UPDATE, AUG. 18, 9:31 A.M.: Backyard Skeptics has corrected the location for its new billboard stating, “Atheism is Philanthropy Without Mythology,
Peace Without Superstition.”
It's at the 55 freeway off Edinger Avenue in Santa Ana.
The unveiling ceremony is at 4:30 p.m. today at 1701 Boyd St.–behind the building at that address and under the billboard. For those operating without the power of prayer or GPS, exact directions after the jump . . .
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Exit Edinger off the 55 and head west. Make a u-turn at the first light (Ritchey) then go south (right) on Boyd to 1701 Boyd.
ORIGINAL POST, AUG. 17, 8:08 A.M.: Backyard Skeptics, the Orange County group getting ever so bold in exposing the unwashed masses to atheism, has disclosed the location of their next provocative billboard.
Bearing the slogan “Atheism is Philanthropy Without Mythology,
Peace Without Superstition,” the 48×14-foot billboard will be unveiled at 4:30 p.m. Thursday off the 55 freeway at 17th Edinger in Santa Ana (Go to 1701 Boyd St.) And no, pious ones, the sign won't be pointed down to H-E-Double-Matchsticks. It'll face south.
Street
Why?
To “increase the awareness of secularism in Orange County” and “give other rationally based (vs. faith-based) individuals a voice,” reads a Backyard Skeptics meet-up message from Bruce Gleason, the group's organizing director.
Gleason goes into more detail in an email to the Weekly:
There are over 15% of those in Orange County who have no particular
religious affiliation–some are agnostics and some are atheists.
Since non-believers do not have a church or synagogue to go to,
Backyard Skeptics is a way for those non-believers to join an Orange
County based group which believes that you can be good without a god.
He argues that “a rationally based non-theistic world view
(vs. a faith-based one) is more peaceful, more tolerant and more moral.”
If that sounds like what you have, check out backyardskeptics.com. You'll discover there and in the links below that Gleason's group, with the aid of a national atheist group, has been spreading the word (as opposed to Word) via billboards, bus ads and teach-ins the past several month. Everyone else seeking salvation can look to the skies . . . above the 55 and Edinger 17th.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.
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