Vandalized Atheist Billboards

Nonbelievers, you are not alone.

That's the message the Center for Inquiry of Southern Arizona hopes to convey on a midtown billboard: "Are you good without God? Millions are."

The message was put up on Monday and will remain on the sign near East Speedway and North Van Buren Avenue - just east of Craycroft Road - for four weeks. A similar message was displayed in Phoenix last year.

"Many people think you can't behave ethically unless you believe in God, but thousands of nonbelieving Arizonans are living proof that this claim is untrue," said Jim Gressinger, a spokesman for the center.

He pointed out that up to 17 percent of Arizona's adult population are nonbelievers, according to the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey.

The center's Web site quotes Gressinger as defining group members as "skeptics, secular humanists, atheists, agnostics, freethinkers and other nonbelievers." He said members are becoming increasingly political because religious values are increasingly being imposed on others through political means.

"In general, we work to uphold the Jeffersonian principle of separation of church and state," Gressinger said. "We put up the billboard because we want people to know about (the Center for Inquiry), to discover what we have to offer, and to work with us to promote science, reason and secular values."

The center is an international, nonprofit group that presents public educational programs and lectures. It has given to local charities for several years. (source)

And Vandalized Atheist Billboard, you're not alone, either. Another atheist billboard near Sacramento promoting atheism was vandalized by someone depicting atheists as lost, one of the billboard's sponsor said.

The billboard -- one of several posted in the Sacramento area -- originally read: "Are you good without God? Millions are." Someone spray-painted the words "also lost?" beneath "millions are."

Rachael Harrington of the Sacramento Area Coalition of Reason -- which paid to have the billboards put up -- said the ads are intended to let atheists and agnostics know they are not alone, the TV station said.

"This shows loud and clear just how necessary our message is, because prejudice against people who don't believe in a god remains very real in America," Harrington said.

The organization has asked Clear Channel, the company that owns the billboard, to file a police report. The company offered to replace the sign free of charge. (source)

I don't know, if I were a godfearing Christian, I would just pray to the almighty the GPS location of the blasphemous sign and have the lord hit it with lightning or brimstone. It'd make a less hypocritical statement about love and understanding and would also make the point a lot louder and flashier than what these unoriginal idiots have done.