Bus Driver Shocked at Non Believers

England (ChattahBox) – A bus driver has refused to drive his route, due to a collection of new advertisements by an Atheist organization, that has been putting it’s message across the sides of buses.
Ron Heather, a 62 year old Christian man, says he was horrified by the slogans, which he had been shocked to see plastered to the side of his bus.
“I was just about to board and there it was staring me in the face. My first reaction was horror. I’d heard about this silly campaign in London but I had no idea it was coming to Southampton.”
The messages started appearing after a collection of Christian slogans were plastered all over London, from subway stations, to bus benches, and were created by comedian Ariane Sherine, and activist Richard Dawkins. They read “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying, and enjoy your life.”

They got the Advertising Standards Association involved and they failed to take God's side:

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has said that an athiest bus poster campaign does not break the advertising code. The ASA comments follow complaints led by Christain Voice, an anti-gay evangelical movement that claim that the advert's claim that God "probably" doesn't exist was misleading.
There will not be an investigation and the case is now closed.
In a statement the ASA said it had "carefully assessed" the 326 complaints it received.
The ads have appeared on 800 buses across Britain.
"There is probably no God," they read.
"Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."
The £140,000 campaign also uses ad space on the London Underground and two large LCD screens on Oxford Street. It has been funded by leading humanists such as scientist Richard Dawkins and is the UK’s first ever atheist advertising campaign.
The ASA code of conduct requires advertising to be factually correct and some Christians claimed the statement should capable of substantiation to comply with the rules.
"Some complained that the ad was offensive and denigratory to people of faith," the ASA said today.
"Others challenged whether the ad was misleading because the advertiser would not be able to substantiate its claim that God 'probably' does not exist.
"The ASA Council concluded that the ad was an expression of the advertiser’s opinion and that the claims in it were not capable of objective substantiation.
"Although the ASA acknowledges that the content of the ad would be at odds with the beliefs of many, it concluded that it was unlikely to mislead or to cause serious or widespread offence."
A Christian fundamentalist preacher known for his homophobia had led complaints against the ad campaign.
Stephen Green, leader of Christian Voice, has protested at Pride events.
"The advertisers cannot hide behind the ASA's 'matters of opinion' exclusion, because no person or body is named as the author of the statement," he said last week.
"It is given as a statement of fact and that means it must be capable of substantiation if it is not to break the rules.
"There is plenty of evidence for God, from peoples' personal experience, to the complexity, interdependence, beauty and design of the natural world.
"But there is scant evidence on the other side, so I think the advertisers are really going to struggle to show their claim is not an exaggeration or inaccurate, as the ASA code puts it."
Mr Green claimed that the Bible would be immune from any questions of substantiation.

What did a blogger says on the Daily Echo?
Pressure group Christian Voice has questioned the campaign but the Methodist Church said it was a ‘good thing’ to engage people in debating the deeper questions of life. good old methodist and they got it right its good to have an open debate, because there is no god or gods its all man made.

Well, people should not be afraid to engage in such questions. It may help bring people together when they realize we are all in this together, with or without divine pampering.


And here is Richard Dawkin's comments on all of this:




OXFORD, England -- All they are saying is give atheism a chance. Earlier this month, 800 buses rolled out of depots across Britain plastered with advertisements cheerfully informing people that "there's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."
Sponsored by the British Humanist Association, the campaign is the brainchild of a comedian who had seen Christian messages on buses, looked up the Web sites of the organizations behind them and found warnings that, as a nonbeliever, she was destined to go to hell.
The campaign's highest-profile backer was Richard Dawkins, a biology professor at Oxford University and the author of "The God Delusion," a defense of scientifically based atheism that became a bestseller in Britain and the United States. Dawkins pledged to match donations to the campaign up to $8,250 -- a figure that was quickly reached.
Passionate but gentlemanly, with a professorial air, Dawkins spoke recently with the Los Angeles Times in his Victorian-era home in Oxford.
Question: Were you surprised that so many individual donors responded to the campaign to mount bus advertisements? Answer: I'm surprised and delighted but also somewhat embarrassed.
The original target was 5,500 pounds (about $8,250), which I offered to match and we thought that we'd be lucky to get. . . . It would have been enough for buses for a brief period in London. What happened was huge numbers of people gave small sums -- 10 pounds, 15 pounds. ... The final figure is something like 130,000.
That's why I said I was embarrassed, because that is too much money to spend on a bus campaign. ... I was actually in favor of diverting the money to something else, which I thought the donors would approve. But other members of the group felt that (as) the money had been given for the bus campaign they were legally obliged to spend it on that campaign.
The campaign's Web site quotes you in "The God Delusion" as saying that even the declaration "There is no God" is a statement of faith, and that "reason alone could not propel one to total conviction that anything definitely does not exist." Doesn't that make you more of an agnostic than an out-and-out atheist?
I don't think that total atheism is a totally rational position. Anyone that definitely says there is no God -- you can't rationally say that any more than you can say there are definitely no unicorns, there are no dragons, there are no fairies. ... To the extent that I'm an "a-fairyist" or an "a-unicornist," I am an atheist.
The bus advertisements tell people to "relax" because there is no God. But now is a time of economic stress for a lot of people who might derive some comfort from their religious beliefs. Isn't this an insensitive moment to deprive people of that comfort?
Yeah, it probably is. When this slogan was dreamed up, not by me ... that was before this economic crisis. I wasn't happy even then with the slogan because it seemed to me to have a whiff of hedonism about it. I think I'd have preferred something like, not "Enjoy your life," but "Spend your life doing good," or something more high-minded.
Do you see any redeeming values in religion or a belief in God?
You can find individuals who are religious who are also good people, and even people who do good things motivated by religion. I suspect you'll find a lot of missionaries all over Africa and New Guinea and places who are doing good in one form or another. But I don't think there's any general reason, any logical pathway, that goes from being religious to being good. ...
Q: For those people who are willing to give up religion and belief in God, what would you recommend as a substitute worldview? A: As a worldview, scientific rationalism. Q: As also a way of answering moral questions? A: Religion should not be a way of answering moral questions either, and to the extent that it is, it should not be relied upon.
Nobody should get their morals from the Bible or the Koran. It's true you can find good bits in the Bible. But how do you decide what are the good bits? The answer is on non-biblical grounds. So we have some non-biblical way of deciding that. ...
The scientific way of thinking and reasoning can also be deployed in moral reasoning. ... Science can't tell you what's right or wrong, but it can help you think more clearly in your reasoning about what's right or wrong.
Q: There are some scientists who don't feel that science and religion are mutually exclusive. Do you see any way to reconcile the two? A: The very fact that there are individual scientists who are religious means that somebody can reconcile them. I think it's hard to reconcile.
When you meet a scientist who claims to be religious, you want to ask them exactly what it is they believe. Many of them turn out to be religious in the Einsteinian sense: They have a sort of reverence for mystery, for the wonder of the universe, the deep mystery of the base cosmos, those kinds of things. It doesn't mean they believe in any kind of conscious, supernatural intelligence. It most certainly doesn't mean that they believe in any sort of creature who can hear your prayer and read your thoughts and forgive your sins. ...
A few of them actually believe in the resurrection and the virgin birth. They're a complete mystery to me. I think they must divide their minds.
Q: How do feel your books have been received in America? A: Very good. Sales have been terrific. It makes me wonder whether America's religiosity has been exaggerated.
I go there quite a lot, and my impression increasingly is that there are two Americas, and it's almost pulling apart, like two species. And it's not just a regional thing; it's not just red states and blue states. ...
You go to a town, whether it's an intellectual center like New York or San Francisco, whether it's somewhere like Kansas or Oklahoma, and even in the places where you don't expect it, there are plenty of people there who are intellectuals who feel, perhaps, beleaguered. And when somebody like me comes into town to give a talk, they flock in, and I get huge audiences, very enthusiastic.
And they tend to say to me in the book signing afterwards, nearly over and over again, I get thanked. "Thank you for coming to Little Rock," or whatever it is. "I finally realized there are other people like me in this town." They go to the auditorium and they find themselves surrounded by like-minded people.


So it's time to make up your own mind on this. More importantly, don't forget to be compassionate and honest when you relay your feelings to others about this. My toughest challenge will be with my wife because she is a believer who feels sorry for me because I have too many questions. My son is caught in the middle. I still go to church, but for the fellowship and the positive encouraging atmosphere.