Last fall, an atheist group in the U.K. made plans to launch an ad campaign on the sides of London buses with the message seen above. With some attention from the national media and from Richard Dawkins, they raised over £135,000 to pay for the ads. That’s enough to put the ads on over 800 buses, not just in London but in other British cities.
The ads began appearing on the buses yesterday, and local bus spotters have sent in photos from as far away as Sheffield showing the ads.
I like the campaign because, unlike some of the confrontational things one tends to see on atheist websites, it’s not demanding the abolishment of religion or some other harsh set of fighting words, but it’s still very much a take-it-or-leave-it statement. We’ve gotten so wrapped around the idea of every contentious issue having to be fought tooth-and-nail by two warring factions until one side is obliterated, that we’re applying the concept in places where it’s really unnecessary. This is a simple statement, and what some might see as a qualification (“probably”) is, in fact, a recognition of the reality that there are some things beyond human proof.
To wit, here is Dawkins himself making one of the most basic logical arguments that many (maybe even all) atheists operate from in their assumption that there is no god. It is called “teapot atheism”, and you should recognize the premise and its validity immediately:
Dear Harvey, Pete, Barry, Kevin, and every other weathermonkey on Boston-area TV: Enough is enough. The fucking blizzard was THIRTY-TWO YEARS AGO. It’s time to stop trotting out the same blurry videotape of cars stuck on Rt. 128 that is older than some of the people who are actually on your broadcast, [...]
It’s going to be a long two months waiting for the iPad to actually ship so that all the tech bloggers and their hangers-on will stop writing so much speculative bullshit about iT and turn their attention iNstead to some other thing that’s going to Change Life As We Know iT.
Since you cannot click a [...]
Please, please, PUH-LEEZE stop talking about “What do we call the last decade?” Nobody could come up with an acceptable choice ten years ago, and nobody’s going to come up with one now. “Aughties” and “Naughties” are contrived and stupid, and so is the very idea that anything wraps up all nice and [...]
Thanks to Shelley for alerting me that last night’s edition of the local TV newsmagzine “Chronicle” featured Harvard Humanist Chaplain Greg Epstein, whom I blogged about recently in conjunction with the various atheist billboard campaigns around the country. I was busy helping Charlotte do her homework, so I didn’t watch the show, but WCVB’s [...]
