The fool hath said in her heart, oh do shut up
And believers keep wondering why non-believers get irritated with assertive religion. It’s because of the assertiveness. It’s because of the assertiveness combined with the lack of plausibility. The two together make an unpleasant combination. Having people always rushing around trying to compel us to believe nonsensical things that there is no reason to believe…gets to be wearing, and annoying, and something bordering on a grievance. If they kept it to themselves, that would be one thing, but since they refuse – we get sick of the sight and sound of them.
Three separate pro-God advert campaigns on the sides of London buses are set to hit city streets. Buses adorned with the slogan “There definitely is a God” are from the Christian Party…The adverts, which are unrelated, come a month after the British Humanist Association placed “no God” slogans on buses across England. Those adverts, which read: “There’s probably no God: now stop worrying and enjoy your life” prompted complaints from the group Christian Voice and from individuals…The Trinitarian Bible Society…has chosen the message from Psalm 53.1, which reads: “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.”…The Russian Orthodox Church plans ads on 25 buses that read: “There IS a God, BELIEVE.”
Now…the atheist bus campaign was inspired by existing Christian ads on buses that asked “When the son of man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8) and gave the url of a website that offers this pleasant warning
for anyone who doesn’t “accept the word of Jesus on the cross”: “You will be condemned to everlasting separation from God and then you spend all eternity in torment in hell. Jesus spoke about this as a lake of fire which was prepared for the devil and all his angels (demonic spirits)” (Matthew 25:41).
In other words the atheist bus campaign was in response to a theist bus campaign that was at once dogmatic and vindictive, in other words it was in response to a combination of assertive falsehoods and vicious threats. The bus campaign was mildness itself, and it included no threats at all, yet believers greet it with outrage and ‘offense’ and all the rest of the panoply of truculent religious self-pity, and then they get busy supplying more assertive dogmatic falsehoods. There definitely is a God, it’s only fools who think there is no god, there IS a god, BELIEVE (implied: or else).
We hear a lot about what is ‘offensive’; well as far as I’m concerned this is offensive. It’s offensive in its aggression, its dogmatism, its willful blindness to the need for good reasons to believe things, its determination to force its unreasonable and punitve beliefs on everyone else. I’m getting more and more and more and more sick of believers forcing themselves on us at every turn; I’m getting more and more sick of this assumption that we have no right to be free of anti-rational truth claims anywhere we go. Next thing you know they’ll be at the door with arrest warrants.
Errr. . . the word of jesus on the cross . . . which one? How about “I thirst”?
Now that’s a problem I can relate to. But it does seem to me that the only faith I require is faith that the next time I thirst, I will be able to find the corkscrew . . .
I heard Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion tour lecture in Liverpool a few months ago – he started by showing all the books that had been written as a direct response to his, I think it was about 15… It amused everyone there because of the nerve he had struck and the mad-panic response from the religious; I imagine a fair few there, like myself, were put in mind of theists’ favourite whinge about there being ‘so many’ atheist books around, when there are clearly far more crappy religious ones clogging up library shelves.
Anyway my point is that this bus campaign has produced the same telling result – an inoffensive and thought-provoking bus campaign, itself a response to a theist campaign that was anything but, is followed by three predictably hysterical and dogmatic religious counter-campaigns. I love ‘BELIEVE’ especially – no reasons given for why anyone should, simply that bland, forced, menacing assertion.
I might have said it before but if g*d is so fabulous and everything, and the christian deal is so great, wouldn’t it kind of advertise itself? And not need to be in our face all the time, threatening us with BELIEVE or else? Word would have gotten out, right?
They are complaining too much. It cuts into their (hee hee hee) credibility.
Does anyone know if there are plans for the atheist bus campaign to respond to these theistic adverts? This could be the start of a new cultural phenomenon, along with shoe throwing as a form of protest, – the ‘soundbite war’.
And don’t the ASA have rules about providing evidence for factual claims?
I think what’s required as a counter-counter-response is a series of Pastafarian ads. ‘There definately is a Flying Spaghetti Monster, BELIEVE’ should get the message through to all but the most irony-impaired.
Does this mean we get to cause a rumpus with the advertising standard commission over the accuracy of their statements?
Claire’ s post reminded me of a poster that appeared in various parts of Manhattan in the late ’80s. It featured pictures of the pope, Jerry Falwell and the Ayatollah Khomeini above the headline
“If God is so great, how come he has spokesmen like these?”
What I can’t seem to wrap my brain around is the role of the Devil as torturer of the condemned. Isn’t he just acting as some sort of cosmic enforcer for God’s laws? I thought they were on opposing teams, not good cop, bad cop.
Wouldn’t the D-man be more likely to turn the condemned into allies against the invisible sky daddy, and therefore not torture them for all of eternity as a favor to G-dog? It really makes no sense to me. What do I know, though. I’m just some atheist who is barely capable of having a cogent opinion (see the TftD post).
Oh wow – compare “There definitely is a God”, “There IS a God, BELIEVE” and “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God” to the *mock* responses proposed by jesusandmo: http://www.jesusandmo.net/2009/02/13/witty/