Atheists’ slavery billboard raises tempers in Pa.

[rug]

By Diana Fishlock| Religion News Service, Updated: Tuesday, March 13, 2:11 PM
HARRISBURG, Pa. — The billboard is down, but the issue’s not gone.

A billboard erected in one of the city’s most racially diverse neighborhoods featured an African slave with the biblical quote, “Slaves, obey your masters.” It lasted less than a day before someone tore it down.

Now, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission is investigating and is meeting with both the atheists who sponsored it as well as leaders of the NAACP who found it offensive and racially charged.

The atheists behind the sign said they were trying to draw attention to the state House’s recent designation of 2012 as “The Year of the Bible” — an action by lawmakers that the atheists have called offensive.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/atheists-slavery-billboard-raises-tempers-in-pa/2012/03/13/gIQA9Rxt9R_story.html

Read on. The guy who designed this billboard is none other than Zombie Muhammad.

[Ian David]

1. Not their most well thought-out idea. n/t

[deacon_sephiroth]

2. poorly executed but definately has people talking (around here at least) n/t

[Jester Messiah]

3. Oof. That's not what I'd call "helping."

That kind of billboard sounds like something the KKK would fund. Not the vibe I want representing me as an atheist.

[DocMac]

4. Pennsyvania is my home state.

I'm an athiest, but they shouldn't be so ambiguous.

I don't know this Zombie person. Google, here I come.

On edit: I see we are talking about the Muslim who attacked the costume guy in that parade, and the judge who sided with the Muslim guy.

[rug]

7. He's the one on the right.

Poke around in here, there were several threads.

P.S. I moved to Pike County, PA 15 yearss ago,

[DocMac]

9. I was born and raised in Washington, PA.

I think this is over near philly? Now i'm wondering why they took the billboard down. What with free speach?

They should pick their battles more carefully.

[uberllama42]

30. Both incidents occurred in the Harrisburg area

The Halloween incident was in Mechanicsburg in Cumberland County, across the Susquehanna River from Harrisburg. The billboard was placed in the Allison Hill neighborhood of Harrisburg.

When the article says "one of the city's most racially diverse neighborhoods," it is euphemizing. It would be accurate to say "a racially homogeneous neighborhood in which the residents are mostly black." There are areas uptown from Allison Hill that are racially diverse. Allison Hill is predominantly made up of black residents. Why newspapers misreport this sort of thing is a mystery to me.

As for free speech, the billboard was vandalized less than 24 hours after being put up and was then removed by the company that owns the advertising space. Physically destroying an ad expressing an opposing viewpoint is of course unseemly in an open society, but the advertising company does not seem to have changed the billboard out of disrespect for the atheist group's point of view.

[Warpy]

5. People who are into bible idolatry generally don't know what's in it

and intensely dislike it when someone points out just what it is that they're clinging to as the "word of gawd" and therefore akin to a god, itself.

[DocMac]

6. Can you explain the message?

I would like to erase ignorance too, but what/how does this message help?

[hayrow1]

11. The billboard stated truth and facts. If that hurts, good. This keeps the conversation moving in

the direction of education, rather than the base ignorance of the thumpers.

[DocMac]

12. I agree with you.

But you know there will be a knee jerk reaction.

[AlbertCat]

28. there will be a knee jerk reaction.

I wonder what the reaction would have been if it had depicted a Roman slave, a white girl in Roman attire.

No one would have gotten it.

[cbayer]

14. What truth and facts? The objection to the billboard was not

that it was put up by an atheist group or about their objections to the recent legislative action. It was because it was felt to be highly insensitive, offensive and racially provocative.

And it wasn't aimed at "thumpers" (whoever you may think they are).

It was the goal of the organization to protest the legislative action and reach out to non-believers. They missed their goals by miles and have even apologized for putting it up.

[skepticscott]

21. The message of the billboard

Has been clearly laid out, in post #15 on this thread, as well as here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1218&pid=13981

Yet you and the other scolds here flat-out refuse to address those issues. Why is that?

Apparently the mistake they made with the billboard was expecting people to react rationally when confronted harshly with their own cognitive dissonance. They should have known that the immediate reaction would be anything but. Nevertheless, if seeds have been sown for the future, the effort was not entirely wasted, despite the knee-jerk vandalism.

[cbayer]

8. That's not the issue or the objection.

"The ad was intended to protest Pennsylvania’s boneheaded declaration of 2012 as the so-called “Year of the Bible.” Much to the “astonishment” of AA reps, the billboard was reviled, defaced, and labeled a hate crime by some in the African American community. Apparently offended black folk just weren’t intelligent enough to grasp the sage lesson that American Atheists, prominent champion of anti-racist social justice, was trying to teach them. Instead, some “misconstrued” the message as racist, concluding that, in a country where white nationalists have issued a clarion call to take back the nation from the Negro savage/illegal alien in the White House, “slaves obey your masters” probably still means them. "

http://www.democraticunderground.com/121813935

[DocMac]

10. Jeebus, they thought people understood what you just said?

An editorial in the paper would help to educate some people before raising that billboard.

Some people just jump in deep water.

[cbayer]

13. I don't understand what you are saying here.

[DocMac]

18. It is clear that the people did not

understand the message. Are you saying that the people that live there know their history?

[cbayer]

24. They didn't understand the message because it was so poorly delivered.

Of course the people who live there know their history. That is why they reacted so negatively to the billboard.

The inability to get the message does not rely with the targeted audience. It lies completely with the messengers.

BTW, the excerpt from the article I posted above is dramatically sarcastic, so perhaps you need to read it in context.

[NAO]

15. The Bible including the NEW Testament is clearly pro-slavery.

The NEW Testament is clearly pro-slavery.

Jesus never condemned the practice of slavery, and he used examples of slavery in parables, not commenting on the moral status of owning another human being. Matt 18:25, Mark 14:66, Luke 12:45-48.

Paul took it much further, admonishing slaves to obey their masters repeatedly in his letters. Paul even devoted an entire letter, Philemon, to returning a runaway slave to his "owner". For Paul's pro-slavery passages, see Ephesians 6:5-9, Colossians 4:1 (cited on the billboard), and I Timothy 6:1-3.

The "Ten Commandments" are given in Exodous 20; Exodous 21 is a set of god's alleged rules for owning slaves. The chapter divisions in the Bible were added in the 16th century, so The Ten Commandments and the guidelines for buying and selling slaves, including selling your own daughter, are in the same immediate context.

If the Bible was god's communication to humans - a set of moral instructions - you'd think he'd at least have given us a heads-up that it is wrong to own other people. But this is not in the Bible, which is clearly a human document and a product of the times in which it was written. Anyone who claims that morality is based on the Bible needs to sincerely take the slavery question to heart. If the Bible does not condemn one of the most immoral practices in human history, it is clearly not a moral authority.

[rug]

16. You're clearly missing the point.

[Sinistrous]

17. No. You are refusing to recognize the point.

[Igel]

19. Words change meaning over time.

They just mean what people the people using them want them to mean, with allowance for what they think others in their audience think they mean.

"Slavery" in the Torah means a few different things. It was a temporary state--sort of like bankruptcy, allowing you to pay off debts; the rules were (to the extent they were enforced) that you could only be a slave for a maximum of 6 years. There were restrictions and exceptions for children, women, etc. But there was another kind that was more collective involving conquered peoples. No good word, AFAIK, on whether there was a cash trade in Palestine in these slaves.

In the NT slavery was primarily Greek and Roman. The Roman type was akin to chattel slavery, with slave markets and the like. Roman slavery was brutal--but there are no regs or prescriptions given in the OT about it--the OT was put together before Rome mattered. And the writers regarded the Romans as fairly irrelevant in most ways. The gospel writers portray the populace as worked up over Roman occupation, but the writers themselves see little point in worrying about it. Doesn't mean that they *liked* the Roman occupation and what happened at Masada. It just means they had a different agenda.

There not much of an approval of slavery in secular terms in the NT. The general attitude is that it's an irrelevancy compared to what a Xian should focus on. Slave or free, Greek or Jew, man or woman no matter. Seeking to be free of a human master is meaningless; seeking to be bound to a human master is meaningless. The real "slavery" that has a positive connotation is being a bondsman to God.

The chapters and verses were added late. This isn't to say that there aren't divisions between sections and that each section has its own context. It's just that you have to read and understand instead of slavishly following some editor's divisions.

I oppose chattel slavery. I think it's a bad thing, esp. since it's covert now and the sadists who continue to engage in it are more brutal than ever. But the millions of Africans sent to North America, and the even greater number sent to South America or the Caribbean was a crime against humanity. The huge numbers of sub-Saharan Africans taken to N. Africa and the Middle East was a crime against humanity. The numbers of Europeans taken captive as slaves and taken to N. Africa and the Middle East also constituted a crime against humanity. All those crimes have had the statute of limitations expire, except for ongoing slavery--scattered about N. America and Europe, a bit more common in some countries like Sa'udiyya, and still not that uncommon in some parts of Muslim Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa (e.g., Niger).

[skepticscott]

22. Despite your rather elaborate parsing

of the word "slavery", you still fail to explain why a god who spends so much time dictating morality and proper behavior fails completely to condemn slavery as the great moral evil it has always been. Kids who sass their parents are to be killed, but just a shrug given to the buying, selling and owning of human beings by other human beings?

[Brettongarcia]

33. Indeed, Igel's typical Christian apologetic seems to rather implicitly support Torah-style slavery.

Since he distinguished that, from chattel-type. And then? Condemns only chattel slavery.

While next? The writer goes on, partially justifying all slavery altogether. First by asserting that in Christianity, all forms of slavery are in effect, unimportant. Especially compared, worse, to the best form of assertedly good slavery: slavery to the Lord, or those who claim to speak for him. (CHurch officials, like himself?)

Then: "Not much approval of slavery in the NT"? Wouldn't just one such approval, be too much? Especially one emphasizing earthly masters. Like this one:

"Slaves be obedient to those who are your earthly masters" (Eph. 6.5).

[laconicsax]

20. This is old news, rug.

[rug]

26. The Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission investigation is not.

[struggle4progress]

23. "Whoa dude! Watch me pizz a bunch a people off and grab me some attention here!"

seems to be a really common mode of thought nowadays: ya see it from the Phelps gang of Westboro; ya see it from the Parading Zombie Dimwits of Pennsylvania

Is there something out there that keeps the brain from developing after puberty? Too much exposure to TV or something?

The Parading Zombie Dimwits of Pennsylvania don't seem to have grasped some basic historical facts very well, cuz the Pennsylvania boys and other Yankees ended fighting against slavery

[cbayer]

25. The parading zombies and the people that put up this billboard are reportedly the same.

They really need some education in cultural sensitivity. I have rarely seen a group shoot themselves in the foot so blatantly (and repeatedly).

Welcome back!

[SpartanDem]

27. They thought this would be a good idea?

[struggle4progress]

31. They're really not much known for their deep thinking: they're more known

for their unceasing efforts to provoke fisticuffs at otherwise harmless Halloween events and the like

[AlbertCat]

29. So... let's see this billboard so we can judge for ourselves.

I don't see an image of it anywhere.

Is the only copy "Slaves, obey your masters". or does it indicate that it is a Bible quote? Does it note (1st perhaps) that the legislature made this the "year of the Bible"?

Do they have an ad group working with them, or are they just making this stuff up themselves with no idea about advertising or just what kind of ideas, and how to convey them a billboard presents
When I took courses in advertising, we had a whole section on just billboards. They create a whole set of circumstances and problems of communication unique to the genre.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

32. This is the billboard: