And this is why Church and State don't mix...

As you know I have been following the Canadian atheist bus add story pretty closely and I have expressed my concerns about putting a religious (or lack there of) message on a state owned vehicle. Well this is exactly why I questioned the idea:

From the Edmonton Sun:

The Roman Catholics have talked about wanting equal space for their perspective and now the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada says they’re planning to buy their own bus ads promoting an all-faith approach to religion.

“It’s not an appropriate place (for the debate) but the other group decided to take this path,” Imam Syed Sohawardy said Thursday.

“We would love to have them in our places of worship and in our community centres so we can sit down and talk.”

The Islamic council already has the funding to place ads on five buses and it’s hoping to raise more money to buy more advertising space.

“It should be some slogan like, `God is merciful, God is with you and enjoy your life,’ ” said Sohawardy.

This puts TTC in a tough spot because they now need to give equal time and space to any religion that wants to be heard. Instead of promoting a positive view on atheism it has created more of a battleground for ad space. I guess this is not a terrible thing for TTC I'm sure with the economy in its current state ad sales have dropped a bit and this will provide them an entirely new client base but you have to ask your self do you really want various religious groups being that large of a client to a government run program?

You can ask why is this a bad thing it’s getting a ton of publicity and all publicity is good publicity right? Well yes if you’re an out of work actor who is looking to get their name out there but in this case I think it’s a bad thing it will only galvanize religious groups against atheists which will only tighten their grip on their followers by giving them another reason to fight against us.

If this was done on a privately owned billboard this would be a non-issue, the ads could stay up as long as there was funding to pay the rent and it would be up to the owners discretion if they wanted to give equal time and space to other groups. Church and state will never mix well because the state ahs to be fair to all of its citizens (in theory) while the church does not.