Religious ads on Halifax Transit despite atheist ad ‘controversy’

Evidently religious ads that portray the hell on earth we’ll face if we don’t Get Religion Now are not quite as “controversial” as those atheist bus ads that were refused because they said “You can be good without God”.

Of course, this is the Seventh Day Adventists, who have believed the apocalypse is coming “sometime next week or so” since 1863. It’s a splinter of the Millerite movement, 1840’s Harold Camping. But wait, you say, isn’t Harold Camping 1840’s Harold Camping? Actually, no! Camping is only about 90 years old, believe it or not! Miller pretty much built the mold that Camping was stamped out of, with several failed End Times predictions based on his own mathematical innumeracy and attempts at interpreting the Bible as a cipher.

The Adventists have decided to rip off Miller’s spiritual successor thusly:

Of course, they don’t want you to believe the end is actually coming October 21st. They want you to believe the end is coming “sometime next week or so”. And not literally — making even the vague prediction that the apocalypse is happening sometime next week is against their doctrine, but boy do they want you to believe with all your heart that the world’s gonna end any day now!

And these guys are less controversial than “you can be good without God”. Pah. It’s never been about controversy, if you ask me. I’d wager if anything, it’s all about a small-minded bigot in charge of the Halifax Transit Authority ad department.

Via Hemant Mehta at Friendly Atheist.

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Religious ads on Halifax Transit despite atheist ad ‘controversy’
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12 thoughts on “Religious ads on Halifax Transit despite atheist ad ‘controversy’

  1. 1

    Aw, don’t pick on the SDA.
    My local TV diet offers about 20 channels of telenovellas, tele-evangelistas or…………..actually that’s about it.
    The only channel that doesn’t induce spontaneous brain death is the SDA. If they’re not beating the bejesus out of every other religion, they’re using numerology to prove the world came to an end last thursday.
    Laughter is the best cure for religion.

  2. 2

    For those who don’t think that the world will end on ct 21, Sacramento is throwing a huge party.

    We invite freethinkers, atheists, agnostics, and people of all religions to join us for Freethought Day on October 23rd.

    We’ll have some great speakers like Dan Barker and Michael Newdow, plus live entertainment including the Phenomenauts and comedian Keith Jensen.

    Best of all… it’s free! Learn more and register online (free) at http://www.FreethoughtDay.org.

  3. 3

    Holy crap.

    See this is the sort of thing that really irks me. This add is about 10000000000x more offensive than “You can be good without God”. It’s not even close.

    Privilege at it’s finest.

  4. 4

    I should add, that although I didn’t actually go on the buses (too busy), I actually was in Halifax yesterday and I think I saw ads for the event they’re advertising at a university there but it was put in an entirely different light (it was much more political, to be honest).

  5. 6

    Hah, not bad feralboy, not bad at all.

    karmakin@3:

    Privilege at it’s finest.

    THANK YOU. Was worried if I said it, it might start to sound like I was a one-trick pony.

  6. 8

    Heh I can understand that. It would be nice if people could understand that privilege takes many many forms, and as such having privilege doesn’t make one a bad person, but considering that it’s all too common for people with certain privileges to try and take advantage of said privilege on an active basis, I think it’s the path of least intellectual resistance to not see things that way.

    Or in short, it’s banking on that privilege that’s the worst of the problem, although passive privilege is a problem in and of itself..it’s just much stickier. (As an aside, I happen to think that religious privilege is the #1 violator of this by a long shot.)

  7. 10

    The Adventists aren’t at all the cuddly side of evangelicalism. I know because I grew up with that doctrine. It’s one of the most bigoted and authoritarian churches in this group, and this comes along with some seriously whacked out misogyny. GLBT people are abominations (of course!) and every sperm is sacred (natch!), but would you be shocked to hear that women aren’t supposed to participate in services (even if they’re officers of the church) while they’re on their periods? Yep, women are unclean, you see. Questioning the doctrine can get you chastised in public announcements and sanctioned in church letters, while something like becoming pregnant out of wedlock can get you tossed out.

    In America, I’ve heard SDA pastors endorse political candidates from the pulpit.

    Their millenialism is as horrifying as the rest: a panting for violent orgies of destruction and terror.

  8. 11

    I actually saw the “There’s probably no God” adverts on the side of a Halifax bus when the contraversie was at its hight. Mind you I took the bus several times a day every day at that point and I only saw it that once.

  9. 12

    I must admit that if I lived in Halifax and saw some big blue-green thing with a hat made of lightning rods washing up into the harbour, I would probably be rather alarmed.
    Interesting that the SDAs of Halifax chose to use a foreign icon for the ad.

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