nunoncastors

‘No God’ slogans for city’s buses

Bendy-buses with the slogan “There’s probably no God” could soon be running on the streets of London.

The atheist posters are the idea of the British Humanist Association (BHA) and have been supported by prominent atheist Professor Richard Dawkins.

The BHA planned only to raise £5,500, which was to be matched by Professor Dawkins, but it has now raised more than £36,000 of its own accord.

It aims to have two sets of 30 buses carrying the signs for four weeks.

The complete slogan reads: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

As the campaign has raised more than anticipated, it will also have posters on the inside of buses as well.

The BHA is also considering extending the campaign to cities including Birmingham, Manchester and Edinburgh.

Professor Dawkins said: “Religion is accustomed to getting a free ride - automatic tax breaks, unearned respect and the right not to be offended, the right to brainwash children.

“Even on the buses, nobody thinks twice when they see a religious slogan plastered across the side.

“This campaign to put alternative slogans on London buses will make people think - and thinking is anathema to religion.”

Hanne Stinson, chief executive of the BHA, said: “We see so many posters advertising salvation through Jesus or threatening us with eternal damnation, that I feel sure that a bus advert like this will be welcomed as a breath of fresh air.

“If it raises a smile as well as making people think, so much the better.”

But Stephen Green of pressure group Christian Voice said: “Bendy-buses, like atheism, are a danger to the public at large.

“I should be surprised if a quasi-religious advertising campaign like this did not attract graffiti.

“People don’t like being preached at. Sometimes it does them good, but they still don’t like it.”

However the Methodist Church said it thanked Professor Dawkins for encouraging a “continued interest in God”.

Spirituality and discipleship officer Rev Jenny Ellis said: “This campaign will be a good thing if it gets people to engage with the deepest questions of life.”

She added: “Christianity is for people who aren’t afraid to think about life and meaning.”

The buses with the slogans will run in Westminster from January.

Source: BBC News

Also.

All aboard the atheist bus campaign

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.

The atheist bus campaign aims to change this. In addition to the slogan, the adverts will feature the URLs of secular, humanist and atheist websites, so that readers can find out more about atheism as a positive and liberating alternative to religion. We’ve also set up an interactive campaign website and Facebook group, so that questions raised by the adverts can be publicly debated.

CBS Outdoor, the bus advertising company, will run the atheist adverts in January if the funds are raised – but we need your help to make this happen.

Your donations will give atheism a more visible presence in the UK, generate debate, brighten people’s day on the way to work, and hopefully encourage more people to come out as atheists. As Richard Dawkins says: “This campaign to put alternative slogans on London buses will make people think – and thinking is anathema to religion.”

Source: The Guardian.co.uk

I’ve mixed feelings about organised Atheism; it seems a little… quixotic to begin veering into areas that are traditionally the reserve of religion. I’m all for raising awareness and prompting people to consider the various contradictions inherent to all major religions, but this seems a little, well, preachy. I’m not keen, no matter how amusing it is.

See, things are just getting silly now. I posted yesterday’s quote at least partially in jest, a snide observation on the ease with which populations can be manipulated by the odious shits in charge. Then I read this.

Passports will be needed to buy mobile phones

Everyone who buys a mobile telephone will be forced to register their identity on a national database under government plans to extend massively the powers of state surveillance.

Phone buyers would have to present a passport or other official form of identification at the point of purchase. Privacy campaigners fear it marks the latest government move to create a surveillance society.

A compulsory national register for the owners of all 72m mobile phones in Britain would be part of a much bigger database to combat terrorism and crime. Whitehall officials have raised the idea of a register containing the names and addresses of everyone who buys a phone in recent talks with Vodafone and other telephone companies, insiders say.

The move is targeted at monitoring the owners of Britain’s estimated 40m prepaid mobile phones. They can be purchased with cash by customers who do not wish to give their names, addresses or credit card details.

The pay-as-you-go phones are popular with criminals and terrorists because their anonymity shields their activities from the authorities. But they are also used by thousands of law-abiding citizens who wish to communicate in private.

The move aims to close a loophole in plans being drawn up by GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping centre in Cheltenham, to create a huge database to monitor and store the internet browsing habits, e-mail and telephone records of everyone in Britain.

The “Big Brother” database would have limited value to police and MI5 if it did not store details of the ownership of more than half the mobile phones in the country.

Contingency planning for such a move is already thought to be under way at Vodafone, where 72% of its 18.5m UK customers use pay-as-you-go.

The office of Richard Thomas, the information commissioner, said it anticipated that a compulsory mobile phone register would be unveiled as part of a law which ministers would announce next year.

“With regards to the database that would contain details of all mobile users, including pay-as-you-go, we would expect that this information would be included in the database proposed in the draft Communications Data Bill,” a spokeswoman said.

Simon Davies, of Privacy International, said he understood that several mobile phone firms had discussed the proposed database in talks with government officials.

As The Sunday Times revealed earlier this month, GCHQ has already been provided with up to £1 billion to work on the pilot stage of the Big Brother database, which will see thousands of “black boxes” installed on communications lines provided by Vodafone and BT as part of a pilot interception programme.

The proposals have sparked a fierce backlash inside Whitehall. Senior officials in the Home Office have privately warned that the database scheme is impractical, disproportionate and potentially unlawful. The revolt last week forced Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, to delay announcing plans for the database until next year.

Source: Times Online

Suddenly it’s not so funny anymore.

Sometimes I’m consumed by a creeping doubt and, while you may not notice, it looms over me and colours my actions. It is the near certainty that I’m a terrible, terrible human being. My polarised way of thinking aside, this suspicion comes from the knowledge that, while I’m generally a polite and reasonable chap - albeit somewhat dark of humour - it’s often largely an act. I may courteously ask someone if I can squeeze past them, but the chances are that I’m thinking “get out of the fucking way, you tit. Why would you stand there and inconvenience the entire world when you could just as easily not exist? What the fuck is wrong with you; it’s an aisle, you don’t stand in the middle of an aisle and block it, you get out of the fucking way don’t you? Yes, yes you do. Move, move now. Go on, fuck off out of the way. God I hate you.”

All of which can make a man question himself. I mentioned this in passing to one of my friends along with my desire to live on a quiet little Scottish island with relatively few people about and a nice sense of remoteness. They advised me to seek help as being a hermit is just as unhealthy.

Fair point.

I’ve stated my conviction that there are more people in my head than just me on a few occasions now. Curiously, the whole concept is no longer a concern, not really, nor is it a particularly serious statement of worry; I think I may just be obsessed with the way consciousness works and the division between the conscious and subconscious mind. What with everyone’s mind working in different ways, I think it’s possible that I’m not actually unbalanced in any real sense; it’s just the case that mine works somewhat more differently than most. A part of me feels that that’s the worst sort of egotism, the idea that I’m in some way different or *ahem* ‘special’, but what’s a man to do?

Anyway, at best my concerns aren’t actually separate entities; they’re just various iterations of myself possessed, as it were, of a greater degree of independence than could reasonably be expected. I don’t know if anyone else has songs running through their head all day, or listens to stories told by yourself to yourself – only not quite – but I do, and it can be a little odd at times. Often there’s the sensation that it isn’t just me looking out on the world and there’s some sort of internal discussion going that I’m not privy to until a decision’s been reached.

That doesn’t make any sense does it? No, thought not. Still, this rambling nonsense has been prompted by the recent feeling that something isn’t quite right, y’know? Not with me, but a general sense of foreboding and the occasional flicker of memories that I’m not convinced belong in my head. There’s been an irritating monologue too, mumbling along and intermittently and drowning out the usual songs and stories, I think I object to that more.

Obviously, this is the most ridiculous delusional toss, but it does set me wondering about the intricacies of the human psyche and what other’s have to put up with, surely not everyone’s like this?