A campaign to raise money for atheist adverts to run on the sides of London buses has gone overboard today - raising it's baseline amount in the matter of a few hours!
Starting today, they hoped to raise £5,500 to run 30 buses across the capital for four weeks with the slogan: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." At mid-morning they'd already shot over this amount!
Professor Richard Dawkins, bestselling author of The God Delusion, is matching all donations up to a maximum of £5,500, so he's giving a total of £11,000.
The aim of it all?
We can brighten people's days on the way to work, help raise awareness of atheism in the UK, and hopefully encourage more people to come out as atheists. We can also counter the religious adverts which are currently running on London buses, and help people think for themselves.As Richard Dawkins says: "This campaign to put alternative slogans on London buses will make people think - and thinking is anathema to religion."
This is the right way to go about it. Far too often Dawkins (&co) have been much more in-yer-face and agressive about their militant atheism and been just as offensive as your fundamentalist preacher (of whatever faith).
ReplyDeleteThis on the other hand gets their point across, is inoffensive, and raises a smile - in many ways it's very similar to the alpha course adverts that they no doubt disapprove of.
Although the 'probably' does - to me at least - sound as if it's part of a series of Carlsberg adverts:
"...probably the best religion in the world"
Oh, and I can't work out your maths. If Dawkins is matching donations to a maximum of £5,500, surely he's only giving £5,500?
But sadly he can't resist that final comment "thinking is anathema to religion" which tars all religious people with the same brush, is inaccurate and offensive.
The late evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould said that half of his colleagues were religious and half weren't. And therefore either atheism and religion are both defensible positions for a scientist, or half of his colleagues were irretrievably stupid.
But this "I am right, and if you disagree with me you aren't just wrong, you're stupid" appears typically Dawkinian (fortunately not a position shared by most atheists OR believers I know).
Or is it just that "Tolerance is anathema to Dawkins"?
You're right about the last bit of the Dawkins quote, I'll leave it up though.
ReplyDeleteI understand that the ad authority makes them put in the 'probably'