Could an atheist bus campaign mobilise Ireland's non-believers into secular action, asks Elaine Edwards
JUST AS SOME people were perhaps considering turning to religion to sustain them through doom and depression, a group in Britain this week put up posters with a discouraging message: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."
The posters on some 800 buses across England, Scotland and Wales were placed by the British Humanist Association (BHA), which didn't add any helpful information on what exactly there is left to enjoy these days.
The campaign was born out of a blog by writer Ariane Sherine on the Guardian's Comment is Free website last June.
She suggested atheist advertising as an apt response to a campaign by a Christian group, in which bus posters carried a link to a website warning non-Christians they would be "condemned to everlasting separation from God and then you spend all eternity in torment in hell".
Sherine said the slogan displayed on public transport would "hopefully reassure anyone who has been scared by this kind of evangelism".
"Ours is a fun and light-hearted message but it does have a serious point to it: that atheists want a secular country, we want a secular school and a secular government. The strength of feeling has been shown with so many people willing to pay for this campaign," she said.
Revered writer and evangelical atheist Richard Dawkins - who is vice president of the BHA - told The Irish Times that an almost identical campaign beginning on buses in Barcelona next week had the Spanish Catholic church "shrieking in horror - surely an inspiration to the Irish to follow suit and then go further".
The BHA liaised with its Irish counterpart, the Humanist Association of Ireland, when the campaign began, and the BHA's chief executive, Hanne Stinson, admitted this week she hoped something similar would be considered here.
But Ann James, secretary of the Humanist Association of Ireland, says there are currently no plans to mount such a campaign. "We don't feel we have to react to everything that religions do," she says. "Some people, even some people here [at the association], might think it's quite aggressive. Personally, I don't think it is at all.
"I think in some ways, because of the way this country is, we might try a less direct method to raise awareness. We want people in every corner to have awareness of what it is, and that if they want to be a humanist they can. I think it's fun - other people might say it's a bit too much."
James admitted, however, that the body is always trying to "dig out" public figures that might help to get the organisation's message across.
The campaign in Britain is also supported by prominent figures such as Irish comedy writer Graham Linehan. Within days of an appeal for funds in October, the atheist bus campaign had raised some £100,000 in donations from the general public, largely online, exceeding the initial £5,500 target. By this week, it had rocketed to about £135,000 and similar campaigns are taking off in other countries, including Italy, Australia, the US and the emphatically Catholic Spain.
The response of the Catholic archbishops of Barcelona was: "Faith in God is not a source of worry, nor is it an obstacle to enjoying life." One group within the church said the ads were "an attack on all religions".
Dawkins, in a characteristic response when asked for his view on those who might be offended at such advertisements, said they were "pathetic cry-babies". He says the bus campaign has raised "an astounding £130,000, almost all of it in small donations from thousands and thousands of ordinary people, sick and tired of being taken for granted as docile, religious sheep".
In fact, Dawkins says the British and Spanish slogan "doesn't go far enough . . . For Ireland, I would suggest: 'There's no such thing as a Catholic child. Protect your children from priestly indoctrination - until they are old enough to decide for themselves.'"
Some 1,000 advertisements will be placed on the London underground next week, and two large LCD screens with the atheist messages will feature prominently on the city's shopping mecca, Oxford Street.
While the atheist campaign may offend some believers, it's unlikely to raise even a shrug from those for whom the only true religion is an overpriced brand of denim.
Perhaps if such a campaign were considered in Ireland, Christians could run a counter-campaign to fit the current mood: "Broke, down in the dumps? Turn to God - praying is the new shopping."
www.atheistbus.org.uk