Discussion with Eoban Binder on the Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign

To Zensunni: First of all, great Dune reference. It's impossible to discuss religion at all without at least mentioning god. This was an argument that was made on Fox & Friends, actually. It's as simple as that, really. By saying 'God is great' you're not attacking churches. Nor are we attacking churches by saying that you can be good without God. 'You can be healthy without legumes' isn't attacking soybean farmers, it's a statement of fact.

To Blondin: Part of it was surely incited by the Bush Administration and related events like 9/11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, recent problems between Israel and Palestine, and the growing Muslim immigrant population in Europe (and to a lesser degree in North America). Perhaps the 'vocal atheist' movements will die down somewhat in a few years, but it won't be because religion will have rebounded; virtually all denominations of Christianity are losing members. The most damning statistics are those concerning the religiosity of young people, or lack thereof, I should say. Christians are having to contend with both a more pluralistic society as well as a more secular one. There is so much more I could say about the status of nonreligion in other countries, but I feel like that would take a very long time.

To Blondin: Yes, of course I'd agree that society's overall treatment of nonbelievers is a problem. It's easy to ignore if you live in a liberal community (even Bloomington, as a college town, is a very diverse and open-minded place for the most part) but I hope our campaign and all the other campaigns speak for closeted atheists who live in isolated, religious communities and have no choice but to conceal their real beliefs.

To Blondin/Kaeso: I'm actually surprised at how much support we've received from liberal Christians, including Catholics, Quakers, and even a local Muslim leader in Bloomington, Faiz Rahman. Of course, most of our support has come from non-religious folks, although we've certainly received a lot of complaints about how we should make our message much stronger.

To Christian Soldier: Well, the atheist bus campaign is not one single movement. I'm from the Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign, and our focus is Indiana, of course. Where we go next simply depends on how much money we have and what transit agencies are willing to run our ad.

I'll add my final comments in the next post...

I'd really like to say three things:

First, I want to make it very clear that this campaign is not about me; all of the Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign's members played an equal part in making this all happen. From the beginning we decided to try out not having any formal leadership and simply make decisions by consensus. If you call me a 'co-founder' of the campaign please keep in mind that I'm just one of about a dozen 'co-founders' and also one of the campaign's hundreds of supporters. This really is a community movement.

Second, I want to say that this campaign was never about the bus ads themselves. It was about sparking discussion and getting atheism out there in the public square, because as much as conservative religious leaders try to criticise atheism, the thing we nonbelievers have to fear the most is being ignored. There are a lot of us out there, but we've been shut out of the Christian-dominated political realm in this country ever since Jimmy Carter.

Finally, If you're thinking of starting an atheist ad campaign, no matter where you are or what the scale of the campaign is, I recommend doing it. Start by getting ten friends together and pooling $100. Because that's exactly how we started out.

I'd like to thank Chris Hammond for organising this and I hope that this is just one of many interviews. I very much look forward to reading more and participating on Atheist Discussion.

If anyone else has additional questions about the Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign, I invite you to visit our website at:

http://inatheistbus.org

We can always use donations, of course, and the word spread to your friends and family about what we do.