March 1, 2011 - The Center For Inquiry (CFI) today launched a nationwide multimedia campaign to deliver the message that it is possible to live a fulfilling life without God. From their headquarters in Amherst, New York, CFI announced plans to deploy the ad campaign in three American cities.
Beginning today, there are ads on 15 buses and at two metro stations in the Washington D.C. area. The bus ads and billboards state "You don't need God - to hope, to care, to love, to live."
“With this campaign, we are aiming to dispel some myths about the nonreligious,” said Ronald A. Lindsay, CFI president & CEO. “One common myth is that the nonreligious lead empty, meaningless, selfish, self-centered lives. This is not only false, it’s ridiculous. Unfortunately, all too many people accept this myth because that’s what they hear about nonbelievers.”
The campaign selected Washington D.C., Indianapolis, and Houston as the three cities in which to roll out the initial ad blitz.
“Most everyone in the United States knows someone who is not religious, whether they’re aware of this or not,” observed Lindsay. “We’re your friends, neighbors, and colleagues-and we have similar hopes and concerns. Irrational prejudice against nonbelievers has no place in twenty-first-century America.”
Center For Inquiry is a nonprofit organization with the mission to foster a secular society based on science, reason, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values.
CFI has branches all over the world, with 19 here in the United States. The local CFI branch here in Portland, Oregon is one of the most active and productive. CFI events locally include meetups, book readings, lectures, and training opportunites. For more information, see the CFI Portland website.
The website of the ad campaign, livingwithoutreligion.org, contains more information about what CFI hopes to accomplish.
CFI is joining the list of secular organizations who have decidied it is high time to begin to counter the negative perceptions many people have against freethinkers, and to let people who have lost faith know there are places they can go to learn more and to share their experiences.
Faith has been dwindling in much of the world for years, and today one in six Americans join that trend in not identifying with any religion. While not all of them are atheists, it's a good bet many who do proclaim a particular religious affiliation are actually skeptics. The number of freethinkers may be larger than some polls indicate.
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