We’re keen to show some billboard love to the rest of our fine country, although we need your help. This post will explain how we will handle new donations that are received from today. They will be separate from past donations and will only be used for billboards.
We will collect tax-refundable donations centrally through this website and the Givealittle service, just like before. The goal is to raise enough money to put as many billboards as possible in cities outside of Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.
The beauty of billboards is that for a relatively small amount of money it is possible to re-locate an existing canvas to a new site in a different city. This will be the first way we’ll use the donated money – to move existing billboards to different cities. Depending on how much we fundraise, the second way we’ll use the donated money will be to commission the printing of additional billboards so we can cover a wider range of sites and cities.
To let us know what cities are most important to you guys, please tell us through the Givealittle site. After you donate you are able to enter a Comment. In this comment write the city in which you’d like to see billboards. We will tally up each time a city is mentioned and work out a plan to bring billboards to the most requested cities. Our decision will also need to be based on the availability of sites and the costs involved, so we’ll need to reserve the right to choose the cities/towns to go to first.
I look forward to seeing which cities out there require the boards the most! Thanks for all the support guys – it’s very much appreciated.
We now have a super sweet billboard generator set up so you can see roughly how your creations will look. Access it here: http://www.nogod.org.nz/generator/
Feel free to share the links around the net. Also, please be polite and clever – it’s the best way to get the message across. Being offensive is not persuasive and we may delete duplicate or offensive billboards.
Some great suggestions for billboards rolling in already – keep them up, and also tell us what ones you like the most!
You may have noticed that legal proceedings with NZ Bus are taking a while. We have too. The Office of Human Rights Proceedings is still reviewing our case, and we’ll update you with news on this matter as early as possible.
In the meantime, we all want to see atheist messages out there in public. To achieve this, we are spending approximately half the donated money – around $10,000 – on a billboard campaign, starting now. This amount will allow for billboards in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. There will also be funds allocated to relocation of these billboards, so that after being up in the main centres they can later be moved to smaller cities relatively cheaply. We’re pleased how the use of billboards allows us to advertise in smaller centres in this way, as so many people asked about this.
The remainder of the money will be saved (with tasty interest accruing) for either a bus campaign once the discrimination proceedings are finalised with NZ Bus, or to fund additional billboards.
We are also pleased to be able to address one of the other most discussed aspects of our campaign – the actual slogan. For the billboards we’ve decided to use new slogans, while retaining the original “No God” slogan as a logo for the campaign. The branding already built up around the “No God” slogan gives us a great opportunity to explore some other catchy phrases that express atheism and get people to stop and think.
But wait, there’s more! We want you to come up with slogans and then vote on the best ones to be used on billboards. Leave comments below on the blog, on the Facebook post, tweet us, or simply email us your ideas for new slogans.
There will also be a billboard generator set up soon so you can see a mock up of how your creation will look as a billboard. We’ll let you know when this is ready.
Here are some potential candidates to get y’all started…
Over one-third of New Zealanders are good without God. You can be too. [or: Are you good without God? Over a million kiwis are.]
We need God like a fish needs a bicycle.
If there was a God, then one of his key mistakes was making me an Atheist. [paraphrased Gervais quote]
Think Rationally. Accept Evidence. Reject Faith.
Question everything, including pixies, leprechauns and God.
We are all Atheists about most religions. Some of us just go one god further. Atheism
Are you also Agnostic about the existence of Unicorns or Zeus? Get off the fence. Atheism
When you understand why you dismiss other gods you will understand why I dismiss yours. Atheism
To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today. – Isaac Asimov
It will yet be the proud boast of women that they never contributed a line to the Bible. – George W. Foote
Question with boldness even the existence of a god – Thomas Jefferson
Don’t believe in God? You’re not alone.
You can be good without God.
Why believe in God? Just be good for goodness’ sake.
In the beginning, Man created God.
Looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with…go!
There’s been a flurry of media activity over the past two days since we announced that NZ Bus is rejecting the Campaign’s ads, and thereby trying to silence a positive atheist message in public. Here’s a brief selection of the coverage…
First off we have the Stuff/Dominion Post coverage of the story, complete with poll. The poll results are rather interesting, with 93.4% of respondents (when last checked) saying that this decision by NZ Bus to reject the ads is “unfair and discriminatory” (standard Internet poll qualifications apply of course).
In the blog world, No Right Turn thinks the decision is “blatantly unlawful” and calls for concerned people to communicate their thoughts to NZ Bus. There’s also a great post from a fellow called Frank, an “unashamed Christian” who while obviously not supporting the exact message of the Campaign, supports our right to get it out there. And last but not least, Brian Edwards summarises the recent events and astutely notes “the sure and certain fact that nothing can draw more attention to a commercial than banning it.”
This is a brief announcement to say that we’re still here, and we’re still committed to getting atheist ads on buses!
We are currently in negotiations with the bus and ad companies, and the administrative side of things is taking longer than expected. We hope to be able to tell you more details in the near future and provide a solid time frame for the buses.
Thank you again for your ongoing support. The many positive messages we have received from New Zealanders have been a great confirmation of the worth of this project. We can’t wait to get the actual ads out there!
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone from the NZ Atheist Bus Campaign! Below are some reflections on the season from Tim, another person involved in the campaign…
I just got wished a merry Dawkins-Mass from a Christian friend. This got me thinking – what do atheists actually celebrate at Christmas. We do not celebrate the birth of Christ. We also certainly don’t celebrate the birth of Richard Dawkins (or Charles Darwin for that matter).
Looking at the history of the festival, Christmas is actually not the date where most Christian scholars believe Jesus was born. The date for Christmas was originally based on an ancient festival – the winter solstice. This is a celebration of the days stopping getting shorter and starting to get longer. An indication of the coming of summer, the ending of winter, or the light at the end of the tunnel. Many cultures use the solstice to mark the life and death rebirth cycle of their deities.
Given we’re in New Zealand, and are at the summer solstice, this makes Christmas for Kiwi atheists doubly strange – neither of the two traditional reasons for the holiday are meaningful. So what do we celebrate?
Christmas has always been a time for family and friends to get together, eat good food, and drink good wine. It’s a defined time where everyone has time off work. Time to make the effort to come to a shared place. Do we need a reason beyond that?
*tag* back to Simon…
I don’t think we do need a reason beyond that. Certainly coming together as family and friends to share, celebrate and strengthen relationship bonds is a great reason. Just as Christianity has redefined the festival to meet its needs, the increasingly secular population has done, and is continuing to do, the same. Christmas is just as much, if not more, a secular holiday/festival in 2009.
I’d like to end with the wise words of the talented Derren Brown, as he reflects on ‘being good for goodness’ sake’…
As ever, the journey is the thing, and should be enjoyed accordingly. To forgive purely because it is nicer to forgive, and to do so when it’s a tough call; to try to speak only kindly of those we know because it is preferable to do so; to enjoy the successes of others because living thus is more enjoyable than the stress of living resentfully: such kind things make us better, lovelier people. And to try to live this way for its own merits, without invoking a supernatural reason for doing so, is to celebrate our humanity and to give kindness back its teeth.
I wish all readers out there a very merry Christmas and, since we are in the southern hemisphere, hope that you can all enjoy drinking white wine or orange juice in the sun with family and friends.
Due to questioning of the use of ‘probably’ in the slogan, we thought it wise to write a blog post to explain the idea further. The 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.
Theists on the other hand think they know the one true god out of the literally thousands that have ‘existed’. And, in fact, they often refer to this god as their Personal God – one personal god for everyone. This is interesting as a recent study has shown that peoples’ own personal beliefs tend to align very well with what they think God thinks. Of course there’s no reason to think that God exists in anything more than a person’s imagination.
Yesterday was a huge day for the campaign in media coverage, donations, and discussion online and on the radio. I’d like to throw out a big thank you to all those who donated and all those who emailed in positive messages of support, or suggestions for improving and expanding the campaign. Much appreciated!
Just to reiterate, our new target is $20,000. We’re nearly three quarters of the way there and still climbing!
Please continue to support/share the campaign on Facebook, on Twitter, and just by talking to friends and family about it. That is one of the main points after all – to raise awareness of atheism and humanism in NZ. To show that it’s perfectly fine to not believe in a deity and that you can be good without one.
If churches want the right "to influence public opinion and political decision making" then we must critique the foundations of their claims 2 weeks ago
You may have noticed that legal proceedings with NZ Bus are taking a while. We have too. The Office of Human Rights Proceedings is still reviewing our case, and we’ll update you with news on this matter as early as possible.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone from the NZ Atheist Bus Campaign! Below are some reflections on the season from Tim, another person involved in the campaign…
