October 21, 2008
Given how crazy this sounds, I would not have believed the report except for the fact that it was published by one of the world's most venerable newspapers, The Times [London]. It seems that Richard Dawkins, perhaps the world's most famous living atheist, is launching a campaign to put advertisements for atheism on London city buses.
Take a look at the story:
“There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” That is the cheery message London buses will be carrying if Richard Dawkins, the atheist, can raise enough cash.
The slogan is to be daubed across 30 Westminster buses in retaliation for a series of bendy-bus Christian messages. CBS Outdoor, the bus advertising company, said that it would run the atheist ads in January. “Religion is accustomed to getting a free ride,” said Dawkins, who will match donations up to £5,500.
Ariane Sherine, creator of the Atheist Bus Campaign, said: “I’m very pleased so many people are behind the atheist bus. Though not actually behind the atheist bus - they’d get covered in exhaust fumes.”
Dawkins, a professor at Oxford University, is among the world's most famous scientists. His professorial assignment is identified as "the public understanding of science," but most of the world knows him as the proponent of the "selfish gene" as the basic engine of evolution.
In more recent years, he has emerged as a strident and outspoken atheist. In his best-selling book, The God Delusion, Dawkins presented a broadside attack on theism in general and the Christian faith in particular. He has become the world's most vocal opponent of belief in God and a significant presence in the media. Now, however, he seems to risk becoming a parody of himself.
Look carefully at the strange wording of the proposed bus advertisements: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” That hardly seems like a ringing call to an emboldened atheism. There's probably no God?" Dawkins doesn't exude much confidence with this wording. Probably?
Regardless of the wording, I cannot imagine that these signs would prompt a wholesale resurgence of atheism. But the wording is interesting, to say the least. Maybe this represents a new "seeker sensitive" approach on the part of the atheists.
Meanwhile, on this side of the Atlantic, Ronald Aronson of Wayne State University argues that politicians had better pay heed to atheists and allied unbelievers. Writing in USA Today, Aronson argues:
Surveys regularly receive front-page coverage for reporting, as the 2008 Pew U.S. Religious Landscape Survey did, that nearly all Americans believe in God. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life concluded that 92% of Americans are believers and that only 5% of Americans don't believe in God (3% gave some other answer, didn't know, or refused to answer).
But something is wrong with this picture. It erases vast numbers of Americans —not only atheists, agnostics and secularists, but also those who have turned away from the God and religion of the Old and New Testaments. And it makes it seem as though most of those who claim to be "believers" believe pretty much the same things — though this is manifestly false. It encourages the sense that there are two kinds of Americans, the overwhelming majority who believe and belong, and those few do not believe, and are outsiders. But the conventional wisdom that nearly all Americans believe in God is wrong.
