for the melodramatic analogy of Occam's razor.... lol! Science extends its collective mind beyond what has been proven, this being a part of how new things are discovered or age-old questions come to be answered.
I do like the logical paradox you quote - the arrow paradox created by Zeno. However, there are several "solutions" for the paradox and some have been around for a few thousand years. Interestingly, both general relativity and quantum mechanics - which do not normally play well together - offer solutions. Quantum mechanics... now there's a topic to make the mind boggle!
Nice. Good post. I see your point on evidence vs proof. I also agree that there are many elegant solutions to the arrow paradox. The beauty, as I'm sure you'd agree, is that the paradox points out a fundamental flaw in logic / science: it is a description of reality, not actual reality which science can provide, and there is always a limitation in a description, no matter how elegant.
ReplyDeleteI especially like your idea of religion as a form of "mega love". The psychological analysis of people's behaviors from this point of view would be fascinating, especially considering how a person is driven to do the most ridiculous things while in love :)
My issue with relational proof is not the statement: "because I know this, I can assume that". You are quite correct that this is how we extend our boundaries. I disagree with the hypocrisy of "I know this, so I can assume that" but then changing the "assume that" as "know that". Often people who follow the scientific way of thought confuse what is "known" for "what is thus proven". Assumptions made by scientists in the past now can be seen as clearly incorrect, but at the time they were "known" to be true.
My arguments (and jibes) are not really against science, but more against what I've come to see as a "religion" of science, as it were.
I believe we can both agree that religious folks are almost invariably unwilling to conceive that possibly, just possibly, they are mistaken in their understanding of the universe (aka the understanding that a guy in a white robe has made the universe and now watches over it). I only claim the same of science.
With the birth of science came hand-in-hand, the birth of the religion of science, the unwavering belief that what science and rationality state are correct, and anything which falls outside of those bounds is, to use a religious term, heresy.
I would say the arguments often used by scientists, and yes, atheists, are as much arguments from ignorance, as we often find in religious arguments: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance
"Because I cannot prove there is a god, therefore I can assume there isn't one."
Your argument, that "Because I cannot prove there is a god, I can PROBABLY ASSUME there isn't one," is not technically atheism. Atheism is, quite literally, a belief system which rejects a God / Gods outright. Your argument (that is your argument, right?) is much more in tune with apatheism or methodological naturalism. I guess a billboard with "Methodological Naturalism" on it wouldn't have the same impact. Too long.
Your own argument around sentient life, is, in a way, an excellent argument for the possible existence of God. "well, it IS a big universe. Maybe if we keep looking...."
On a personal note, while we disagree on several points, I would like to say that I appreciate your style of arguing, as it seems very compatible with mine. I believe that without debate, we cannot grow. I believe from your arguments you believe this is the same for you.
PS: I thought the Occam's razor reference was an excellent metaphor :)
ReplyDelete