Sorry, but I just happen to love the word “lucre” and it does seem applicable.
I have, sadly, been adding a few more essays into the Atheist Bus Ads and Bill Boards category with the advent of the apparently annual rearing of the ugly head of atheist bus ads and billboards.
Ariane Sherine, Dan Barker, Richard Dawkins, Philip Pullman, et al, are hard a work promulgating their own cleverness via the ads like so many questioners before a mirror asking “Mirror, mirror on the wall; who’s the cleverest of them all?”
Last year, upon being asked, Ariane Sherine assured the atheists who had nothing better to do with their money than donate it to not helping anyone in any sort of real material need that they could be assured that not one single penny would go towards anything but ads:
Many people have asked how the extra funds are going to be used…every penny of the total is going directly towards the atheist adverts. If you have an innovative idea about how we could advertise more effectively…please let us know…Atheists have truly pulled together to make ourselves heard, and it’s exciting to imagine what we could achieve in the future.
She asked what to do next and for innovative idea about how we could advertise more effectively. Well, ok, let us see, how about an ad that states:
We repent! In a time of recession we did not bother thinking of the needy and did not lift a finger to help them. We are truly sorry that our atheism has made us anthropo-self-centric and we threw some much money away simply to demonstrate how clever we think ourselves to be whist spitting in the face of religious people during the holidays.
I’d buy that ad for a shekel.
Her article was entitled, ‘Probably’ the best atheist bus campaign ever – Thank you! Now you’ve made the campaign such an extraordinary success, we all need to think about what to do next
Well, by now we know what they did next: in the guise of concern for the free thought and free choice of children they launched a campaign which seeks to convert children to atheism. We know this because some of the very, very influential atheists involved have admitted that this is their goal (see here). Thus, when we see them taking such actions we know that which motivates them as they have admitted it—now it is merely a matter of connecting the obvious, evidential dots.
These particular atheists have most certainly made themselves heard and I, for one, am somewhat torn. On the one hand, I would love to see them go beyond their parochial and self-centered concerns and I would love to see the needy receive much needed help. On the other hand, considering that their various atheist bus ads and billboards are openly, proudly and loudly exhibiting illogically and responses to non-existing arguments they are ready made lessons in well-within-the-box-atheist-groupthink. The ads/boards are a self-service refutation of atheist talking points.
If you read atheist’s comments on various related issues, you will be hard pressed to fine find one single one lamenting the worldwide atheist’s stunning lack of true humanitarian charity but they simply pull the old and dry as dust atheist card which they pull whenever they do not have a counterargument: “You do it too!” This, the tu quoque response, may demonstrate hypocrisy but it in no way defeats the original argument. In fact, it is tantamount to an admission of the original argument’s success in that it ignores it and merely attempts to redirect.
Certainly, studies show that atheists are the least charitable, moral and sociable amongst us but some atheist organization do actually engage upon humanitarian work. I tend not to emphasize this since it has almost become a sort of inside joke to see how many atheists respond emotionally when the self-centered greed of their celebrities and their adherents is pointed out to them. Think too, how much more would those humanitarian efforts help the needy if so much money was not being wasted on bus ads and billboards that are mean to express prejudice based cleverness.
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