Boston Area Coalition of Reason Kick Off Event (Nov 2)

[nvidia99999.livejournal.com]

Good without God? Millions of Americans are.
boston.unitedcor.org/

Kickoff Event

When: Monday Nov.2, 7:30-9:30 PM
Where: Harvard Science Center Hall D. Free and Open to the Public

I thought this could be of interest. One of the member organizations is the Tufts Free Thought Society. www.facebook.com/group.php

Comments

moderator note

[ron_newman]

Could you please post the relevant information as text (date, time, location), and put the graphic behind an lj-cut? thanks

[magid.livejournal.com]

You might want to edit your image, too, since "Publilc" is not the usual spelling.

[turil.livejournal.com]

These folks would do well to read some marketing and communications theory, including George Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant book.

Something more like "Curiosity, it's what makes us want to be better." would communicate the same message, without the defensiveness and negativity and antagonism against "god". Define yourself by what you are, rather than what you are not so that people will feel inspired to follow you...

[cnoocy]

This seemed remarkably non-antagonistic to me, actually. I think you may be reading a lot into three words.

[infinitemorning.livejournal.com]

I agree. "There's probably no God" is mildly aggressive. "Good without God?" isn't.

[turil.livejournal.com]

I understand that it's not always easy to see how language works in the mind, which is why I suggested the Lakoff book. It's a simple book about the complex issue of linguistics and how it effects people, using PR campaigns to demonstrate the power of the word.

[perich.livejournal.com]

Something more like "Curiosity, it's what makes us want to be better." would communicate the same message

No, it wouldn't.

The original message is a marketing gem: non-antagonistic (good without god, question mark: it's offering a positive state as an option), concise (three words in large text to entice the reader, four words below it in slightly smaller text to elicit more), clear (the most important words are all one syllable or easily visualized terms, like "millions" and "Americans"). It's presented in a readable font with plenty of empty space around it, that space being filled by the non-confrontational image of a blue sky.

Given the issues that non-believers have had marketing themselves in the past, I was frankly astonished when I saw this poster. It's almost unprecedented in its quality.

[turil.livejournal.com]

The current one up there is certainly better than some messages I've seen from the anti-something-about-god folks, but it's still literally antagonistic, just not as obviously so. The term "without" is a negative word, connoting a lack of something, and emptiness, rather than a fullness. Yes, the term "good" is obviously a step in the positive direction, but when you combine the negative "without" with the positive "good" they cancel each other out, and you are left with people hearing nothing beyond "God". Literally.

[jovianconsensus.livejournal.com]

But curiosity doesn't make me want to be better. It makes me want to know stuff.

I also read it as "better than those believers," which is only a step below a raised middle finger on the antagonism scale.

Curiosity, it's what makes us want to be even better than we are now.

[turil.livejournal.com]

Does that sound better to you? Or do you have something else in mind that would be even better? :-)

And why do you think you "want to know stuff" (curiosity)? Probably because knowing more stuff makes you better able to work with nature (the laws of the universe) to get more of what you want in life. That may not be how you'd phrase it, but my guess is that, if you are like everyone else I've ever met who's interested in science, you want to learn about the universe because you have imagine that there are so many things you could be enjoying that you don't even know about yet...

[turil.livejournal.com]

Also, people have many different meanings for "god". For some the term god means "love". So the title of the campaign and book to these folks sounds just like "Good Without Love" which is pretty dumb sounding, and probably not at all what was intended. I say, leave "god" out of things unless you are very clear what you mean by the term.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Reads loud and clear to me.

[perich.livejournal.com]

Do the (very few) people who think god means "love," rather than "a supernatural consciousness worthy of worship," not understand what the rest of the world thinks of "god" as? Is the conceptual leap, "Oh, okay, they mean 'god' as in 'that guy who lives in the clouds,' not my conception of god" too much for them?

I mean, some people think of meat as disgusting. Should every steak ad include a disclaimer?

[candid.livejournal.com]

For me, "god" means "gluten." Which means the campaign sounds like "Good Without Gluten."

Which (in a cosmically-improbable coincidence) is the name of a great little blog:

http://goodwithoutgluten.blogspot.com/

One wonders if the whole campaign wasn't secretly spearheaded by coeliacs.

[infinitemorning.livejournal.com]

I sincerely doubt that there's anyone that takes 'God' to be literally synonymous with 'love'. When people say God is love, they are referring to His (or Her, or his, or her) infinite compassion, not saying that the terms 'God' and 'love' are interchangeable.

Put it this way: Earth is a planet. Not all planets are Earth, and when I say Earth is a planet, I don't mean Jupiter is an Earth.

[agnosticoracle.livejournal.com]

Since love is an emotion not an entity that can be prayed too, perhaps you have more in common with the folks putting this on than you let on. Well that or it is all just a concern troll thing.

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that people who believe God is love aren't going to be interested in this gathering in the first place.

[aynatt.livejournal.com]

Why do we need a large organization to tell us that it is OK to not believe in God...
There is something kind of creepy about this campaign that I find a bit unsettling.

[thebinturong.livejournal.com]

Mainstream religion, and much of American culture has marginalized and misrepresented atheism so far. But evangelizing atheism is equally as creepy as evangelizing religion. Which isn't to say it isn't a bit creepy.

Atheists tend to be united only in what they don't believe more than in what they believe. But I think that an organization that can state to the world that a moral compass can be provided by reason just as well as religious dogma has a place in society (if that is what this is about.) Its "what this country was founded on:" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment

... despite the best attempts of some right wing Christians to convince us otherwise. Reason may as well be defended, but like any morality, it is just what an individual believes.

[cosinezero.livejournal.com]

For a few reasons;

- The christians have an organized, political movement. They use this massive organization to affect your life in very real ways such as blue laws, abortion rights, "morality" taxes, etc.

- Athiesm and athiests by very nature lack organization - I don't believe in many things - why would I have meetings about that? Well, the fact is that if People for Purple Unicorns was pushing our country to engage in a holy war against countries run by Dragon Riders (and the women that love them)... wouldn't it be time to unify our voices against the ignorance and insanity that our tax dollars are being used to fund?

- All that said - Athiests and Agnostics are a major, growing group that it's generally perceived as OK to discriminate against. Athiests have a harder time being elected to public office due to the public slant towards fairy tale beliefs in public servants. In studies and research (I won't quote here what others have better) athiests fall below homosexuals in public trust, "hireability", and other areas of discrimination.

There's many, many more reasons. Read Richard Dawkins "The God Delusion", or Christopher Hitchen's "God is Not Great" for tremendously good examples of why athiests need to worry about the christian and religious fairy tale-ists influence in our culture, and why it's high time we get ourselves organized and start influencing back.

We're a silent majority that badly needs a voice.

[tt02144.livejournal.com]

Why must it always be termed 'discrimination' when someone of a certain persuasion or belief can't get elected? Did it ever occur to you that people, by nature, tend to gather with others like themselves. Therefore, Christians (the overwhelming majority of Americans) might be more apt to vote for a Christian. Maybe only because they have a sense of the persons' beliefs, or moral compass, or whatever. It's not 'discrimination'. The term discrimination, in my opinion, has become so over-used and trivialized that it's barely relevant any longer anyway.

Duh, perhaps because discrimination usually occurs

[nvidia99999.livejournal.com]

against minorities and are perpetrated by overwhelming majorities? Just a wild guess...

[jenskot.livejournal.com]

As a science lover and humanist (and therefore the target audience), I'm still kind as of bothered by the fact that this meeting is being held in the Science Center. I know that the two often correlate, but scientific progress has been hampered for centuries by people assuming that science = atheism, when in fact I know many religious people who are super-awesome scientists, and God and science are more mutually exclusive than antagonists. :/

(Not to bash, it looks interesting, I was just taken aback by the location - this seems like something that would be better held in a philosophy building.)

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

I'm still kind as of bothered by the fact that this meeting is being held in the Science Center

Religious meetings and all kinds of other non-science-related meetings are also held in the Science Center--it's a relatively low-cost venue that's open to all area non-profit groups.

[ron_newman]

The Science Center is just a place with large auditoriums that are suitable for large meetings, especially if any films or slides are to be shown.