The Freedom From Religion Foundation is continuing to spread its freethought message in the heart of the Deep South.
A 14-by-48-foot billboard featuring a secular play on our current national motto has just gone up on Cobb Parkway north of Roswell Street in the Atlanta area.
The eye-catching panel, depicting an astronaut floating in space, reads: "In SCIENCE We Trust."
The Freedom From Religion Foundation, the nation's largest association of freethinkers (atheists and agnostics), has put up the billboard for a month in Round Two of a new year-long campaign in the South's most bustling metropolis. A smaller 36-by-10-foot billboard with the same message went up in January at a different location on Cobb Parkway.
The message will rotate to a new spot in the Atlanta region in March.
Georgia FFRF member Jack Egger, who is underwriting the campaign, notes that it's satisfying to counter the godly motto, "In God We Trust," which optionally appears on many Georgia license plates.
"If all of us had faith in science and humanism, we would improve life on Earth so fast," urges Egger.
"In God We Trust" was belatedly adopted as a motto by Congress at the height of the Cold War. The original national motto, "E Pluribus Unum [From many, come one]," chosen by a committee of Founders, is superior, FFRF contends. That's because the original motto, still appearing on the Great Seal and on currency notes, celebrates unity through diversity and does not exclude citizens based on religion.
"It's truly unfortunate this godly usurper was adopted," says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. "The United States is not a theocracy: Our government is supposed to be neutral toward religion, and citizens of any religion or no religion are equal under the law. But this ubiquitous motto sends an exclusionary message to the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population based on religious demographics."
Current Pew surveys reveal that a quarter of adult citizens and more than a third of Millennials qualify as "None," either specifying atheism, agnosticism or no religion.
Since 1990, the number of Americans with no religion has nearly tripled, from about 8 percent to 23 percent. With the secular trend projected to continue, "Generation Z" is primed to be the least religious generation yet. There are now more "Nones" than Catholics, and by 2035, Nones are projected to outnumber Protestants.
FFRF contends that it is time to jettison the divisive "In God We Trust" and return to a celebration of American can-do-ism and respect for the separation of religion and government. Its Atlanta campaign aims to further these goals.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation and its membership work to promote the viewpoint of freethinkers, including atheists and agnostics, and to protect the constitutional principle of separation between religion and government. FFRF has roughly 33,000 members and 20 chapters all over the country, including 500-plus and an Atlanta chapter in Georgia.