Another story in the media today: a Christian bus driver refused to take out a bus which had a paid-for atheist slogan on the side of it.
I initially read it in all three of The Sun, The Daily Mirror, and The Daily Mail. Richard Dawkins is only mentioned in the Mail version (I missed it initially), and then only briefly. For those who don’t know, Dawkins is a rabid atheist who is a hundred times more bigoted than those he seeks to lampoon with every word he utters. I know from long experience his sinister support of these kind of things and his name did come to mind while I was reading the stories and before I remembered his involvement with the group who had paid for the slogan.
And then I saw The Guardian’s article, linked to at the top of this post. Bingo: I knew he’d be poking his oar in somewhere.
In a nutshell, the British Humanist Association has paid £140,000 for this advert – you’d think they’d have something better to spend it on, wouldn’t you? – which says:
There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.
The bus driver, Ron Heather – a devout Christian – refused to drive it when he saw it. He is, of course, entitled to feel like this.
The issue isn’t over whether Mr Heather is right or wrong in his belief in God or, indeed, if anyone is right or wrong in their belief of any God or gods. The really worrying thing is that as mandatory Christianity is removed from schools, agencies like the BHA can start to peddle their own sinister brand of ‘religion’ to corrupt people’s minds.
The BHA – and its vice president, Dawkins – is happy to keep asking ‘can you prove that God exists?’, but the simple response to this has to be ‘but can you prove God doesn’t exist?’ The answer in both cases is ‘no’.
I notice from their website that the BHA seeks:
inclusive schools where children with parents of all faiths and none learn to understand and respect each other, instead of being segregated in the growing number of faith and sectarian schools
You can’t help thinking that a better understanding of how the world works might be a more realistic aspiration. But I really like the closing paragraph in the Mirror’s story:
The £140,000 ad campaign is being run by the British Humanist Association to “give atheists a voice”.
Another £140,000 and hopefully it would give them a brain, as well.