Only a few days after it was put up, a Sacramento Coalition of Reason billboard on Interstate 80 has been spray-painted by vandals. That's not an unusual thing to have happen to a billboard but this isn't just a gang sign or somebody's initials defacing it. It's an attempt to change a message that the vandal or vandals didn't like and couldn't tolerate.The original message on the sign, one of 10 put up in the Sacramento area by the local coalition of Reason, read, "Are you good without God? Millions are." The words "also lost?" were spray-painted onto the end of the message so that the last sentence now reads, "Millions are also lost?"
Michael Krebsbach, a member of Sacramento CoR, while disappointed by the attack, thinks it didn't come from religious people. KCRA News quotes him as saying,
"I don't imagine the religious side would want a person with a spray paint can speaking for them. I couldn't take it as an attack from their side."
"We just simply want to be a part of society just like everyone else," he added.
It's not the first time this type of billboard has been vandalized. Beginning last year, local CoR groups started putting dozens of them up all over the country and a fair number have been defaced, including one in Moscow, Idaho which was attacked twice. Generally, these have been attempts to blot out parts of the message or, as in the Sacramento case, change it's meaning.
Someday perhaps, the only kind of graffiti CoR groups will have to worry about will be the spray-painted gang signs or somebody's initials that appear on other people's billboards... but that's not the way it is today.
Photo Credit:
1) Sacramento CoR billboard similar to the vandalized one (cropped from a photo by A. Williams/Sacramento Bee)
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Comments
Your witness is correct. Vandalism violates the Commandments against theft and coveting--because if you damage the property of another, you rob him of its use--and that's as bad as outright theft.
Whoever's doing that, I urge that person to stop.
Great reporting! That's just wrong. I feel everyone has a right to believe what they will. It's wrong to vandalize period.. whether done by well meaning Christians or not. I don't think REAL Christians would actually break the law like that. Defacing someone else's property is just plain wrong.
What ever happened to free speech in America? Unfortunately, for some lost souls, speech that doesn't fit their ideology isn't acceptable.
Remember last July when leading atheist PZ Myers desecrated the eucharist and laughed at Christians for their outrage? "Nothing must be held sacred," he wrote while piercing a rusty nail through a communion wafer and throwing it in the trash along with banana peels and coffee grounds.
If it was funny when atheists ridiculed and trashed things that Christians value, then must be just as funny when Christians do it right back at them. Otherwise, atheists are just being hypocrites.
Hello Gil. Where is your sense of proportion? Vandalizing property is a crime. Insulting religion isn't...
Unless, of course, you live in a country like Saudi Arabia.
"I don't imagine the religious side would want a person with a spray paint can speaking for them. I couldn't take it as an attack from their side."
No, it may not have been the preacher from the church down the street, but it very well may have been some of their members. That's what happens when people are told that those who don't believe in your God or any god, are evil.
Ha! It seems we're all being played for suckers! The people paying for these "Good Without God" billboards, the United Coalition of Reason, is doing ALL of this as a publicity stunt for a new book coming out.
Examiner wont let me link to the Coalition's page on the billboard campaign, but do a google search and see for yourself.
They let me link the pages, but no, no talk of a publicity stunt either at the main site ( unitedcor.org ) or the Sacramento site ( sacramento.unitedcor.org ).
religious and anti religious slogans are two controversial they stir up too much emotion in people
btw I have a second column here now, besides Montreal mental health examiner I am also the Montreal health examiner, please subscribe, thank you
@Gil
Are you comparing the tossing of a communion wafer into a trashcan to the defacing of private property? Excellent comparison failure.
If they want to make a statement, why not burn a laptop? Why not dispose of every technology they own to show their contempt for the science loving non believers?
The artifacts of religion: atrophied minds and stale wafers
The artifacts of science: enlightened minds, zip-lock bags to keep your wafers fresh, and a whole heap of wonderful technology
Make a statement, my theist friends; boycott technology, after you've read this of course.
Odysseus has a point. I always thought the Amish rejection of secular technology a bit more honest in their faith than the religious folk who push for weapons innovation.
Thank you for this important article. It is yet another example of the appalling amount of religious fueled intolerance we have in this country.
>>"Ha! It seems we're all being played for suckers! The people paying for these "Good Without God" billboards, the United Coalition of Reason, is doing ALL of this as a publicity stunt for a new book coming out.
Examiner wont let me link to the Coalition's page on the billboard campaign, but do a google search and see for yourself."
Imagine that. A billboard being used to advertise.
I understand that atheists wish to live free from ostracism by the religious majority and have the same respect and rights as others. In some states they are not even allowed to hold office (un-Constitutional as those laws are). I have to admit that, certain past atheist publicity campaigns (like the UK London Bus campaign for example) have, to me, appeared to be a bit pointless and silly. And I could see why some religious people would see it as offensive, since promoting atheism is promoting a LACK of (a) God. This one however was much better, and would probably be about the least offensive it *could* get, yet it was still vandalised.
I don't envy anyone given the task of PR for atheism, but perhaps billboard campaigns like these just aren't the way to go?
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