The Freedom From Religion Foundation has a message for drivers in the Atlanta area: “Enjoy life now — There is no afterlife.”
The billboard, near the intersection of Piedmont and Sandy Plains Road, has just gone up for a month as part of a year-long media campaign in the Atlanta area underwritten by FFRF member Jack Egger.
The message was actually coined by the late octogenarian farmer and atheist, Wayne Hensler, who placed the billboard in rural Wisconsin for many years as a “legacy for his grandchildren.”
Egger is a fan of the message.
“If all of us had faith in science and humanism, we would improve life on Earth so fast,” says Egger. “By giving up supernaturalism, we all can have a more fulfilling life, with a brighter, more peaceful and predictable future.”
Previous billboards that have been placed this year in the vicinity include a 14-by-48-foot bulletin calling “supernatural belief — the enemy of humanity,” an arresting billboard showing an astronaut in space with the slogan “In Science We Trust,” and another timely billboard message stating, “The only wall we need is between state and church.”
“I heartily concur with the ‘enjoy life now’ idea,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “We have to do the things we love in this life.”
“Pie in the sky” notions can be harmful, asserts FFRF, especially those by fundamentalist Christians in government today who deny climate change and take literally the Genesis edict: “Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the Earth, and subdue it; and have dominion . . . over every living thing.”
“I feel strongly that the only afterlife that ought to concern any of us is leaving our descendants — and this planet — a secure and pleasant future,” adds Gaylor.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a state/church watchdog with more than 33,000 members and 20 chapters nationwide, including 500-plus members in Georgia and an Atlanta-area chapter.
