HUMANIST HOLIDAY CAMPAIGN SPEECH

Fred Edwords, director of communications, American Humanist Association (AHA)     

I’m Fred Edwords, here to answer the question, “What are the humanists up to now?”

Well, with our holiday print ads appearing in the Washington Post and New York Times today, and our Washington, D.C., Metro bus posters first appearing a week from today, we’re proclaiming loudly and clearly an important part of the humanist ethical message. Let me pick up where Roy left off on that. 

In our ads and posters we pose the rhetorical question: “Why believe in a god?” This is our way of suggesting that the belief isn’t really necessary. Then we follow with a proposal: “Just be good for goodness’ sake”—a line inspired by the famous secular holiday song, “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” introduced in 1934.

Our message is that all of us can have moral values as a natural result of who we are as a species and who we have become as a civilization. Each one of us knows what it means, generally, to be ethical. We may disagree on specific details—that’s part of the creative dialogue on values that has continued across the centuries—but we all get the basic idea and can therefore appeal to each other’s sensibilities across political, religious and cultural lines. The fact that we share a common humanity is what makes moral suasion across those lines even possible. So the underlying unity of human values is our humanist message for the holidays.

It will soon be blazoned on the sides, taillights, and interiors of over 200 Washington, DC, Metro buses. The exterior posters will appear on buses in Northwest Washington starting next Tuesday, November 18. The interior posters will begin December 1 in Northwest and Southeast. This is the first ad campaign of its kind in the United States.

We expect these bus signs to generate a lot of public interest. Some folks may be offended, but that isn't our purpose. We just want to reach those open to this message but unaware how widespread their views really are. Hence our ads and posters direct people to a special Web site that helps them find others of like mind in the Washington, D.C., metro area and nationally.

But why are we doing this now, at the end of 2008? The answer is because humanism and other expressions of a nontheistic worldview are enjoying unprecedented publicity and acceptance, leading to a sudden growth in the membership of humanist and other freethought organizations across the nation. Moreover, demographic surveys reveal that young people are more receptive to our type of message than are their parents. Put simply, we’re striking while the iron is hot. 

This is really a new experience for us. I personally remember, back in the late 1960s, how in order to publish a forthrightly atheistic book in the United States a person needed to go through a freethought publisher. Not only would no mainstream U.S. publishing house touch such a work, but none of the major vanity houses would even accept money for those willing to pay for such publication.

Even as recently as 2006, a University of Minnesota poll found that atheists are the most distrusted group in America, ranking below gays, Muslims and recent immigrants. More Americans (48 percent) would be unwilling to vote for an otherwise qualified atheist than those belonging to any other group.

But in 2004 everything started to change. W.W. Norton published The End of Faith by Sam Harris. The author took to the lecture circuit and the book went on to win the 2005 PEN/Martha Albrand Award. This was followed by top-selling titles from Daniel Dennett, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. There was also a one-woman stage show by comedian Julia Sweeney called “Letting Go of God” and the theatrical release of The Golden Compass, a film based on the book of the same title by atheist author Philip Pullman. 

Then, in September, a new television police show premiered on CBS called "The Mentalist." In it, the hero, Patrick Jane, played by Simon Baker, is an atheist magician—a former "psychic" con artist turned police consultant. In the course of his work he uses and exposes magic tricks, uses mentalist stunts to get people to reveal themselves, challenges supernatural beliefs, and solves crimes through reason and stage trickery. The suave, soft-spoken protagonist has already been dubbed "the sexiest atheist on television."

And the most recent bit of entertainment is Bill Maher’s comedy film Religulous.

Turning to politics, last year Pete Stark, a leading member of the U.S. House of Representatives, came out as not believing in a god. This year he received the American Humanist Association’s Humanist of the Year award and spoke at the World Humanist Congress of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, hosted by us this past June here in Washington, DC. And on November 4 he was overwhelmingly reelected in his California district.

So the nation is enjoying a new burst of freedom of expression. And we humanists have some thoughts we’d like to freely express.

That’s why, throughout this year, we’ve been expressing them. Jan Meshon will tell you about the billboard campaign that has raised the profile of our movement and generated an avalanche of responses, both from people who realized that they, too, were humanists as well as from those who disagreed with us. But everyone heard our message loud and clear. And this is what it takes for us to reach our audience. 

We anticipate that our holiday Metro bus campaign will have a similar impact. And if it does, we hope to expand it to other cities, with new and different humanist messages. To us, then, this is just the beginning. You’ll be hearing much more from us in the future.