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Email: "Atheist Ad Adorns 800 London Buses - Another 1,000 to Be Placed in Underground"

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Catholic Herald editor and Daily Telegraph blogger, Damian Thompson, said that the ads will likely have the opposite of the intended effect. BY LifeSiteNews.com By Hilary WhiteLONDON, January 12, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – An atheist ad campaign run by the UK’s secularists has garnered complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). The message, “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life” has appeared on over 800 London buses since the campaign began in October and, starting next week, 1,000 of the ads are to be placed on the London underground and on two large LCD screens on the city’s shopping mecca, Oxford Street. The British Humanist Association (BHA) that has funded the campaign, dismissed the news that the ASA has received a complaint from the evangelical group Christian Voice, which say the ads break rules on substantiation and truthfulness. Stephen Green, national director of Christian Voice, said, “There is plenty of evidence for God, from people’s personal experience, to the complexity, interdependence, beauty and design of the natural world.“But there is scant evidence on the other side, so I think the advertisers are really going to struggle to show their claim is not an exaggeration or inaccurate, as the ASA code puts it.”Catholic Herald editor and Daily Telegraph blogger, Damian Thompson, said that the ads will likely have the opposite of the intended effect. “The British Humanist Association bus campaign, which tells us to stop worrying because there probably isn’t a God, really is an answer to prayers,” he wrote. Given the widespread indifference to religion among the British public, Thompson wrote, “In the first place, it’s counter-productive: plaster double-deckers with posters about the existence of God and you’ll make people think about him for the first time in years.”Britain’s best known “evangelical atheist,” professor Richard Dawkins, told the Irish Times that he thinks the UK campaign does not go far enough. Dawkins called those who objected “pathetic cry-babies” and said, “For Ireland, I would suggest: ‘There’s no such thing as a Catholic child. Protect your children from priestly indoctrination - until they are old enough to decide for themselves’.”The campaign’s organisers have boasted that their fundraising requests have garnered over £135,000 ($243,448 Cn.) within weeks of being posted to the internet. Dawkins, who is vice president of the BHA, said that the money has come from “thousands and thousands of ordinary people, sick and tired of being taken for granted as docile, religious sheep.”The writer whose blog post on the Guardian website inspired the campaign, Ariane Sherine, said that the message, though meant to be “fun and light hearted,” has a serious intention. She told Elaine Edwards of the Irish Times, “Atheists want a secular country, we want a secular school and a secular government. The strength of feeling has been shown with so many people willing to pay for this campaign.”Sherine’s wish, however, has in large part already come true; Britain is known to be one of the world’s least religious nations. In 2000, the BBC reported that almost half of all adults in the UK said on a survey that they have no religious affiliation. That figure rose to two-thirds of 18-24 year-olds. At the same time, the nation’s established Church, the Church of England, claimed only one quarter of the British public as members and only a tiny fraction of those attended Sunday services regularly. This week, it was reported that the number of marriages in Catholic churches in Britain has fallen by 24 per cent since the start of the decade.In addition, the legal situation has never been more hostile to the public profession of Britain’s traditional Christian religious belief. Secularists, together with homosexualist activists and their collaborators in the Labour government under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, have made strides in their stated goals of suppressing Christian institutions and charities. With the legal recognition of same-sex partnerings and the passage of the Sexual Orientation Regulations (SORs) of the Equality Act, Britain’s Christian schools have come under threat when they refuse to cooperate in endorsing the homosexualist doctrines. In the last year, Christian couples have been refused permission to act as foster parents to needy children and to adopt children for upholding Christian beliefs about marriage and sexuality. Since the passage of the SORs, many of the country’s Catholic adoption agencies have chosen either to sever their ties with the Catholic Church or close their doors. Similar campaigns to that of the UK are being undertaken in Italy, Australia, the US and Spain, where religious practice has been in decline for decades. Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:Advertising Nothing: London Buses to Sport Atheist Message, "There’s Probably No God"http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/oct/08102304.htmlAtheist Humanist Ads Hit Washington DC Buses During Christmas seasonhttp://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/nov/08111307.html http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/atheist-ad-adorns-800-london-buses-another-1000-to-be-placed-in-underground/

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