08 January 2009

there "probably" is not a god?

From London via the New York Times: Atheists Send a Message, on 800 British Buses

In response to a religious message on the side of a London Transit bus Ariane Sherine, a comedy writer, checked out the web site on the sign and found out that she was going to hell. She was taken aback.
and then she thought, how about putting some atheist messages on the bus, as a corrective to the religious ones?

And so were planted the seeds of the Atheist Bus Campaign, an effort to disseminate a godless message to the greater public. When the organizers announced the effort in October, they said they hoped to raise a modest $8,000 or so.

But something seized people’s imagination. Supported by the scientist and author Richard Dawkins, the philosopher A. C. Grayling and the British Humanist Association, among others, the campaign raised nearly $150,000 in four days. Now it has more than $200,000, and on Tuesday it unveiled its advertisements on 800 buses across Britain.

“There’s probably no God,” the advertisements say. “Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

Wow! Think there may be a little backlash going on to the ever-present propaganda coming from the religious?

One very telling comment in the article struck me:
“I think it’s dreadful,” said Sandra Lafaire, 76, a tourist from Los Angeles, who said she believed in God and still enjoyed her life, thank you very much. “Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I don’t like it in my face.”

Well, Sandra Lafaire, 76,a tourist from Los Angeles, how do you think some of the rest of us feel when at every turn in our daily lives we are bombarded by your opinion?

I get pretty sick of it.

As far as the probably in the ad as well as this blog title, the word had to be used in the ad because of laws and rules in England!
An interesting element of the bus slogan is the word “probably,” which would seem to be more suited to an Agnostic Bus Campaign than to an atheist one. Mr. Dawkins, for one, argued that the word should not be there at all.

But the element of doubt was necessary to meet British advertising guidelines, said Tim Bleakley, managing director for sales and marketing at CBS Outdoor in London, which handles advertising for the bus system.

For religious people, advertisements saying there is no God “would have been misleading,” Mr. Bleakley said.

“So as not to fall foul of the code, you have to acknowledge that there is a gray area,” he said.

and advertisements implying that there IS a god are NOT misleading?

just asking...

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