Christian billboard campaign threatens to kill you if you don't believe in God

Fine, so the headline might be a tad hyperbolic, but how do you interpret the billboard currently running in Texas? The headline reads: "If God doesn't matter to him, do you?" and shows a young boy holding a gun aimed straight at the viewer. The TV-commercial spells it out further: if you don't matter to God, you don't matter to anyone... as the young by aims at you. Am I to interpret this as young boys will blow my head off because I'm an atheist - or because HE is an atheist? Am I a murderer because I am an atheist? Or is it "karma will get you" because I am an atheist? That would be a bit odd, since karma isn't a christian concept, but I digress. The body copy of the print ads reads:

As a soceity, we reap the consequences of the unquestioned acceptance of the belief in evolution every day. It diminishes your worth and reduces human beings from being "made in the image of God" to being mere players in the game of survival of the fittest.

Dearie me. Look, like I tweeted yesterday I don't believe in evolution. Evolution is a fact. The sneaky use of the word "believe" here suddenly equates science to a faith-based idea. Even John Huntsman used the phrase when he stated "To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy." in his famous tweet. I'm not going to call anyone crazy, but science doesn't require anyone to believe in it. Science is not a matter of faith. The word "believe" here isn't the innocent version as the one used when replying to -"Is it raining out?" -"I believe it is.", but the sneaky one that tries to equate fact with opinion. Do not let this happen, they are not synonyms. How do you interpret this commercial? I guess it's a shorter version of the old "If you don't believe in God you will burn in eternity in hell" schtick that christians have been pushing for 2000 odd years now. That argument never works on people who don't believe in the concept of heaven and hell, but it does drag in the false believers, those who will believe because "you never know", and "it can't hurt". So there it is, if you don't believe in God, some little twerp is gonna shoot you! I wonder if the Genesis tells me to duck or wear kevlar. Lets not forget, us non-godfearing folks will randomly shoot people because youknow, we don't believe in god so this makes us all crazy bloodthirsty murderers, clearly. No, I do understand, the ad wants to remind us that the moral code of "thou shalt not kill" is written in the bible. But this doesn't mean that people who don't believe in God aren't following of a moral code society at large agrees with (killing people is bad, mmmkay?).

Answers in Genesis - If God doesn't matter to him, do you? (2011)

 

They also have a softer ad, fighting prejudice. Can we not want to fight prejudice and be atheists at the same time? I did not get that memo!

Answers in Genesis - Prejudice - (2011)

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Jay Winters's picture

Full disclosure, I'm not just a Christian, I'm a pastor of a Lutheran church.

That said, yeah, I'm a little weirded out by how you jump from evolution to poppin' a cap in someone...it's a jump, to say the least.

But I think you misunderstood the jump. The issue the billboard is *trying* to communicate (although it doesn't do a spectacular job) is that if you don't see the other person as special, and if kids aren't raised to think other humans are special, then they will abuse and devalue one another to the point of not caring about shooting someone.

So, no, the gun isn't aimed at atheists or Christians or Muslims or Buddhists or Rastafarians - it's aimed at humanity, all of it. It is interesting to me, though, that you took it that way as an atheist. I'm sorry you did. It just shows how badly the message was crafted.

Thanks for your site, by the way, love it. Long time RSS feed follower, first time commenter.

Jay

Dabitch's picture

Thanks for your comment Jay.

Yes, the message is badly crafted, it seems to imply that atheist = murderers. Because those who understand evolution don't think we're special individual fantastic creatures and don't respect others right to live? Whu... ? You put it much better, lets break it down: Belief in the christian God = belief in all mankind is created in his image = belief we are all special and everyones right to life should be respected (ie; thou shalt not kill). This really isn't a difficult thing to communicate without taking a jab at evolution. It's not as if understanding evolution = sudden epiphany nobody is special we are all meat-robots by chance = get a gun lets run out and shoot people randomly. The choice of a young boy holding the gun is strange in the evolution context as well, has he even gone past basic physics in school yet?

The other one is less of jump but still weird, they want to say that christianity is inclusive, for everyone, as Jesus love all the children of the world. A jab at christians who are racists, I suppose. Both open minded atheists and christians can agree that prejudice is a bad thing™ (There are of course fools in both camps). But the ad comes off really negative, and can also be misinterpreted. There's just something really off with these ads.

The Bloody God's picture

Evolution is a scientific theory. It hasn't harmed a single person.

Belief in "one true God" is responsible for horrific holy wars throughout history, terrorism, murder, torture, invading sovereign nations, racism, sexism, and all manner of untold suffering.

ImmediateRealityCheck's picture

"Evolution...hasn't harmed a single person"???
On the contrary, adherence to the tenants of evolution has led to the greatest atrocities in history. Just a few examples out of thousands possible using you own categories:

RACISM: As a direct result of accepting Darwin's ideas Aboriginals from Australia were put in cages and paraded around Europe as examples of missing links between monkeys and man. Many died horrible deaths after what could only be described as inhuman treatment. Even Blacks were put in this category by evolutionists, hence the derogatory term 'monkeys' to refer to blacks (note neither of these came from Christian teachings!)

MURDER, INVADING SOVERIGN COUNTRIES: Carl Marx wanted to dedicate his book to Darwin as his inspiration, and the great(?) communist leaders [Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc) ware rabid believers in Evolution. Standard practice when they invaded and took over a country was to execute Christian pastors and leaders, an immediately force children into Evolution indoctrination. Communist mass murders are legendary, such as the Ukrane where millions of 'useless eaters' died, Mao's purges, Pol Pot's Killing Fields where he tried brutally to institute Darwinian principles, etc. And don't even get me started on Hitler, who's purge of Jews was a blatant application of Darwin's ideas of getting rid of inferior evolution dregs to institute a superior Arian Race in the struggle for survival. Even abortion in our nation is based on the evolutionary premise that they are not really human yet, but just going through the recapitulation of ontogeny as they progress toward humanhood, and are therefore expendable.

SEXISM: Christianity, for the first time in history, elevated women to equality in cultures where women had previously been considered property, worse. In atheistic Russia, women were just another worker bee in the machine, and women and children were slaughtered (and still are in other communist nations) with no pause, along with their men.

In summary, more humans have been slaughtered, tortured, and discriminated against in Atheist/Darwinian-led nations just in the last 100 years (>100 million) than could ever be remotely attributed to Christians. Ideas have consequences, and Evolutionary principles, when applied to the real world, has led to disaster in epic proportions. Would to God that evolution had remained in the science laboratory!!

AnonymousCoward's picture

Their idea is that if people aren't following the God-given moral code found in the bible/ the answers in Genesis, people won't have morals at all. Because without faith one can not be rational and moral, supposedly.

You're not that far off with your assumption that they mean you would be shot dead since you don't believe in God. This might have been the inspiration.

Genesis 32:30 So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and my life was preserved.”

AnonymousThinker's picture

They are saying people without God are dangerous.

The message implies; that since the boy does not believe in God, he can have no values, morals or guidance (like the ten commandments "thou shalt not kill" etc...) and will therefore be a liability i.e. kill people at random.

It tries to make the point that if we "believe" in evolution and not teach or receive the word of God we will all remain primitive and uncivilised madmen and find ourselves as "players in the game of survival of the fittest".

The message is a non-sequitor and nonsense.

A good guide that is as old as humanity and pre-dates any Abrahamic or modern religion is:
"One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself".
It is humanist by nature (later taken hostage by religion) and since 1670 called The Golden Rule.

Imagine what the world would be like if people lived by that one sentence.

MJ

Dabitch's picture

Nice thoughtful comments y'all. Thanks. Does this ad grate people of another faith or another version of christianity (Orthodox, catholic, lutheran)? I learned from this that there's something called Theistic Evolution that the catholic church says is OK. Cliff notes: evolution as science has observed exists, but the ball started rolling by God. The observer at the beginning of the universe if you will.

I'm quite amused that this post has ended up on christianfamiliesnetwork via their automagic headline scraper that collects anything with the word "christian" in it (I presume).

The Bloody God's picture

There are plenty of religious folks who believe in evolution. I salute their open-mindedness and logic, even though they still worship a bloody fairy tale.

AnonymousCoward's picture

As a soceity, we reap the consequences of the unquestioned acceptance of the belief in evolution every day....

This ad reads more as anti-evolution (or anti-science) than pro-Genesis. Is their plan to bring us back to the dark ages when the world was flat?

Dabitch's picture

You're right. I was reading too much into when I interpreted it as the usual You'll go to heck if you don't believe in Gosh thing.

Flat-earthers scare the hell out of me though.

AnonymousCoward's picture

This religious concept that morality comes from "God" is insulting and frankly childish. I am a human, with a brain and I make my own morality. I do not kill. Lol... in fact I think many atheists believe ppl are more special than christians... we dont think we were planned, and there for our existence is "miraculous" :) Yes those ppl who made the billboard knew exactly what they were saying and implying and wanted it that way. Its pathetic.

AnonymousCoward's picture

Why did they use two different slogans with two different meanings? Do they think this is clever, or are they just unclear thinkers?

Dabitch's picture

I will tip my hat to a refreshing way of counter-arguing. Well played sir/madam.