Four freethinking billboards have just been posted in the Salt Lake City area by the Freedom From Religion Foundation:
• One seasonal 14×48 foot bulletin proclaims “Reason’s Greetings from the Freedom From Religion Foundation” at I-15, about 4000 feet south of 33rd Road South.
• Another colorful14x48 foot bulletin with a stained-glass window motif can be found on I-15 2 miles north of Spanish Fork. It asks viewers to “Imagine No Religion.”
• The jaunty “Reason’s Greetings from the Freedom From Religion Foundation” can also be found as a 10×24 foot poster on South Vanwinkle (north of 9th East) and as a 10×36 foot poster on 33rd South and 168 West.
The billboards will be up past the New Year.
This is FFRF’s first billboard campaign in the State of Utah.
FFRF, a state/church watchdog and the nation’s largest association of freethinkers (atheists and agnostics), launched a national billboard campaign in late 2007. FFRF has placed hundreds of billboards around the country, visiting more than half the states so far.
FFRF has more than 17,000 nonreligious members nationwide, but its Utah membership, at 102 persons, is on the slim side. FFRF hopes its billboard campaign will change that.
“We want the nonreligious — freethinkers, atheists, agnostics and other skeptics — in Utah to know they are not alone,” says Dan Barker, a former evangelical minister who now co-directs FFRF.
FFRF’s “Imagine No Religion” billboard harkens to John Lennon’s song, “Imagine”:
Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today.
FFRF also wants to remind everyone of what it calls “the real reason for the season — the Winter Solstice, a ‘natural holiday,’ “ adds Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president.
The Winter Solstice, the shortest, darkest day of the year typically referred to as the first day of winter, takes place this year on Thursday, Dec. 22. “It signals the return of the sun and the natural new year. It has been celebrated for millennia in the northern hemisphere with evergreen displays, feasts, festivals of light and gift-exchanges,” Gaylor notes.
See some photos, billboard locations and map below:
Billboard Locations
#8764A E/S I-15 3960' S/O 33rd South F/N (14'x48') – "Reason's Greetings"*
#23543A W/S I-15 2mi N/O Spanish Fork F/N (14'x48') – "Imagine No Religion"*
#9279A NE/L Ne/S Vanwinkle 9' Nw 9th East F/NW (10'x24') – "Reason's Greetings"
#23640A N/S 33rd South & 168 West F/W (10'x36') – "Reason's Greetings"
