As followers of our campaign will know, in late 2009 we hit a roadblock when NZ Bus denied us the chance to put ads that questioned belief in god on the sides of their buses. To quickly recap these events, this is what happened…

In December 2009 we were going through the process of organising bus advertising on NZ Bus buses through the agency that handles their advertising. Following initial informal agreement, and once we reached the stage of organising specific details of the campaign, we received unexpected news from NZ Bus via their ad agency. They basically said no, we wont run the ads.

This decision appeared to us to be a case of discrimination under the Human Rights Act 1993. The act states clearly that businesses are unable to discriminate in the provision of services based on certain grounds of discrimination. One of the grounds of discrimination is “ethical belief, which means the lack of a religious belief, whether in respect of a particular religion or religions or all religions.”

In response to NZ Bus’ decision we lodged a formal complaint with the Human Rights Commission (HRC). The first step in the formal process for complaints is for the HRC to try and resolve the issue with mediation between the two parties. However we didn’t get very far with this option with NZ Bus.

The next step available to us in the complaints process was to take our case to the Human Rights Review Tribunal. This now becomes a more formal legal process in that the Tribunal is able to enforce the law to prohibit companies from discriminating. Of course, taking a case to the Tribunal requires legal representation, which as expected is a costly endeavor. There is yet another organisation, the Office of Human Rights Proceedings that provides legal representation and covers all associated costs involved with bringing a case to the Tribunal. They don’t just do this for anyone however – there is a process whereby they assess the worth of cases in terms of legal value and chance of success among other criteria.

We are very pleased to report that the Office agreed to take on our case against NZ Bus. This is a huge win as without their support, it is unlikely we would have found the resources required to represent ourselves.

Now, we must wait. Tribunal cases take a long time, and proceedings are not expected to begin until 2012 at the earliest.

I wish to thank again everyone who donated initially for the bus ads and also for the later billboard campaign. Your support is very, very much appreciated! We still have a pot of money stowed away for a bus ad campaign if/when the ruling is returned in our favour.

We’re raising money to cover the costs of transportation and re-installation of our existing billboards to put them in other cities around New Zealand. It’s important that these messages reach not only the large cities, but those in smaller cities as well.

Currently the most nominated areas are:

1. Napier / Hastings
2. Hamilton
3. Nelson
4. South Auckland

Where do you want to see the billboards? Let us know by donating and then typing in the Comment field what city you’d like to see the billboards in.

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.

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!

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!

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).

Next we have the Stuff/NZPA article, which also includes a link to the TVNZ Breakfast video. There’s also the TV3 Sunrise article and video which follows a similar line.

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.”

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!

Stay tuned…

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.

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.