The Naysayers

Well AiG's new billboard outreach to atheists has certainly prompted a huge response.

There were those who mocked, of course, even using vile and blasphemous language on my Facebook page and through emails that have come into our offices.  Many blog posts and media reports have been written about the billboard campaign.  (The boards have been placed in the San Francisco Bay Area and in downtown New York City at Times Square, and soon they will be in the Los Angeles area.)

The overwhelming response from Christians has been one of support for AiG being bold in the culture and making a statement about those atheists who are trying to impose their anti-God religion on people.  But then there have been some Christians who have claimed that the campaign wouldn't work—others who stated the message was negative. There were the atheists, of course, who said the campaign was a waste of time.

But actually the campaign has already greatly exceeded our expectation—and it's just started!  Our website traffic is up significantly (30 percent).  In fact, that was the goal—to have the billboards be a marketing piece that would prompt people to visit our website, where they will get answers to skeptical questions, watch a video clip of mine, and hear the gospel clearly. And the media (the New York Times on Tuesday and our local paper The Enquirer today) have taken notice and have helped draw more attention to the boards and thus to the AiG website that is prominent on them. The naysayers can’t say the campaign has not accomplished its goal.

I wrote a commentary today about the billboard outreach, which is the lead article on the AiG website.  I urge you to read this article, which begins with the following paragraphs:

Our new “Thank God You’re Wrong” billboard campaign began with a big bang on Monday. The billboards are up in the San Francisco Bay Area, one large video board is seen in Times Square in downtown New York City, and six will be going up soon around Los Angeles and Hollywood. We praise the Lord for the great response we have received all this week, from media outlets like the New York Times and CNN to countless bloggers. As expected, many atheists revealed their real anger against God by posting some very nasty, vile comments on my Facebook page, so they were deleted and banned. Also some secularists (after some investigation) were found to be pretending to be Christians on Facebook and were complaining about the billboard campaign.

But it was sad to see some people whom I presume are Christians (or at least church-attenders) make all sorts of wild accusations against AiG because of the billboards’ direct challenge to atheism. Frankly, no matter what AiG does, we get criticized, including when we posted pro-life billboards around the country. A number of people calling themselves Christians considered the latest campaign to be unloving. Others believed the billboards should have had the gospel (or what they believe is the “gospel”), presented on the boards. I wonder if these same Christians would object to a billboard that presented some of the Ten Commandments or contained a pro-life message, which are not gospel-proclaiming messages. Furthermore, some Christians did not like the fact that we stated that the atheists are wrong in their worldview.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying, Ken