{"id":653,"date":"2009-08-23T07:31:27","date_gmt":"2009-08-22T20:31:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/?p=653"},"modified":"2009-08-23T16:09:43","modified_gmt":"2009-08-23T05:09:43","slug":"atheist-bus-ads-come-to-australia-but-not-without-a-struggle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/?p=653","title":{"rendered":"Atheist bus ads come to Australia – but not without a struggle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Atheist Foundation of Australia<\/a> President David Nicholls has finally persuaded <\/a>Metro Tasmania to run bus advertising promoting atheism, but not before having to go to conciliation<\/a> via the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Commission<\/a> after Metro knocked back the atheist ads<\/a> in 2008.<\/p>\n

So, Taswegians will soon be seeing something like this on buses:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This text is a bit watered down from the original proposition, which was Atheism: celebrate reason, sleep in on Sunday.<\/em> This was apparently interpreted as unnecessarily targeting christianity. I do agree that atheism really should<\/em> go after religion in general. Given the prevalence of xianity in Australia, Australian atheists can on occasion be a bit myopic and fail to address the nonsense propounded by all<\/em> religions, not just xianity. The first approach thus is certainly excusable in Australia on that basis alone, but I suppose the final draft is in the end most appropriate (and less wordy to boot).<\/p>\n

For the record, I’m still a fan of the text used by Ariane Sherine’s original UK bus ads<\/a>, There’s probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life<\/em>. Mind you, even that text was softened by the use of the word ‘probably.’<\/p>\n

I see no reason for atheists to soften their message. Religionist advertising has never been subject to such limits, nor have religionists traditionally had to fight to get advertisers to run their tripe.<\/p>\n

The AFA are now taking a new tack, one that I agree with very strongly. AFA will be asking that <\/a>religionist<\/a> adverts be subjected to truth-in-advertising laws. I don’t know how successful this will be, but it’s definitely worth a crack. There’s no proof gods exist, so if the letter of the law is obeyed, most religious propaganda<\/a> won’t pass muster.<\/p>\n

-weez<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Atheist Foundation of Australia President David Nicholls has finally persuaded Metro Tasmania to run bus advertising promoting atheism, but not before having to go to conciliation via the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Commission after Metro knocked back the atheist ads in 2008. So, Taswegians will soon be seeing something like this on buses: This text is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}