Moving Memes Off The Internet

Over the weekend, while I was out at lunch with the family, some nice Christian put a postcard on my car windshield titled, “Why Die and Go to Hell? When Jesus Made a Bridge to Heaven!”

Sure it is possible that the Christian wanting to save my soul didn’t even notice the atheist bumper stickers on my car – after all, the same postcard was left on everyone else’s windshield too. But I think the Christian might have seen the bumper stickers and felt even more empowered and self-righteous.

The post card does contain a website for a church local to that area so I am tempted to e-mail the church and have a conversation. However, such a conversation probably wouldn’t be of much use without an audience.

This postcard does remind me of a project I wanted to start awhile back. Why aren’t atheists and humanists trying to spread our ideas in a similar fashion? We post great memes on Facebook, Twitter, and other social network sites, but why can’t we turn some of those memes into postcard (or business card) sized memes and put them on cars too?

We don’t even need to promote a website or anything. We just need to spread our values through memes. Sure, most people would just throw them out and if they are too aggressive we would come off as being dicks, but we can spread some positive values that might just inspire people to think critically.

Here is one example from blogger JT Eberhard:

What messages and memes can you create that can be used for this purpose? Is this a technique for spreading memes too aggressive? The case could be made that we shouldn’t be emulating the religious in this way. I don’t really see a problem as long as the memes we spread this way are positive. It couldn’t be any less positive that threating people with eternal damnation. Still, the point we want to get across is that atheists are friendly and that critical thinking and doubt are cool.

Speaking of doubt, the Skeptic Ink book, “13 Reasons to Doubt” is now available on Kindle. Paperback and other formats will be available soon. I’m proud of my chapter for this book so I hope you will all check it out.