Wednesday, January 14, 2009

The Atheist Bus Campaign Update

I posted a while back about the atheist bus campaign in the UK. It's finally getting underway, and you can read more about it here (thanks Dave). In my previous post I did say that I thought they could have come up with a better slogan for the campaign than the one they chose (There's probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy your life). I've posted many a quote on this very site that would be more suitable. Well, it turns out that the campaign will indeed also be using a few other choice quotes:

That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.

Emily Dickinson

and:

I do not beieve in a personal God and have never denied this but have expressed it clearly.

Albert Einstein

While I think the scheme is a great idea, I still find these quotes somewhat lacking. Then yesterday I read about the Italian atheist bus campaign. Their slogan (translated to English) reads:

The bad news is that God does not exist. The good news is that you do not need him.

I love it. It's confident and positive. Hemant Mehta (the Friendly Atheist), however, is of the opinion that the lack of the "probably" qualifier, as seen in the UK slogan, is "intellectually dishonest", since we can't prove absolutely that God doesn't exist. I disagree, since nobody would think to argue the same point about the phrase "Santa Claus does not exist", and God and Santa Claus each have exactly the same amount of evidence for their existence.

Thumbs up to the Italian infidels.

1 comment:

  1. I agree with you completely, I also much prefer the Italian slogan. The words "Probably doesn't exist" gives religion the credibility of the Loch Ness Monster, when it deserves the credibility of the tooth fairy.

    Cheers

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