$10,000 and growing fast
11.12.09 | Duncan | 
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We have been overwhelmed with the incredible response from New Zealand, and have sailed past our original target of $10,000 in less than 48 hours. More importantly, we have started the discussion around the web, and hopefully at dining tables and in living rooms all over our beautiful country.
Of course we now doubled our target, so we need your help to continue spreading the message. Post on Facebook, tweet about it, get involved in the huge number of discussions going on around the web, and talk to your friends and family about it. Remember this campaign is about positivity, and we need to respect peoples alternative points of view, just as we hope they will respect ours. It is easy to get caught up in what can understandably be a very personal and emotional issue for some people.
Simon will be appearing on Close Up tonight, TV1 at 7pm to discuss the campaign. It should also be posted up on the TVNZ website later tonight.
Thanks to everyone who has sent us positive messages, and offered their support. We are trying really hard to answer all your questions, hopefully we will have more time over the weekend to do that!
127 Responses to “$10,000 and growing fast”
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Pages: « 1 2 [3] 4 5 » Show All
December 12th, 2009 at 12:53 am
It’s always futile arguing with faith-addicts. They’re driven by a desire to satisy their emotional needs and they’re not interested in learning about the true nature of reality.
The notion that they’re actually living in a world without a god isn’t merely unpalatable to them, it’s unacceptable. So ultimately, they’ll persist in believing whatever they want to believe, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
December 12th, 2009 at 2:01 am
I thought people would not be able to donate much coz of the recession.
December 12th, 2009 at 6:13 am
@Thomas- you say that without god-”whatever you or anyone else does is ultimately meaningless so you might just as well end it all now.”
Do you realise how sad this sounds? I am glad I dont a faith like yours and dont have this attitude..
just about every second page of the first half of the Christian bible has God killing somebody! best example of smiting 70’000 people in a single verse 1 Chronicles 21:9-14 …which is not really giving a good example..Your christian god is not fair and just.. but to me its fiction so I dont loose sleep…
December 12th, 2009 at 7:03 am
I keep hearing comments along the lines of “all this money could have been spent on something worthwhile/charity/the poor” from christians.
I take this to mean that they feel the same way about any religious advertisements and that the church should stop wasting this money and spend it on the poor and needy.
Or are they being hypocritical?
December 12th, 2009 at 7:30 am
If this campaign generated as little controversy as a “Jesus Saves” message would then it would be a total waste of money.
The response it has provoked is proof of it’s necessity.
December 12th, 2009 at 8:03 am
We don’t need a bus ad campaign, the second coming is at hand!
December 12th, 2009 at 8:35 am
@Thomas,
Evolution has been shown to occur in the lab.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment
December 12th, 2009 at 10:00 am
@Phil “Glad you enjoyed it. Sorry if it got a bit robust. I suppose you expected it.”.
Phil, don’t apologise when you are arguing rationally against a faithhead. The “robustness” of this discussion is nothing compared to what you find on PZ Myers’ Phayngula or RichardDawkins.net. You have no reason to aplogise. On the contrary, get stuck in!
@ivan “all this money should be spent elsewhere”.
I can spend my money how I like. There is a large church sign down my road that has constantly changing inane sayings that I have to drive past every day. This is typical of churches everywhere. It’s high time there were atheist messages out there to counter the woo. Don’t tell me I should not be spending my money on this!
December 12th, 2009 at 10:14 am
“For those who claim that there is no evidence for God – what evidence would convince you ?”
For example: that prayer was more effective than no prayer. I bet those miners stuck in a mine wished they had instead prayed that the mine didn’t collapse on them in the first place!
“all that it leaves you with is agnosticism, not atheism, so the whole “bus campaign” is misguided.”
Did you not see the word ‘probably’? It’s not exactly hidden.
“”Who knows ? Maybe God does exist. We have not seen Him but that proves nothing so … keep looking cos that could prove to be the most important pursuit in your life””
Him? What about Her? or It? We have also not seen Santa, the Devil, invisible pink unicorns, sparkling vampires and flying pasta. To spend all your life looking for such things might be considered a tad delusional. How about just getting on with life here on tangible ole planet Earth? Look for new batteries for the remote control instead.
“can you prove the theory of evolution that way ?”
Ah….Thomas. You seem not to realise that science never proves anything. It’s all about the probabilities, man. See http://notjustatheory.com.
“My faith is anything but ‘blind’. It is’ reasonable’ and supported by arguments that work for me and are convincing enough. ”
If only you could articulate just one of these arguments! Perhaps they are ‘convincing enough’ to someone who doesn’t take much to convince. Say, I ‘ve got this friend in Nigeria. He’s a banker with the government, and has just discovered this massive fund that he’s sure the government has forgotten about, and he needs your help!
“honestly, I fail to see how the thought of being an accident of nature can fill anyone with joy, hope etc .how positive is the idea that human existence is ultimately meaningless”
Significant words here: that you fail to see. It is your failing. Human existence is as meaningful as a tree’s or a bird’s. Like them, you’re just a really complicated mechanism for passing on your genes. If you can’t see the merit in enjoying all that living you get to do in the meantime, eating food, being nice to people etc, then that’s your failing. It’s a shame that you have to subscribe to a story made up by someone else in order to enjoy your life.
December 12th, 2009 at 11:16 am
I am hoping to see a huge groundswell of support for this. For far too long non-believers have had to put up with the hatred, bigotry, disunity and oppression carried out in the name of religion and the “one true belief”. The suffering of millions upon millions of people that this has caused. The silent majority despise this hypocrisy, and it’s time to be speak up and demolish the elevated status of this superstitious bunkum called religion.
December 12th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Ok, for all the Religious people commenting here, a lack of knowledge about something does NOT imply there is a God. Just because science doesn’t know absolutely everything about the universe does not mean you can fill the gap by saying ‘God dunit!’
And to every one saying things along the lines of ‘this is weak, why use probably? You are not certain blah blah blah”:
Atheism is the lack of faith in a god/gods, so when people say Atheist they tend to mean ‘Agnostic Atheist’ an agnostic atheist is a person who believes the probability of a God is so small that it most likely doesn’t exist. Now, im sure there are some Gnostic atheists out there, gnostic meaning they believe 100% there is no god…but that’s just as Dogmatic as religion itself…
December 12th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
I’m a committed Christian, and I think this advertising campaign is doing wonders for opening up the debate on Christianity vs atheism in NZ (not sure why other forms of religion haven’t come into the debate, but hey).
In my opinion, its pointless arguing whether God exists or not. Everyone has their own belief on this, and its not going to be swayed by what someone else posts on a web forum.
Instead, people have to come to that decision for themselves, based on their own experiences, what they read and research, and the impact of people living out their lives around them.
For myself, the conclusion I’ve come to is that God is for real, and I want to follow Him with everything I have. Others will be different, and I respect that. God gives us a free will.
What I don’t respect so much is people who jump to conclusions without giving it serious consideration. Jesus was a man who came to this earth proclaiming a message which was quite preposterous, and definitely life-defining. He was quite unlike any human being before or since. For that reason, he deserves some time and effort to investigate whether he was a lunatic, a liar, or who he really claimed to be.
December 12th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
@benji
If you believe in a god without evidence (and there is no objective evidence for god) then to be consistent you should believe in every other thing that could be imagined that also has no evidence.
Why pick the xtian god out of the infinite other imaginary things?
If you use subjective evidence for god, how do you tell reality from fantasy, or truth from insanity?
December 12th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Cyberguy, thanks for the encouragement to “get stuck in” I have spent many an entertaining hour reading the posts on Phayngula and RichardDawkins.net but make this observation: a lot of the posts seem pretty testosterone fueled and polarising. Calling believers “faith heads” for instance is derisive, like calling muslims “towel heads”. These are human beings we are dealing with and to have any hope of persuading them we should not be alienating them. And if we are not trying to persuade then why are we bothering at all?
Personally I’m glad I came to atheism through a sincere faith. I know how difficult it is to escape from these mind-traps. Religions are well-evolved memes and contain their own safeguards against doubt, like an immune system. Its damned hard to get a hearing for a competing point of view. Best be gentle and respectful.
And No Comment actually has a good idea when he suggests this campaign should send some money to Samoa. They must be feeling like god has abandoned them right now. Human empathy and compassion is the real source of help in such situations. I’ll donate if such gift is set up from NZ atheists. Anyone with me?
December 12th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
If a belief in the supernatural makes you a commited christian then please , commit yourself to the nearest asylum.
December 12th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
@Phil
I think people who complain about how some atheist messages may offend the people we are trying to persuade are totally missing the point. They object to the “tone” of the message as being counter-productive.
Many atheists would agree that older religious believers are generally a lost cause, because their minds are already made up. It is the younger generation we have to influence in order to generate a complete paradigm shift in how religion is perceived. And for reaching youth, tone is important – and the more derisory and contemptuous of religion the better!
The reason is this – on the subject of paradigm shifts, Kuhn said, using a quote from Max Planck: “a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it”.
Younger people are more influenced by how others see them. In this case, public ridicule and deliberate contempt of an idea, combined with clearly explained derision toward those who hold the idea to be true will certainly cause young people to think twice about subscribing to the same concept. It’s about making religion look un-cool and for brain-dead losers.
We need to shift the balance away from the default setting of pandering to religion. Hopefully this might open up the middle ground for polite, well-informed, quietly-spoken atheists such as Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers to be more widely viewed as the clear-thinking moderates that they are, instead of continuously and falsely being painted as “radical” and “strident” by our opponents.
In a paradigm shift, it is all about the popularity of the idea among the new generation that determines its eventual dominance. This leads to the understanding that we need to get more atheist billboards and bus campaigns out there, etc, and to be very “loud and proud”.
If I cause offence, then good!!! The shows I am succeeding.
No accommodation, no prisoners.
December 12th, 2009 at 10:41 pm
Well Cyberguy, it seems I am an exception to your rule that older believers are a “lost cause”.
Basically I thought my way out of my long-held beliefs after much reading and questioning. What you are proposing sounds more like propoganda and brainwashing. The very methods used by religions to ensure conformity.
Bugger that, give me critical thinking any day! What sort of non believers would result? Shallow thinkers vulnerable to peer pressure, not able to think for themselves. Vulnerable to persuasion by irrational memes. Fragile.
I think you and I will have to beg to differ. We are probably speaking to different audiences anyway. You do it your way, I’ll do it mine.
December 13th, 2009 at 2:26 am
Good on you for questioning the beliefs you were brought up in – for most people (myself included) it is not an easy thing to do.
You misunderstand me. My ideas are not propaganda and certainly not brainwashing!!! More like marketing, or focusing on what will give the better long-term results.
I quoted Planck, “a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it”.
Rephrased – ““atheism does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it”.
In other words, it is usually futile trying to convince someone whose mind is already made up. However, on the internet, the whole world is watching!
So stupid ideas must be shown up to be stupid in order to demonstrate that fact to others who may be reading.
Another reason that I think it is important to argue very strongly in favour of atheism, is that atheists have been quiet and polite for centuries in the face of religious hostility (and worse!) and it has not got us any respect. Nor has it sufficiently reduced the hold of religion in society. It is way past time to try a new tactic.
You say “We are probably speaking to different audiences anyway. You do it your way, I’ll do it mine.” Agreed.
December 13th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
Cyberguy,
“Marketing”, “focusing”, you have better chosen your words young Skywalker…The first version sounded like you were advocating some form of cyber-bullying, something I could never be a party to. No idea, no matter how “correct” it might be or scientifically verifiable, is worth increasing human suffering for. I guess that makes me a humanist.
My main reason for promoting atheism is that, in order to deal with the challenges now facing our species our model of reality has to be as close to actual reality as possible. If we have false assumptions we will get policies and strategies wrong. Notions that we are somehow seperate from our ecosystem for instance or that the worthy will all be whisked away in a “rapture” are instilled by religion and palpably false.
There are better models of what drives human behaviour than religious ones (sin, virtue) and, as we are our own main problem, it will pay us to update our models. Abandoning superstition is vital. I think we can agree on that.
December 14th, 2009 at 11:10 pm
@ Cyberguy
As I said, there’s not much point aguing about whether God exists or not. You believe God is imaginary, I don’t. I’d rather discuss why you have those beliefs than argue whether they are right or wrong.
But, a question for you: do you believe a man named Jesus Christ walked on the earth approx 2000 years ago?
@ Cambell
No, I never said believing in the supernatural makes me a committed Christian.
But I’m genuinely intrigued – why do you associate belief in the supernatural with being mentally unstable?
Cheers,
benji
December 14th, 2009 at 11:34 pm
@ Madeleine #68
Re: your comment about the effectiveness of prayer.
I was at a Christian conference a few years ago, and one of the speakers asked if there was someone in the audience with an injured ankle. A guy (lets call him James) who had a broken ankle got up on his crutches and went to the stage. I think his ankle had been broken for about 2 weeks at that stage.
The speaker said “James, God wants to heal your ankle right now”. He started praying and asked everyone in the audience to pray out loud. We did this for 3-4 minutes. Then we stopped and the speaker asked James how his ankle was.
James said it was quite good… He then proceeded to put down his crutches and walk off the stage, just as any normal person would! It was amazing, an absolute miracle!!! It would’ve been awesome if you were amongst the 400 or so there that night.
December 14th, 2009 at 11:44 pm
Hi benji,
While you wait for Cyberguy’s response I’ll give you mine.
I believe god is imaginary because the only place there is any evidence of his existence is in the imagination of the host. Yes I mean host as in a parasitic idea that infects minds, like a computer virus. We infect each other, we infect our kids. Where did you get your infection? Peer group? Family? Now I know you didn’t make it up yourself, its too formulaic.
To be fair I know that all ideas (we call them memes) are parasitic in that they are like software that runs on our hardware (brain). Including atheism. But a good atheist will be trying to defrag his hard drive and clear out the clutter of beliefs that are not based on evidence and experience. I’m not including religious experience, which I’ve had myself, as its a kind of self induced halucination. Intense longing can make you believe pretty much anything. Our modelling software is intensely powerful.
Which brings me to the “mentally unstable” question. Not my words and a bit harsh in most instances. If you are living in a distorted reality (we all are to a degree) you are apt to make some non-adaptive choices. Extremists hurt themselves and others, average believers are selective in the scriptures they adhere to and get by very well. Hey, there are even a few pearls I follow myself having tested them (do unto others etc.) Just don’t swallow the whole thing, there are some real sharp bits in there.
This Jesus chap may well have existed but I doubt his second name was Christ “excuse me Mr Christ, your table is ready”
My two cents, have a fabulous day.
December 15th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
@benji
“As I said, there’s not much point aguing about whether God exists or not.”
Wrong. There are many very good reasons to argue about it – mainly because people who believe in their imaginary friend influence policies at every level in society – from school boards to medical ethics committess to national politics. And that misapprehension affects me directly.
“You believe God is imaginary, I don’t.”
No, I don’t believe god is imaginary. Rather, I know for a fact that there is no objective evidence for god, and consequently there is no reason to think that any gods exist. Read those two previous sentences carefully, because they are two different things. One is a positive claim; the other is a statement about a lack of convincing evidence.
And don’t pull up Pascal’s Wager at this point, because that tired old chestnut had been totally refuted in SO many different ways over the centuries!
I have a website with two specific pamphlets I have written that explain this in more detal than what I can go into here. See http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~edmin/Pamphlets/ – in particular “Pamphlet 01 – What is Atheism.pdf” and “Pamphlet 03 – Scientific Method and the Burden of Proof.pdf”. They might help you understand better.
“I’d rather discuss why you have those beliefs than argue whether they are right or wrong.”
But that is the whole point. It is totally important WHAT IS TRUE!!! We cannot just decide for ourselves what is true – we have to find out. And we must accept what science tells us, whether we like the answer or not.
You keep going on about belief. Atheism is NOT a belief!!!! It is a complete ABSENCE of a belief. As has been said 100′s of times before – atheism is a belief in the same way that OFF is a television channel, or baldness is a hairstyle, or not collecting stamps is a hobby. You are projecting your own lack of understanding onto atheists and getting confused about it.
Hard as it may be for you to understand, I don’t think I actually have any “beliefs” – I certainly can’t think of any. I have evidence for or against something, so I make up my mind based on that. I cannot think of any evidence-free ideas that I take as being true.
Maybe you could help me on that.
– suggest a few.
“But, a question for you: do you believe a man named Jesus Christ walked on the earth approx 2000 years ago?”
There’s that word “belief” again.
There MAY have been a middle-eastern Jewish philosopher called Yesua who lived about 2000 years ago, who was the basis of the four inconsistent and contradictory gospels in the bible, and a few other apocryphal texts, written decades after he was around – but the evidence for a real Yesua is insubstantial. About the same level of evidence as for a real life Robin Hood or King Arthur. Saul/Paul (a power-hungry individual who never actually met Yesua) did a big beat-up about him, and really got the chrisian religion started when otherwise it would have just naturally faded away. Paul only needed a few folk stories about Yesua to really get the ball rolling – so Yesua may be a fiction.
But it is really not relevant whether Yesua was real or not. If he was real, he was a bronze-age religious man of his time and place. He did not preach anything special that was not already known in other earlier religions. Likewise, the miracles associated with him already exist in other earlier religions.
If you are reaching for C.S. Lewis at this point, don’t. Yesua’s teachings and status hinge on whether a god exists or not. And since there is no evidence for any gods, most of these 2000-year-old teachings are simply mistaken.
We don’t need god or Yesua for us to be good moral people, or to treat our fellow humans with care and respect. In fact if you really read the bible, it is just as well that we do ignore most of it.
December 15th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Hey Cyberguy…..SMOKIN’…!
December 15th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
Benji,
In response to your reference to a “miracle cure”, its a pity these results can not be repeated in clinical trials.
See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4681771.stm
or: http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/175986/prayer_doesnt_help_heart_surgery_patients_study/index.html
or just google it.
December 15th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
@Phil
Thank you, Sir.
I deliberately try to write concisely, getting as much content into the smallest space and using the plainest language possible.
Trouble is, I often find my carefully-worded arguments scare away the theists and I don’t get a reply.
December 15th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
Cyberguy,
By executing such a withering attack on the belief system you may be triggering the “immune response” of the meme that I was referring to before. They have been told the “devil” will try to “tempt” them and that they will be persecuted. Thats why I try not to make them feel too persecuted. That and that I’m a softy.
Admirable work none the less.
December 15th, 2009 at 11:31 pm
@Phil
Regardless of who I am responding to, I generally reply being mindful that others will read it, and hoping to make any lurking fence-sitters think more deeply about their own worldview.
And of course hoping to persuade those lurkers that atheism is the sensible option.
December 16th, 2009 at 10:03 am
In simplistic terms God is the answer and religion is how the gullible are exploited for the benefit of the priests. Essentially religion is just like politics, the aquisition of wealth and power without merit.
I would suggest for a start that Marx’s ‘Religion is the opiate of the masses’ is a more apt slogan for the back of bus.
The ‘God probably doesnt exist’ concept is just a waste of time. If you truly wanted to fan the flames of revolution then start a campaign for the removal of GOD from the national anthem, followed up by removing non profit / charitable status from all religions. Hit them where the purveyors of religion hurt the most, in the pocket.
December 16th, 2009 at 10:18 am
Better slogan:
Religion is the opiate of the masses – Karl Marx. Say NO! to drugs.