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Billboard Debate

by Published: Sep 14, 2011

In a col­umn in the Sept. 7 edi­tion of the Torch, the author addressed her per­sonal beliefs on a bill­board located on U.S. 131. The bill­board reads, “You don’t need God to hope, to care, to love, to live.”

In many cir­cum­stances, reli­gion has been a sen­si­tive topic when acknowl­edg­ing the dif­fer­ent beliefs of oth­ers. By no means was either the author nor the Torch’s inten­tion to offend the per­sonal beliefs of any­one who read the col­umn. Based on the response our read­ers have shown, there is a level of sup­port toward both sides of the issue. The author is clearly not alone in her opin­ion on this topic.

A num­ber of indi­vid­u­als who have read the bill­board have viewed its mes­sage as offen­sive, truth­ful, false, or an exam­ple of free­dom of speech.

Regardless of how you view its mes­sage, in its sin­cer­est form, an opin­ion should be viewed as an indi­vid­ual belief and not a means of sim­ply prov­ing another wrong. The opin­ion of the author and the bill­board itself should be used as a means to cre­ate dia­logue between oppos­ing viewpoints.

If we allow this pur­pose to get lost in per­sonal emo­tions, we lose the oppor­tu­nity to gain knowl­edge on our dif­fer­ences; rather one’s per­sonal beliefs clas­sify them as Christian, Catholic, athe­ist or agnos­tic. The response to both the author’s col­umn and the billboard’s mes­sage has shown that there are a mul­ti­tude of mis­con­cep­tions regard­ing the pur­pose of faith.

I believe the most valid point the author made in her col­umn was “There are peo­ple who live through their faith when they have noth­ing else…”

This is a state­ment that con­nects us all no mat­ter which side we stand on in regard to this issue.

The future of this debate should not con­tinue through attack­ing unfa­mil­iar beliefs or con­vinc­ing another that their beliefs are mis­guided. It should be to under­stand the beliefs of oth­ers and learn accep­tance toward another’s oppos­ing views.

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  • Elizabeth

    Well, well, well. I believe I was right. All of that cri­tiquing of the author’s style and all we see is a rather insult­ing “apol­ogy” from the Editor-in-Chief using very sim­i­lar argu­ments. I’m glad to see that the Editor-in-Chief sup­ports argu­ment fal­lac­ies and did not have the author write any­thing her­self. Bravo, Torch! This is lower than my real­is­tic expec­ta­tion, but higher than worst case sce­nario. Please tell me that nei­ther of these indi­vid­u­als are actu­ally Journalism majors…

    I do com­mend you on the fact that you redi­rected everyone’s anger towards the Sororities instead of the poor writ­ing skills of the Opinions Editor.  That was clever.

  • Xgoddess210

    I hate to break it to you, but this arti­cle was almost as insult­ing as the first. I bet if the arti­cle was directed at Christians and not Atheists, the response would have been a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. Also, don’t blame us for attack­ing the opinion’s edi­tor and tell us that we don’t accept her view when she insulted every athe­ist out there. If she didn’t want that response, she should have thought twice before she wrote what she did. I mean, hon­estly, did you even read her arti­cle before you wrote your response?

  • Ex-Torch Reader

    “Based on the response our read­ers have shown, there is a level of sup­port toward both sides of the issue. The author is clearly not alone in her opin­ion on this topic.” And where are those peo­ple that sup­port her opin­ion in the com­ments sec­tion? I am a Ferris stu­dent and I am offended greatly by both the orig­i­nal arti­cle and this crude attempt at try­ing to make it seem like it was not a mis­take to have been let through, regard­less if it was for the extremely poor writ­ing, or for the extremely biased response. I am ashamed that my University would sup­port this big­otry with a response attempt­ing to jus­tify its publication. 

  • Alodomic

    Aww.… so much for the apol­ogy. That stinks.

  • Amela O’Gorman

    This mediocre attempt at an apol­ogy is almost as insult­ing as the first arti­cle. I won­der if the E-Cheif and the Opinions Editor have the same point of view on this issue? On the up side, at least this arti­cle doesn’t sound like a jour­nal entry. 

    Everyone is enti­tled to an opin­ion. The prob­lem isn’t so much the view point of the author but the way the arti­cle was writ­ten. The exam­ples used in the arti­cle to express the authors point of view were insulting. 

  • ema

    I really love this apol­ogy arti­cle.  It says, “We’re not sorry but our boss made us write this.”  But in a very classy way, I promise.  Basically the pre­vi­ous arti­cle was a cut and paste when it comes down to it.  You can make every­thing sound good when you take it out of con­text.  I found it inter­est­ing that the author wasn’t con­fi­dent enough in her writ­ing and posi­tion to include the com­plete bill­board quote so that the read­ers would be more edu­cated in their non-education.  The full bill­board reads, “You don’t need God to hope, to care, to love, to live.  Basically this quote doesn’t mean that you don’t need God.  It says that you are capa­ble of being a good per­son, even with­out reli­gion.  Someone con­vinced oth­er­wise is most likely suf­fer­ing from belief bias.  It’s dis­s­a­point­ing though because I used to find that the Torch’s arti­cles were well researched and mod­er­ately well writ­ten.
    Oh well.
    I guess every­one has their off days.