Tuesday 21 October 2008

Atheist Bus Campaign

I got to thinking about the success of the Atheist Bus Campaign prompted by this article.
Now the only thing I have against the plan is that the word "probably" in the advert isn't a strong enough word to convey the meaning, and "almost certainly" doesn't quite flow right. However unless you're going to do a parody with something like the Invisible Pink Unicorn I don't see how you can make the improbability of a god more clear. I do think that the original author knocked the nail on the head though when she said:

"It tells you that, [...] a man with a beardy face is going to be upset with you, for ever, because you've refused to acknowledge his existence, despite the fact that he's too antisocial to come down here and say hi."

Unfortunately that's a little long for an advertising campaign.
It's clear to me that if god did exist as part of our society he would be locked up immediately. If one needs more confirmation of how antisocial, criminal and dangerous god would be in modern society, a quick read of The Skeptic's Annotated Bible should do the trick. God is clearly racist, homophobic, sexist, pretty much every ist there is. He seems to approve of incest, infanticide and ritual sacrifice.
But that's surely the problem with modern day values, social reality and ethics; people are trying to apply the values of 4000 years ago to the current day and it just doesn't work.

Which brings me back to an old thought of mine; to me you become an adult when you arrive at decisions based upon a set of choices you yourself have made rather than because someone else has told you to do it. Children have to be told what to do often with the explanation of "because i say so" and this is fine when the child doesn't have the life experience to make fully informed decisions. Likewise there are times when adults have to follow similar orders be it in following bureaucracy rules that make no sense (unless you see the big picture which possibly no-one can), or in a military hierarchy where orders must be followed blindly for a multitude of reasons. However I see the ability to think for yourself as that quality that defines humanity and I see religion as acting against this.
Fundamentally I think that is it, an atheist wonders how anyone can think for themselves and not see that god is a fantasy, and a theist wonders how anyone can have the presumption and arrogance to presume how they want the world to behave.

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