An atheist bus campaign has been in full effect for some time in the UK, raising over £100,000, and now the American Humanist Association is getting in on the fun by launching similar campaigns in America, just in time for (the war on) Christmas season.

The AHA campaign is placing ads on buses in Washington, DC that read “Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake,” and feature a person in a Santa Claus outfit with a skeptical look on their face. The idea of the project, like in London, is to raise awareness of agnostic, atheist and any other non-theist views in a largely religious world.

The message has also already appeared in the New York Times and Washington Post, and will be followed by showing up on buses all over Washington, DC. Fred Edwords, a spokesman for the AHA said that “Our reason for doing it during the holidays is there are an awful lot of agnostics, atheists and other types of non-theists who feel a little alone during the holidays because of its association with traditional religion.”

From whybelieveinagod.com:

“Humanists have always understood that you don’t need a god to be good,” said Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association. “So that’s the point we’re making with this advertising campaign. Morality doesn’t come from religion. It’s a set of values embraced by individuals and society based on empathy, fairness, and experience.”

Not surprisingly, religious groups in the United States are not pleased with the campaign. Tim Wildmon of the American Family Association said bluntly, “It’s a stupid ad. How do we define ‘good’ if we don’t believe in God? God in his word, the Bible, tells us what’s good and bad and right and wrong. If we are each ourselves defining what’s good, it’s going to be a crazy world.”

Wildmon obviously does not understand the whole point of the ad. There are many of us (even if it is a small percentage) that don’t believe in God, and don’t get our morality from the Bible. I for one have written on multiple occassions about atheists and morality, and Mr. Wildmon would be hard pressed to prove that I have no morals because I didn’t get them from God.

The AFA is choosing to take a very childish stance on this by basically saying that if you’re not doing it our way, you’re not doing it right — no matter if we both end up in the exact same spot.

I think this is a great ad campaign in theory, since I would love for there to be more awareness. If people weren’t made to feel alone and ashamed in this country for not believing in a god, then maybe more people would admit that they have severe doubts about the religion they pretend to believe in.

But in practice, I fear that this will cause a massive backlash in today’s America, and we just don’t have the numbers to put up a fight. When all of the conservative Christian groups get their hands on this one, especially during the Christmas season, it may get ugly. Once Ann Coulter, Brent Bozell, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly get their hands on this, they will call their troops to arms and distort the actual message of the ads to get them all fired up. At that point, us atheists will have to spend so much money, time and effort just to try to get our point across that we’ll end up exactly where we started, despite all of the effort.

Hopefully, though, the ads can be tasteful and non-offensive enough to these people that the point can be made. That’s a distinct line that I think atheists need to be walking right now. It’s so easy to get caught up in the moment and do something big for the shock value, but the right move is to create tasteful ads that are not offensive, so that they can inform without drawing protest. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but as a group, we need to understand that baby-steps is the way to go.

As I’ve said before, I’m not a supporter of the “war on Christmas.” I like Christmas as a traditional celebration. I think it’s up to each individual or family to determine the religiousness of Christmas. But seeing the word “Christmas” does not bother me. In that respect, I’d rather have seen this ad campaign run at a less divided time of the year. I’m an atheist, but I like Christmas. Christmas stopped being a religious holiday a long time ago. Now it’s just a time to get presents, enjoy a day off from school or work, and for me, eat a leg of lamb on Christmas day shrimp scampi on Christmas Eve. It’s just my family’s tradition. Nothing to do with religion, but I love Christmas for what it is to me.

In the long run, I hope this campaign is successful. To me, successful is that it gets some media coverage, makes people talk about it, and doesn’t get drowned out by the voices of protesters — both in person and in the media.

If we can get people talking about atheism like it’s something to be accepted and understood, it will be our biggest accomplishment in years. From there, we can only get more involved and included, and that’s all I really want for Christmas.

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