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Dashboard Confessional PHILADELPHIA – A consortium of atheists placed a billboard beside I-95, the East Coast’s main north-south artery, to direct attention to its website, phillycor.org. According to businessman Steve Rade, who spearheaded the effort and donated the $22,500 necessary to keep the ad up from May through August, “Our mission is not to convince fundamentalists to change their position. What we want to do is give people who are questioning their beliefs a place to go for more information and to meet like-minded people.” Rade says he has “absolute certainty” there is no God and no afterlife. “I’d like everyone to believe what I do. I think it would be a better world if they did.” His desire to connect with fellow nonbelievers led to the ad. He contacted the American Humanist Association in Washington, D.C. to ask about finding a group in his area. What he found was disarray: There were many associations but no coordination between them. He gathered leaders from various groups and convinced them to create an umbrella organization, the Greater Philadelphia Coalition of Reason. Why the need to band together? The U.S. has the lowest percentage of self-described atheists of any industrialized nation. No wonder Fred Edwords, director of communications for the American Humanist Association, says, “We feel we’re the last minority group it’s okay to say bad things about.” |