{"id":381,"date":"2009-10-21T08:46:33","date_gmt":"2009-10-21T13:46:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.homecomers.org\/weblog\/index.php\/a-million-good-atheists-in-new-york-city\/"},"modified":"2009-10-21T08:46:33","modified_gmt":"2009-10-21T13:46:33","slug":"a-million-good-atheists-in-new-york-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/a-million-good-atheists-in-new-york-city\/","title":{"rendered":"A million good atheists in New York City?"},"content":{"rendered":"

CNN reports that a coalition of non-religious organizations is running a atheist ad campaign<\/a> in New York city subways, “designed to raise awareness about people who don’t believe in a god.”<\/p>\n

The advertisements ask the question, written simply over an image of a blue sky with wispy white clouds: “A million New Yorkers are good without God. Are you?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The ads are actually misleading. That 2008 survey cited by the sponsors, American Nones: The Profile of the No Religion Population<\/a>, didn’t ask people if they were good. The word “good” doesn’t even appear in the report. It just asked about religious affiliation. True, the 15% who said they had no religious affiliation weren’t saying they were Christians who hadn’t found a good church, but they weren’t saying they were atheists either. Only 7% said they were atheists.<\/p>\n

The most startling claim, of course, is that New York City has a million good people, period. I mean, I think the Chasidic Jews only estimate a dozen or two really good people worldwide. Maybe good people are naturally attracted to New York City. Still, if I were you,\u00a0I would keep alert on the subway, and lock \u00a0my car.<\/p>\n

But the ads ask a good question, even if they begin with an inaccurate statement. That is, they ask, “Are you good?” I suspect that, if they think about it, that question will make a lot of New Yorkers a little uncomfortable. I know it did that for me. And if the answer is no, there are organizations in New York City that can help. But I don’t think they’re atheist organizations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CNN reports that a coalition of non-religious organizations is running a atheist ad campaign in New York city subways, “designed to raise awareness about people who don’t believe in a god.” The advertisements ask the question, written simply over an image of a blue sky with wispy white clouds: “A million New Yorkers are good […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-desperate-suggestions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}