UK: Atheists fail to cough up for London bus ad

[Synnical]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2485331/Atheists-fail-to-cough-up-for-London-bus-ad.html



They even made a mock-up photo of a bus carrying their chosen message: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and get on with your life."

http://www.pledgebank.com/atheistbus

[moggie]

1. I would put it another way

As a Londoner and atheist, I would have written "atheists don't see point in London bus ad, think it waste of money". Maybe this sort of advertising would serve a useful purpose in the US, but here in the Smoke we're a pretty godless lot already, and the apatheism expressed by the proposed ad is largely uncontroversial: I wouldn't expect it to raise many eyebrows or change many minds.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. I'd agree - not a Londoner, but not something I thought money was worth spending on

Londoners are pretty aware of the option of atheism.

Maybe the thing to do would be write a poem, and wait to see if you can get it on the Tube for free. :evilgrin:

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. But now it's worked - over £27,000 in less than 12 hours!

plus £5,500 from Richard Dawkins:

All aboard the atheist bus campaign

It's real, it's happening: you can sponsor the first atheist advert on a bus – and Richard Dawkins will match your money

The atheist bus campaign launches today thanks to Comment is free readers. Because of your enthusiastic response to the idea of a reassuring God-free advert being used to counter religious advertising, the slogan "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" could now become an ad campaign on London buses – and leading secularists have jumped on board to help us raise the money.

The British Humanist Association will be administering all donations to the campaign, and Professor Richard Dawkins, bestselling author of The God Delusion, has generously agreed to match all contributions up to a maximum of £5,500, giving us a total of £11,000 if we raise the full amount. This will be enough to fund two sets of atheist adverts on 30 London buses for four weeks.

If the buses hit the road, this will be the UK's first ever atheist advertising campaign. It's an exciting development, which I never expected when I first proposed the idea on Cif in June. Back then, I was just keen to counter the religious ads running on public transport, which featured a URL to a website telling non-Christians they would spend "all eternity in torment in hell", burning in "a lake of fire". When I suggested the atheist counter-slogan (now shortened for readability), the response was extremely positive, and hundreds of you pledged your support after the follow-up article.

As you read this, a new advertising campaign for Alpha Courses is running on London buses. If you attend an Alpha Course, you will again be told that failing to believe in Jesus will condemn you to hell. There's no doubt that advertising can be effective, and religious advertising works particularly well on those who are vulnerable, frightening them into believing. Religious organisations' jobs are made easier because there's no publicly visible counter-view to refute their threats of eternal damnation.

...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/21/religion-advertising

At the donation site:

Fundraising target: £5,500.00
Donations so far: £ 27,657.05

** We reached the total at 10.06am - thank you so much to everyone who contributed! If you haven't donated yet and would like to then please do - we can then get adverts inside the same buses to strengthen the campaign's impact! **


CAMPAIGN

The Atheist Bus Campaign launches today, Tuesday October 21 2008. With your support, we hope 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."

http://www.justgiving.com/atheistbus

[Synnical]

4. That's great! Thanks for the follow-up n/t

-Cindy

[moggie]

5. I see this is getting some Christian love in R/T

I still don't support it. For one thing, the message seems akin to telling a depressed person to "just cheer up": it doesn't work. Religion preys on unhappy or insecure people: if you're "worried", you're more likely to respond to an ad which offers a solution (however false) than one which sternly admonishes you to get over it. This is one of the difficulties of promoting atheism: we don't have easy answers. Worried about your health, your job, your family, the future in general? Well, there are things you can do, but you need to do them, it won't be easy, and there's no fairy godfather who loves you and will sprinkle you with pixie dust to solve your problems.

[onager]

6. You're right about the no easy answers...

And I fall right into that trap every time I go home to the American South.

One relative is always complaining about how "the schools won't let us pray. But every meeting of Congress starts with a Xian prayer...W-A-A-A-H!!!"

Now I can answer that, but I can't do it in a snappy one-liner. Well, I could, but "Oh, STFU, bitch" sort of wreaks havoc on the ol' Xmas spirit of joyful family togetherness.

But in order to answer it, I have to point out rather drony stuff like...

1. The U.S. Congress is not a captive audience of impressionable schoolchildren. Hard as it can be to tell the difference sometimes.

2. By the time of the school prayer court cases in the early 1960s., no less than 30 American states had already banned mandatory school prayer.

3. Some religions, and even some Xian denominations are against public prayer. So was Jesus H. Christ His Own Self, according to Matthew 6:5-8 (for those who believe that sort of thing.)

Etc. etc.

My solution is just to try and not get baited into talking about religion with the Wrong People in the family.