The group that put these billboards up has not quite gotten the reaction they hoped for. The group’s intent to post the billboard in Williamsburg, home to a significant Hasidic Jewish community, hit a snag when they tried to access the billboard:

“We believe that (these) communities are teeming with atheists due to the emails we regularly receive,” said American Atheists President Dave Silverman, a nonprofit that seeks civil rights for non-believers and absolute separation of church and state. “We have received a dozen emails from Hasidic Atheist Jews since we announced the billboards. … They feel totally alone. We want to tell them they are not alone.”

Silverman was at the site with the advertising company to erect the giant sign atop a residential building.

But landlord Kenny Stier refused to allow workers from the advertising company Clear Channel into the building, said Silverman. He told The Brooklyn Paper that he believes powerful rabbis in the largely ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jewish area persuaded Stier to block the billboard.

“It has been very disconcerting to see that the traditional victims of religious bigotry have become the purveyors of religious bigotry,” said Silverman, who was raised in the Jewish faith.

Stier could not immediately be reach for comment, but The Brooklyn Paper quoted him as saying, “I don’t want to get involved in this.”

Williamsburg Rabbi David Niederman told the paper the sign is “a disgrace. … The name of god is very holy to us and to the whole world.”

Curious that Silverman doesn’t see the problem with his own bigotry in using G-d’s name in pursuit of his own atheist agenda and offending the religious Jewish community in Williamsburg.

But for most people, it’s just more clutter in the background and not changing anyone’s views.