âHave you heard the Good News that you are destined for oblivion?â
preferable to an afterlife with those guys.
That ad is great! Internet atheists always seem to lead with âyour God is fake,â which is no more persuasive than âJesus or hell.â Itâs refreshing to see they can take a gentler approach, almost as if other people mattered.
âTired of the people you have coffee and doughnuts with once a week? Come have coffee and doughnuts once a week with us instead.â
If I saw this, I would immediately suspect âAHA!â of being a front for some Christian denomination or another.
Just look at what the âAlpha courseâ has been doing:
You would never suspect.
Fortunately I have not seen anything quite so misleading in a while. (Of course, nothing compares to the âBook sale!â sidewalk sign that the local Scientology chapter used to employ. I was slightly tempted to slap a picture of Admiral Ackbar on that one a couple of times.)
Itâs spooky how they draw people in.
Itâs a trap!
Iâm a little wary of capital-A Atheism as something that you sign up to and go to meetings to discuss. To me thatâs like joining a special club to talk about how Susan Boyle didnât drill a hole through the Earthâs crust, I mean, I know she didnât; whatâs this actually about?
Obviously, Atheism is about people who are transitioning from having religion to not having religion. But thereâs a danger that instead of helping that transition, it just becomes a different kind of church, especially when âscienceâ is treated as a drop-in replacement for âscriptureâ (the atom logo on this poster is telling). I feel like the people who are drawn to this would probably be better off joining a Quaker meeting, and googling any science questions they may have.
When operating in a world where everything is becoming increasingly nonsensical (as in, not intuitive or logical based on a surface reading), itâs just good strategy to lean on the fact that the thing you oppose âdoesnât make senseâ. Of course it doesnât: nothing does!
You would suspect a group that explicitly labels itself as âAtheists, Humanists, & Agnosticsâ of being a Christian denomination?
And the Alpha Course example isnât all that misleading:
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2 of the 5 images say âcoming to a church near you,â and a third gives the name and location of a specific church as a meeting location.
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In my experience, any ad that talks about the meaning of life is a religious ad. Except ads for Monty Pythonâs The Meaning of Life.
There is a lot to be said for having a community to belong to. Even if it is just a weekly get together for coffee and donuts.
Thereâs always Sunday Assembly, itâs like a salon every week with interesting speakers from scientific and other reality-based professions.
Oh, great, another one of you Boyle-deniers. Look at the evidence!
I have a great urge to graffiti â42â on the bottom-right image there 
Re the ânot making senseâ ad. One of the lines Catholics (probably other Christians too) are fed is that doubt is ok. That itâs ok to go through period where oneâs faith is being questioned. In fact, it just makes you a BETTER Catholic, not a worse one. Heck, even Jesus himself had moments of doubt. So instead of thinking âlet me explore this doubt, as I think I might be on to something hereâ one thinks âdoubtâs ok - Iâm still a good Catholic - I can have some doubt.â
Genius, if you ask me.
That and the âFree stress test!â signs the Scientologists had on their kiosks at the mall. I have to thank my conservative Christian upbringing for unintentionally training me to be skeptical of anyone offering me answers through an organizationâs evangelized philosophy.
Said no introvert ever.
Evangelism is one of the more pernicious traits of religion.
The conservative Christian college I went to was all about confronting the questions and inviting atheists and evolutionists and such to come speak. Unfortunately for them, they brought up questions I hadnât been able to articulate yet and which they werenât able to provide any reasonable answer to other than âtrust us.â
