Today, the American Humanist Association is launching the largest atheist ad campaign in history. It challenges Biblical morality and fundamentalist Christianity and it’s bound to get a lot of attention.

There will be a TV commercial during Dateline NBC this Friday night.

There will be billboards in Idaho and Philadelphia and bus ads in Washington D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

There will be ads on cable TV, ads in magazines like Reason and The Progressive, and ads in newspapers in places like USA Today, the Seattle Times, and the Village Voice all “demonstrating that secular humanist values are consistent with mainstream America and that fundamentalist religion has no right to claim the moral high ground.”

It’s called “Consider Humanism” and you’ll be hearing a lot about this campaign in the coming weeks — click on the ads for larger PDFs:

According to the AHA’s press release:

“Humanist values are mainstream American values, and this campaign will help many people realize that they are already humanists and just did not know the term,” said Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association. “Humanists believe in and value love, equality, peace, freedom and reason — values that are comparable to those of moderate and liberal religious people.” … “It’s important that people recognize that a literal reading of religious texts is completely out of touch with mainstream America,” Speckhardt added. “Although religious texts can teach good lessons, they also advocate fear, intolerance, hate and ignorance. It’s time for all moderate people to stand up against conservative religion’s claim on a moral monopoly.”

I love that the campaign includes verses from the Koran and the New Testament.

I know it’ll be easy for Christians to say, “Of course I don’t believe that,” but that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? It’s silly to take a literal interpretation of the Bible. It also makes no sense for so many religious moderates to dismiss the Old Testament rules when the New Testament ones aren’t much better.

The point is that religious texts say some horrible things and we shouldn’t put them on a pedestal. We certainly should’ve base our lives around them. The more we can expose people to that kind of thinking and steer them toward Humanism, the better off we’ll all be.

Incidentally, the total cost of the campaign is $200,000 (with $150,000 coming from the Stiefel Freethought Foundation). If you want to keep the campaign going, you can donate here.

So let’s hear it:

How will Christians react?

How effective will the campaign be?

Do you like the campaign?



