A 14-by-48-foot billboard went up this week on the corner of Broadway and 4th Avenue in Denver presenting a secular play on the national motto.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation, the nation’s largest association of freethinkers (atheists and agnostics), has placed the billboard with the slogan “In Science We Trust.” The billboard will be displayed for approximately one month.
FFRF is grateful for the support of FFRF Member Monty C. Cleworth, who graciously funded the billboard.
“With a host of real and pressing challenges facing society today, our leaders need to be making evidence-based policy decisions,” says Cleworth. “Our world would be quickly improved if we all gave up supernaturalism in favor of belief in science and humanism.”
“In God We Trust” is a johnny-come lately motto adopted by Congress during the Cold War, FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor points out. She says that the motto, to be accurate, would have to be worded “In God Some of Us Trust,” and that would be a very silly motto. The original national motto, “E Pluribus Unum [From many, come one],” chosen by a committee of Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson, celebrates unity through diversity and pluralism.
“We need to place our trust not in some deity to rescue us, but in reason, compassion and humanity,” says Gaylor. “The only afterlife that should concern us is leaving our descendants a secure and pleasant planet and future.”
This is the second billboard message in the Mile High City hosted by FFRF this fall. In September, with the help of the Denver chapter of FFRF, a billboard saying “I’m an atheist & I vote!” went up on the corner of Lincoln Street and Eighth Avenue depicting four young Millennial atheists.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with over 32,000 members and several chapters across the country, including more than 800 members in Colorado and chapters in Denver and Colorado Springs. FFRF’s purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between church and state, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.