Atheist Bus Ads in… Croatia?

I’m quite curious myself to hear what happens next. I’d be terrified by those Roman Catholics. >.>

My prediction: The Christian orthodoxy will pitch their usual shit-fit and try to censor the message. As to the efficacy of their attempts to muzzle the speech of the Croatian atheists, I have no idea.

Interesting. I hope Croatian atheists don’t have a lot of trouble getting their ads put up.

Best of luck to the Croat atheists. My dad was there during some minor disturbances that happened in the region back in the 90s and said it can be a very violent place when it wants to be. We’ll see.

Wonder if it’ll cause enough of a stir for Pope Benedict “Joey the Rat” XVI to issue two-faced commentary on it like he did about homosexuality. Maybe something about how atheists deserve the utmost compassion and respect and they’re also gravely disordered and in need of ‘correction’ for their own good.

Wow, even the Croatheists will get an ad before my region does.

To connect this to another atheist bus controversy, we have a restaurant here in Bloomington called “Little Zagreb”. It’s quite good.

Hi. I’m an atheist from Croatia and i have to say that these ads were first applied on trams in march 2009, but in a matter of hours these trams were removed from traffic. Organization responsible for these ads is the Woman Network, and because they thretaned with law suit, company who is in charge for ads on trams promised that they will put those ads back.

But, there is another drama going on here: our President is on the mission to remove all crosses and religious symbols from public places. It’s a tough task, because the ”catholic mafia” is strong in my country. For example, Croatian catholic Curch is the biggest landowner in Croatia, and money they get from national budget is roughly twice as big as money for academic education (that is mostly free until this year because crisis)!
P.S. Sorry about my english. I’m little out of a shape

I live in Zagreb and am quite interested in seeing how this pans out. I’ll keep you posted.

There was a plan for such ads in Poland (95% catholics). Answer from tramps officials was that “message” will force viewers to think because it is very controversial (sic!) and will ofend religious feelings (yes – we have law that forbids to public ofend other religious feelings ).

Intresting timing. There presedent is in a litlle fight with church. He said church sings should be banned from public places because curch called him a traitor. And now that I can’t wait.

Most of these Roman Catholics attend church service only on Easter and Christmas, are pro-choice and curse their god. If there was church tax (paid only by Roman Catholics, not all taxpayers), Croatia would have perhaps 30% of Roman Catholics. Even my mother said I was Roman Catholic for last census (I wasn’t at home), and she very wells knows for years that I’m an atheist. So the situation is a bit better than it seems. Croatia is secular by Constitution, but has an international contract with Vatican which is above the Constitution and according to which (among everything else) religion must be taught in public schools and Catholic church gets lots of money and real estate from Croatia. Clergy is messing with politics, they were against anti-discrimination law and they want to outlaw abortion (permitted in first 10 weeks of pregnancy).

I tried to send you something about this campaign, but you never got the mail, and I have lost it somewhere when switching to Linux. I’ll try to find it again.

No Gods No Masters! That’s a slogan that has been used by anarchists for years. I love it. I’m not an anarchist myself but it is still a bit of a personal mantra for me.

I would note that Spain is officially 76% Catholic, and yet we have Gay Marriage, Gay adoption, and no politician ever feels the need to discuss their religion in public, while many opt to swear on our Constitution instead of a Bible.

The point is that percentages are misleading. In much of Europe religious identification is more a cultural thing. Maybe Croatia is very religious, but I’d need more than a percentage to be sure.

Echoing Lost Left Coaster, “No Gods, No Masters” has actually been the motto of the anarchists for about as long as the movement has existed. So yes, atheist message, but I think the anarchists deserve the credit there.

Personally, I am an anarchist, and think a lot of people are without really noticing.

Definitely an anarchist slogan. That’s going to piss off more than just the religious.

Being 1/2 Croatian and 1/2 Serbian, I was thinking the other day if I would see this in Croatia or Serbia (there are plenty of atheists in big cities there too, Zagreb, Belgrade, etc.).

Hvala Hemant! (Thank you Hemant!)

I’m going to have to ask my Croatian friends what they think of this…maybe I shouldn’t ask…haha…now I have to ask.

-Nathan

Todd,

Anarchy? How do you figure? Not all forms of authority are “masters.” In the case of this message, it usually means the kind of master that would have slaves, or something along those lines, like a god over his creation.

I think it’s a great message. Of course any clear message from us is going to piss off a lot of theists. Even just hearing that we exist is enough to set them off. So I don’t care what they think about “No Gods, No Masters.” It’s not supposed to be an invitation to a tea party. )

I’m Croatian (the same way the Olive Garden is Italian), living in Canada, and an atheist.
It’s great to see that they’ll get these ads!

Anarchy? How do you figure?

It’s a well known slogan of anarchists. AK Press even titles their anthology of anarchist writing with those words.