‘Good Without God,’ Atheist Subway Ads Proclaim

by: Jennifer 8 Lee

Atheism is coming to the subway — or at least subway ads promoting it are.

Starting next Monday, a coalition of local groups will run a monthlong advertising campaign in a dozen Manhattan subway stations with the slogan “A Million New Yorkers Are Good Without God. Are You?” The posters also advertise the Web site BigAppleCoR.org, which provides a listing of local groups affiliated with the Coalition of Reason, the umbrella organization that coordinated the campaign.

The campaign — which is being paid for by $25,000 from an anonymous donor — follows a similar but unrelated monthlong campaign on buses by New York City Atheists in July. Jane Everhart, a spokeswoman for the New York City Atheists, said that campaign was highly successful and brought in many new members. “We are trying to raise money to do it again,” she said.

The subway station advertisements were chosen for the $25,000 campaign because they were the best deal for the given budget, said Michael De Dora Jr., the executive director for the New York branch of the Center for Inquiry. A Times Square ad would have cost $45,000 to $50,000 for a month, while a campaign that blanketed the inside of subway cars would have cost $70,000.

The subway campaign is timed to a new book called “Good Without God” by Greg Epstein, which is to be released on Oct. 27 by William Morrow. Mr. Epstein, the Harvard University humanist chaplain, is having a book signing at Columbia University Bookstore on Oct. 28.

Other books on atheism, including best-selling ones by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, have helped to give visibility to an “atheism awakening,” where atheists have been finding strength in numbers. President Barack Obama’s inaugural address even included a reference to “nonbelievers” among an enumeration of various religions.

Mr. De Dora said the million-person estimate of New Yorkers who do not believe in God was an extrapolation from surveys on religion. The American Religious Identification Survey, which was released earlier this year, showed that those who put “none” for religion had risen to 15 percent in 2008, from 8 percent in 1990. Based on their projections, New York City, with its 8.3 million population, would have more than a million nonbelievers, Mr. De Dora said. (It is questionable, of course, whether New York City, given its demographics, is representative of the country as a whole.)

Asked to comment on the advertisement, Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, said: “The First Amendment allows these groups to preach their religious beliefs. I hope that the rights of other religious groups will also be respected when they also seek to advertise their beliefs.”

A number of atheist-themed advertising campaigns have been promoted this year. The largest so far has been one in Britain that put ads on 800 buses stating: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

In the United States, the Coalition of Reason has also placed billboards that read “Don’t Believe in God? You Are Not Alone.” in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and Morgantown, W.Va. An Indiana atheist group ran ads in the cities of Bloomington and South Bend that read “You can be good without God.” The group, called the Indiana Atheist Bus campaign, also crossed the border into Chicago, where they purchased ads for 25 buses.

Because New York is so large and diverse, the atheist message is actually harder to promote, Mr. De Dora said. “Collectively, we’ve had a harder time selling our message to New Yorkers,” he said. In addition, since there are so many different atheist and secular-minded groups in New York, they are competing for an audience. Aside from the center, other groups in the coalition include the Flying Spaghetti Monster Meetup, New York City Brights, New York Philosophy, New York Society for Ethical Culture, Richie’s List and the Secular Humanist Society of New York.

The dozen subway stations where the ads are running are:

14th Street-Sixth Avenue
14th Street-Seventh Avenue
14th Street-Eighth Avenue
23rd Street-Eighth Avenue
Pennsylvania Station (three ads)
86th Street-Lexington Avenue
96th Street-Lexington Avenue
42nd Street-Sixth Avenue/Bryant Park
66th Street-Broadway/Lincoln Center
72nd Street-Central Park West
86th Street-Central Park West
West Fourth Street