Dundas Square

Mock-up image of Atheist Bus Ad at Dundas Square - Toronto

Hey everyone, here is an update on where we’re at with the Canadian Atheist Bus Campaign, what’s coming up, and some news about a Calgary counter advert campaign.

Ottawa Atheist Bus Ads:

We’ve signed a contract and our production artwork has been submitted, the ads are scheduled to be posted on April 6th. There will be 24 King Size bus ads (the big ones on the sides of buses).

Next Step in Advertising:

We have a little bit of money left to advertise with, those who have any suggestions on the best way to spend it please post in the comments. I personally would like to either advertise quotes on the interiors of buses and subways or put a poster up on Dundas Square as seen in the mock-up picture I created to the right. Dundas Square has always seen religious groups advertising through word-of-mouth and fliers and just yesterday I saw a group attempting to convert passerby’ers to Islam. Maybe it’s time to spread a little bit of atheist love.

I also wanted to propose an idea similar to that of which the bus stop bible studies is already doing. During the CFI Ontario Annual General Meeting I proposed that we should be advertising educational quotes sponsored by donors. We would have a list of proposed quotes to advertise and donors would send us money for the advertisement and we’d handle the production and posting. We would also give the donor a choice to have his or her name listed on the advertisement as the sponsor. If you want to share your suggestions about this idea, please comment below.

Allah vs. God, What’s the Difference?

noallah

Allah by definition means God.

I’ve received at least a dozen emails asking why we are apparently picking on Christians with our advertisement (we aren’t picking on Christians btw), they would like us to advertise a message that opposes the Muslim and Islamic religion. So to anyone reading this and wondering why we don’t say ‘Allah’, here is the answer. Allah means God. Taken from godallah.com, “The word “Allah” is the perfect description of the “One God” of monotheism for Jews, Christians and Muslims“. From dictionary.com, “–noun Islam. the Supreme Being; God“. When we mention ‘God’ we are referring to all monotheistic and polytheistic gods of every religion. That’s probably why Imam Syed B. Soharwardy, a Muslim, has recently used $12,000 of credit with his own personal credit card to purchase and produce 8 advertisements for the sides of Calgary’s city transit buses.

tp-cgy-god-exists

God Exists ads that began in Calgary on March 16th/09

Imam Syed Soharwardy Buys $12,000 of Ad Space With Personal Credit.

In Calgary a group titled “God Exists” has started advertising a message that says “God cares for everyone…. even those who say he doesn’t exist”. The ads were paid for by Imam Soharwardy with his own personal credit card.

According to CBC, Soharwardy has said “The message they are saying is that believing in God creates worries, that it takes away joy from people’s life, which is wrong. It is not true,” and that “Believing in God brings strength, especially in this economic crisis when millions of people face losing their jobs.”

To add a little bit of my own commentary as a response, I would say that believing in god ‘takes strength’ rather than ‘brings strength’ because it is always harder to believe in something/someone that doesn’t exist. And rather than clasping our hands in prayer during this time of economic crisis, we should be lending eachother a helping hand and doing what we can to help our follow man/woman out.

Soharwardy has it wrong when he said that beliving in god doesn’t create worries. I’ll share with you a personal anecdote from my childhood when my friend and I went to see a church play. When I was 11 years old and at the time a Pentecostal Christian, the church I attended allowed a travelling Christian show to perform. The title of the performance was “Heaven’s Gates and Hells Flames”. The play was about various people of Christian faith and non believers- it showcased the last minutes of their lives. After each person died they appeared at the gates of heaven. Those who believed in the Christian God and Jesus were permitted to enter heaven and those who weren’t were dragged into hell after a group of demons and ‘Lucifer’ appeared. There was loud music, demonic voices, and sound effects used that were accompanied by lighting and fog machines to try and amplify the experience of hell. After my friend watched this, he told my family that he ‘gave his heart to Jesus twice’ just to be safe because he was so scared that he would go to hell. Looking back at this I feel great sadness for any child that is subjected to such mental torture and abuse. The fact is that religion does bring fear and worry into many peoples lives and so Sohwardy is wrong. I can’t imagine why anyone would want God to exist after reading the bible or the Qur’an (visit evilbible.com to see what I’m talking about).