Atheist bus campaign spreads the word of no God nationwide

Donations totalling more than £140,000 to fund adverts on 600 buses across UK as well as in London tube stations
Riazat Butt, religious affairs correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 6 January 2009 17.20 GMT

Anyone who has spent a chilly half-hour waiting for a double-decker may already have doubted the existence of a deity. But for those who need further proof, a nationwide advertising campaign aimed at persuading more people to "come out" as atheists was launched today with the backing of some of Britain's most famous non-believers.
The principal slogan – "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" – can already be seen on four London bus routes, and now 200 bendy buses in London and 600 across the country are to carry the advert after a fundraising drive raised more than £140,000, exceeding the original target of £5,500.
The money will also pay for 1,000 advertisements on London Underground from next Monday and on a pair of giant LCD screens opposite Bond Street tube station, in Oxford Street. Organisers unveiled a set of quotes from public figures – including Albert Einstein, Douglas Adams and Katharine Hepburn – who have endorsed atheism, or at least expressed scepticism about a Creator. The words "That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet" are quoted from the poet Emily Dickinson.
At the launch in a heated marquee next to the Albert Memorial, the television comedy writer Ariane Sherine, creator of the campaign, said: "You wait ages for an atheist bus and then 800 come along at once. I hope they'll brighten people's days and make them smile on their way to work."
She suggested the campaign in a Guardian Comment is free blogpost last June, saying it would be a reassuring alternative to religious slogans threatening non-Christians with hell and damnation. At today's launch she said the sheer number of donations, which were still coming in, demonstrated the strength of feeling. "This is a great day for freedom of speech in Britain. I am very glad that we live in a country where people have the freedom to believe in whatever they want."
Joining Sherine were Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, Hanne Stinson, from the British Humanist Association (BHA), the philosopher AC Grayling and Graham Linehan, who wrote Father Ted, Black Books and The IT Crowd. There were messages of support from the actor Stephen Fry and the writer Charlie Brooker.
According to the BHA, "huge numbers" of people in Britain have non-religious beliefs – between 30 and 40% of the population, with a higher figure, between 60 and 65%, in young people.
Hanne Stinson said: "We all, whether we have religious or non-religious beliefs, have a right to be heard, and no one particular set of beliefs has any more right to influence the public debate than any other. The message isn't aimed at people with religious beliefs – it's aimed at atheists and agnostics."
Most commentators recognised the slogan as a simple statement of non-religious belief and appreciated that it was designed to reassure people there was no reason to worry about being non-religious, she said. "People can lead a happy, enjoyable and rewarding life without religion."
Prior to the launch, Sherine was concerned that the posters would be banned from buses operated by Stagecoach, the second largest public transport company in the UK. Its co-founder Brian Souter is a member of the Church of Nazarene, an international evangelical Christian denomination.
A Stagecoach spokesman said all adverts on its buses were vetted before being published. "This particular advert is being carried on a number of bus operators' vehicles across the UK. We took advice from the Advertising Standards Authority in advance of publication and we have been advised the advert complies with the relevant guidelines and legislation."
The theology thinktank Theos welcomed the campaign, saying it was a "great way" to get people thinking about God. "The posters will encourage people to consider the most important question we will ever face in our lives. The slogan itself is a great discussion starter. Telling someone 'there's probably no God' is a bit like telling them they've probably remembered to lock their door. It creates the doubt that they might not have."
A statement from the Methodist Church thanked Dawkins for encouraging a "continued interest in God".
The success of the British initiative has inspired atheists around the world. The American Humanist Association launched a bus advertising campaign last November with the slogan, "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake", appearing on the sides, rear and insides of Washington DC's 230 buses.
The subsequent news coverage generated mostly negative phone calls and emails, with the largest number going directly to the organisers. Hundreds of complaints were sent to Metro, the government body responsible for the city's buses and subways. The poster provoked two counter-campaigns by devout Christians.
From Monday, buses in Barcelona bearing a Spanish translation of the British slogan will hit the streets, to the consternation of the city's Catholic hierarchy, while Italy's Union of Atheist, Agnostics and Rationalists plans to roll out atheist buses.
Atheists in Australia have fared badly with their campaign. Attempts to place slogans such as "Atheism – sleep in on Sunday mornings" on buses were rejected by Australia's biggest outdoor advertising company, APN Outdoor.

Legal case against God dismissed

[from www.bbc.co.uk/news]

A US judge has thrown out a case against God, ruling that because the defendant has no address, legal papers cannot be served.
The suit was launched by Nebraska state senator Ernie Chambers, who said he might appeal against the ruling.
He sought a permanent injunction to prevent the "death, destruction and terrorisation" caused by God.
Judge Marlon Polk said in his ruling that a plaintiff must have access to the defendant for a case to proceed.
"Given that this court finds that there can never be service effectuated on the named defendant this action will be dismissed with prejudice," Judge Polk wrote in his ruling.
Mr Chambers cannot refile the suit but may appeal.
'God knows everything'
Mr Chambers sued God last year. He said God had threatened him and the people of Nebraska and had inflicted "widespread death, destruction and terrorisation of millions upon millions of the Earth's inhabitants".
He said he would carefully consider Judge Polk's ruling before deciding whether to appeal.
The court, Mr Chambers said, had acknowledged the existence of God and "a consequence of that acknowledgement is a recognition of God's omniscience".
"Since God knows everything," he reasoned, "God has notice of this lawsuit."
Mr Chambers, a state senator for 38 years, said he filed the suit to make the point that "anyone can sue anyone else, even God".

The Fine Art of Baloney Detection

CARL SAGAN'S BALONEY DETECTION KIT
Based on the book The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan
The following are suggested as tools for testing arguments and detecting fallacious or fraudulent arguments:

Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the facts
Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
Arguments from authority carry little weight (in science there are no "authorities").
Spin more than one hypothesis - don't simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.
Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it's yours.
Quantify, wherever possible.
If there is a chain of argument every link in the chain must work.
"Occam's razor" - if there are two hypothesis that explain the data equally well choose the simpler.
Ask whether the hypothesis can, at least in principle, be falsified (shown to be false by some unambiguous test). In other words, it is testable? Can others duplicate the experiment and get the same result? Additional issues are
Conduct control experiments - especially "double blind" experiments where the person taking measurements is not aware of the test and control subjects.
Check for confounding factors - separate the variables. Common fallacies of logic and rhetoric
Ad hominem - attacking the arguer and not the argument.
Argument from "authority".
Argument from adverse consequences (putting pressure on the decision maker by pointing out dire consequences of an "unfavourable" decision).
Appeal to ignorance (absence of evidence is not evidence of absence).
Special pleading (typically referring to god's will).
Begging the question (assuming an answer in the way the question is phrased).
Observational selection (counting the hits and forgetting the misses).
Statistics of small numbers (such as drawing conclusions from inadequate sample sizes).
Misunderstanding the nature of statistics (President Eisenhower expressing astonishment and alarm on discovering that fully half of all Americans have below average intelligence!)
Inconsistency (e.g. military expenditures based on worst case scenarios but scientific projections on environmental dangers thriftily ignored because they are not "proved").
Non sequitur - "it does not follow" - the logic falls down.
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc - "it happened after so it was caused by" - confusion of cause and effect.
Meaningless question ("what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?).
Excluded middle - considering only the two extremes in a range of possibilities (making the "other side" look worse than it really is).
Short-term v. long-term - a subset of excluded middle ("why pursue fundamental science when we have so huge a budget deficit?").
Slippery slope - a subset of excluded middle - unwarranted extrapolation of the effects (give an inch and they will take a mile).
Confusion of correlation and causation.
Straw man - caricaturing (or stereotyping) a position to make it easier to attack..
Suppressed evidence or half-truths.
Weasel words - for example, use of euphemisms for war such as "police action" to get around limitations on Presidential powers. "An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public"
Above all - read the book!

Do they really think the Earth is flat ?

[By Brendan O'Neill - www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine/]

In the 21st Century, the term "flat-earther" is used to describe someone who is spectacularly - and seemingly wilfully - ignorant. But there is a group of people who claim they believe the planet really is flat. Are they really out there or is it all an elaborate prank?
Nasa is celebrating its 50th birthday with much fanfare and pictures of past glories. But in half a century of extraordinary images of space, one stands out.

WORLD VIEW
330 BC Aristotle provides evidence of spherical earth
240 BC Eratosthenes of Cyrene accurately calculates circumference of globe
8th Century AD work by Bede shows acceptance of sphere idea

On 24 December 1968, the crew of the Apollo 8 mission took a photo now known as Earthrise. To many, this beautiful blue sphere viewed from the moon's orbit is a perfect visual summary of why it is right to strive to go into space.
Not to everybody though. There are people who say they think this image is fake - part of a worldwide conspiracy by space agencies, governments and scientists.
Welcome to the world of the flat-earther.
Our attitude towards those who once upon a time believed in the flatness of the earth is apparent in a new Microsoft advert.

Photos such as this one are deemed fakes by flat-earthers
Depicting an olden-days ship sailing on rough seas, presumably heading towards the "edge of the world", the advert is part of a $300m campaign aimed at rescuing the reputation of Windows Vista by comparing its critics to flat-earthers.
Satellite era
But are there any genuine flat-earthers left? Surely in our era of space exploration - where satellites take photos of our blue and clearly globular planet from space, and robots send back info about soil and water from Mars - no one can seriously still believe that the Earth is flat?
Wrong.
Flat earth theory is still around. On the internet and in small meeting rooms in Britain and the US, flat earth believers get together to challenge the "conspiracy" that the Earth is round.
"People are definitely prejudiced against flat-earthers," says John Davis, a flat earth theorist based in Tennessee, reacting to the new Microsoft commercial.
"Many use the term 'flat-earther' as a term of abuse, and with connotations that imply blind faith, ignorance or even anti-intellectualism."
Mr Davis, a 25-year-old computer scientist originally from Canada, first became interested in flat earth theory after "coming across some literature from the Flat Earth Society a few years ago".
"I came to realise how much we take at face value," he says. "We humans seem to be pleased with just accepting what we are told, no matter how much it goes against our senses."
Mr Davis now believes "the Earth is flat and horizontally infinite - it stretches horizontally forever".
"And it is at least 9,000 kilometres deep", he adds.
James McIntyre, a British-based moderator of a Flat Earth Society discussion website, has a slightly different take. "The Earth is, more or less, a disc," he states. "Obviously it isn't perfectly flat thanks to geological phenomena like hills and valleys. It is around 24,900 miles in diameter."
Mr McIntyre, who describes himself as having been "raised a globularist in the British state school system", says the reactions of his friends and family to his new beliefs vary from "sheer incredulity to the conviction that it's all just an elaborate joke".
So how many flat-earthers are around today? Neither Mr Davis nor Mr McIntyre can say.
Disappearing ships
Mr McIntyre estimates "there are thousands", but "without a platform for communication, a head-count is almost impossible", he says. Mr Davis says he is currently creating an "online information repository" to help to bring together local Flat Earth communities into a "global community".
"If you will forgive my use of the term 'global'", he says.
And for the casual observer, it is hard to accept that all of this is not some bizarre 21st Century jape. After all, most schoolchildren know that ships can disappear over the horizon, that satellites orbit the earth and that if you head along the equator you will eventually come back on yourself.
What about all the photos from space that show, beyond a shadow of doubt, that the Earth is round? "The space agencies of the world are involved in an international conspiracy to dupe the public for vast profit," says Mr McIntyre.
John Davis also says "these photos are fake".
And what about the fact that no one has ever fallen off the edge of our supposedly disc-shaped world?
Mr McIntyre laughs. "This is perhaps one of the most commonly asked questions," he says. "A cursory examination of a flat earth map fairly well explains the reason - the North Pole is central, and Antarctica comprises the entire circumference of the Earth. Circumnavigation is a case of travelling in a very broad circle across the surface of the Earth."
Ultimate conspiracy
Mr Davis says that being a flat-earther doesn't have an impact on how one lives every day. "As a rule of thumb, we don't have any fears of aircraft or other modes of transportation," he says.
Christine Garwood, author of Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea, is not surprised that flat-earthers simply write off the evidence that our planet is globular.
"Flat earth theory is one of the ultimate conspiracy theories," she says.
"Naturally, flat earth believers think that the moon landings were faked, as were the photographs of earth from space."
When Columbus sailed, it was known the world was not flat
Perhaps one of the most surprising things in Garwood's book is her revelation that flat earth theory is a relatively modern phenomenon.
Ms Garwood says it is an "historic fallacy" that everyone from ancient times to the Dark Ages believed the earth to be flat, and were only disabused of this "mad idea" once Christopher Columbus successfully sailed to America without "falling off the edge of the world".
In fact, people have known since at least the 4th century BC that the earth is round, and the pseudo-scientific conviction that we actually live on a disc didn't emerge until Victorian times.
Theories about the earth being flat really came to the fore in 19th Century England. With the rise and rise of scientific rationalism, which seemed to undermine Biblical authority, some Christian thinkers decided to launch an attack on established science.
Samuel Birley Rowbotham (1816-1884) assumed the pseudonym of "Parallax" and founded a new school of "Zetetic astronomy". He toured England arguing that the Earth was a stationary disc and the Sun was only 400 miles away.
In the 1870s, Christian polemicist John Hampden wrote numerous works about the Earth being flat, and described Isaac Newton as "in liquor or insane".
And the spirit of these attacks lives on to the present day. The flat-earth myth remains the outlandish king in the realm of the conspiracy theorist.
And while we all respect a degree of scepticism towards the authorities, says Ms Garwood, the flat-earthers show things can go too far.
"It is always good to question 'how we know what we know', but it is also good to have the ability to accept compelling evidence - such as the photographs of Earth from space."

Imagine No Religion

[by Richard Dawkins http://richarddawkins.net/]

Imagine, sang John Lennon, a world with no religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Kashmir dispute, no Indo/Pakistan partition, no Israel/Palestine wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no Northern Ireland 'troubles'. Imagine no Taliban blowing up ancient statues, lashing women for showing an inch of skin, or publicly beheading blasphemers and apostates. Imagine no persecutions of the Jews - no Jews to persecute indeed, for without religion they would long ago have intermarried with the surrounding populations.Of course today's religious killings and persecutions are not motivated by theological disputes. IRA gunmen don't kill Protestants (or vice versa) over disagreements about transubstantiation. The motive is more likely to be tribal vengeance. It was one of 'them' killed one of 'us'. 'They' drove 'our' great grandfathers out of our ancestral lands. The grievances are economic and political, not religious, and the vendettas stretch back a long way.But although the tribal disagreements themselves have nothing to do with religion, the fact that there are two tribes at all has everything to do with religion. There are, no doubt, tribal distinctions of genetic or linguistic origin, but in Northern Ireland what else is there but religion? The same applies to Indo-Pakistan, Serbo-Croatia, and various regions of Indonesia and Africa. Religion is the world's most divisive label of group identity and hostility. If a social engineer set out to devise a system for perpetuating today's most vicious enmities, he could not come up with a better formula than sectarian education. Faith schools that taught all religions comparatively might do some good. But the whole point of faith schools is that the children of 'our' tribe must be taught 'their own' religion. Since the children of the other tribe are simultaneously being taught the rival religion with, of course, the rival version of the vendetta-riven history, the prognosis is all too predictable.What can it mean to speak of a child's 'own' religion? Imagine a world in which it was normal to speak of a Keynesian child, a Hayekian child, or a Marxist child. Or imagine a proposal to pour government money into separate primary schools for Labour children, Tory children, LibDem children and Monster Raving Loony children? Everyone agrees that small children are too young to know whether they are Keynesian or Monetarist, Labour or Tory, too young to bear the burden of such labels. Why, then, is our entire society happy to slap a label like Catholic or Protestant, Muslim or Jew, on a tiny child? Isn't that, when you think about it, a kind of mental child abuse?I once made that very point in a broadcast debate with a Roman Catholic spokeswoman. I've forgotten her name but she was probably some kind of agony aunt, and a stalwart of Thought for the Day. When I said that a primary school child was too young to know whether it was a Catholic child or a Protestant child, she bristled: "Just come and talk to some of the children in our local Catholic school! I can assure you they know very well that they are Catholic children." Well yes, I believe it only too well. The Jesuit boast - "Give me the child for his first seven years, and I'll give you the man" - is no less sinister for being familiar (in various versions) to the point of clich?. But, you may ask, what if religion is true? (What if my particular religion is true, you should rather say, for mutually contradictory beliefs can't all be true.) Surely sectarian indoctrination would not be child abuse if it saved the child's immortal soul? Despite its smug presumptuousness, I can see how you might take that view if you sincerely believed you had the God-given truth. Let me, then, be ambitious if not presumptuous, and try to persuade you that you do not have the truth. Your confidence in your God is simply wrong!Why do you believe in your God? Because he talks to you inside your head? That is surely not a reliable argument. The Yorkshire Ripper's murders were ordered by the perceived voice of Jesus inside his head. The human brain is a consummate hallucinator, and hallucinations are not good grounds for beliefs about the real world. Perhaps you believe in God because life would be intolerable without him. That's an even weaker argument. Maybe life just is intolerable. Tough! All sorts of things are intolerable, but it doesn't make them untrue. It may be intolerable that you are starving, but you won't make a stone edible by believing - no matter how passionately and sincerely - that it is made of cheese. By far the favourite reason for believing in God is the argument from improbability. Eyes and skeletons, hearts and nerve cells are too improbable to have come about by chance. Man-made machines are improbable too, and they are designed by engineers for a purpose. Surely any fool can see that kidneys and wings, ears and blood corpuscles must also be designed for a purpose, by a master Engineer? Well, maybe any fool can see it, but let's stop playing the fool and grow up. It is 146 years since Charles Darwin gave us what is arguably the cleverest idea ever to occur to a human mind. He demonstrated a working process whereby natural forces, with no design whatsoever, can by slow, gradual degrees generate an elegant illusion of design, to almost limitless levels of complexity.I have written books on the subject and I obviously can't repeat the whole argument in a short article. Let me give just two guidelines to understanding. First, the commonest fallacy about natural selection is that it is a theory of chance. If natural selection really were a chance process, it is entirely obvious that it could not explain the illusion of design. But natural selection, properly understood, is the antithesis of chance. Second, it is often said that natural selection makes God unnecessary, but leaves his existence an entirely open possibility. I think we can go further. The argument from improbability, which traditionally is deployed in God's favour, turns out to be, when you think it through, the strongest argument against him.The beauty of Darwinian evolution is that it explains the very improbable, by gradual degrees. It starts from primeval simplicity (relatively easy to understand) and works up, by plausibly small steps, to complex entities which, by any non-gradual process, would be too improbable for serious contemplation. Design is a real alternative, but only if the designer is himself the product of an escalatory process such as evolution by natural selection, either on this planet or another. There may be alien life forms so advanced that we would worship them as gods. But they too must be ultimately explained by gradual escalation. Gods that exist ab initio are ruled out by the Argument from Improbability, even more surely than are spontaneously erupting eyes or elbow joints.Religious faith is not only a major force for evil in the world. Its very foundations are undermined and denied by scientific logic. Imagine a world where nobody is afraid to follow such thoughts wherever they may lead.

Some good quotes ...

"It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public; and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds which follows from the advance of science." [Darwin]

"If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities." [Voltaire]

"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism." [Einstein]

"Faith means not wanting to know what is true." [Nietzsche]

"I cannot believe in the immortality of the soul.... No, all this talk of an existence for us, as individuals, beyond the grave is wrong. It is born of our tenacity of life – our desire to go on living … our dread of coming to an end." [Edison]

"The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma." [Lincoln]

"Religion is a byproduct of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?" [Arthur C. Clarke]

"Religions are all alike – founded upon fables and mythologies." [Thomas Jefferson]

"Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile." [Kurt Vonnegut]

"Religion is based . . . mainly on fear . . . fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. . . . My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race." [Bertrand Russell]

Saudi king appeals for tolerance

[from www.bbc.co.uk]

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has called on followers of the world's main religions to turn away from extremism and embrace a spirit of reconciliation.
The king was opening a conference in Madrid which brings together Muslims, Christians, Jews and Buddhists.
He said the great conflicts of history were not caused by religion, but by the misinterpretation of religion.
King Juan Carlos of Spain, the co-host, said Spain had always sought to promote international dialogue.
Critics have dismissed the gathering as a propaganda gimmick by the Saudis who, they say, are not best placed to host a meeting on religious tolerance.
Wahhabism, the strain of Sunni Islam that is officially practiced in Saudi Arabia, is considered one of the religion's most conservative and intolerant forms.
"My brothers, we must tell the world that differences don't need to lead to disputes," King Abdullah said.
"The tragedies we have experienced throughout history were not the fault of religion but because of the extremism that has been adopted by some followers of all the religions, and of all political systems."
Correspondents say King Abdullah has made reaching out to other faiths a hallmark of his rule since becoming king in 2005. He is the first reigning Saudi monarch to meet the Pope, for example.
In June, Abdullah held a religious conference in Mecca in which participants pledged improved relations between Islam's two main branches, Sunni and Shia Islam.
The conference is sponsored by Saudi Arabia and is billed as a strictly religious, non-political affair. It is off limits to journalists apart from the inaugural session.