And Another Thing…

The complainants are, of course, just trying to prove a point.

However, it IS factually inaccurate to say ‘There Definitely is a God’? The original advert said ‘probably’, which was ambiguous. Saying there ‘definitely’ is a God suggests some objective fact, some absolute consensus, which clearly doesn’t exist.

Welcome to the argument over the existence or non-existence of evidence of the existence or non-existence of a deity. We hope you enjoy he meta-discussion. Later, triangle sandwiches, tea and fairy cakes.

…Is a post about religion anything to do with you having the devil’s number of followers on Twitter, Tom?

If people want to spend their hard earned cash on proclaiming their faith in a mythology, that’s up to them. It causes me no offence.

It’s when they start to use that mythology as an excuse to abuse others with a different or no faith that I get a tad grumpy. And don’t get me started on people who want creationism or intelligent design taught as fact.

My objection to both the atheist’s and Christian party’s signs is that they are so ugly and unimaginative.

Our country is stuffed to the
gunnels with far too much ugly signage pollution as it is, so why would we want any more?

If organisations are intent on having using signs as advertisements, they might at least make these interesting.

Stu at 11.10 pm: “However, it IS factually inaccurate to say ‘There Definitely is a God’?”

Of course it is. And your point is? Should Christians be legally prevented from saying things which they believe as an article of faith, just because they can’t be proved? Thousands of churches every day proclaim similar messages on notices outside their buildings. Will they become the subject of complaint next from insecure and intolerant atheists?

I was not sure whether this was one of your spoof posts, Tom. And I find it is not.

This has descended into an “Oh yes there is – Oh no, there isn’t pantomime farce.

Why do nutters waste their money? It proves only that some people can advertise on a bus.

Anybody who understands Christianity knows that all the normal rules of PR, as far as God is concerned, need not apply.

It is usual, anyway, for folks to become Christians through contact with believers. Even then, that is not necessary. I think we are getting a little secularised in some quarters – are we not?

“Seek, and you shall find” has always seemed to me to be a decent piece of advice.

Tom, I can see what you are getting at – but there are some facts that you missed.

In the first instance Christian groups complained about an atheist ad – “There is probably no God…”. They complained that “God definitely did exist” and therefore the ad was false http://bit.ly/1aDDTh The ASA declined to investigate the complaint.

Second, the full text of the Christian party ad is “There definitely is a God. So join the Christian party and enjoy your life.” Would it therefore be ok for the Tories to run an ad “Labour are a bunch of lying crooks” would that be ok ‘cos they believe it? I assume that you appreciate that the rules governing ads should be different to those that enshrine free expression.

Thirdly, @stu is correct, the “probably” in the atheist ad was carefully chosen to avoid violating advertising rules. As atheists the believe there is *no* God, but can’t prove that belief therefore inserted the “probably” in the ad. The Christians were able to freely use the word “definitely” because of the daft decision of the ASA not to investigate and reject the earlier complaints about the Atheist adverts.

So Tom, it looks to me like it is people like Christian Voice who have a problem with free expression rather than atheists.

“Thousands of churches every day proclaim similar messages on notices outside their buildings. Will they become the subject of complaint next from insecure and intolerant atheists?
”
Ignoring for now your infantile branding of those that disagree with you as intolerant and insecure, would you care to enlighten us lesser mortals as to why exactly the religious should be permitted to loudly proclaim obvious untruths from outside their buildings, when any other special interest group doing so would be (rightly) clamped down upon?

Tom, you missed my point. I don’t have any objection to Christians expressing an article of faith, the issue is that tgebus advert contains a demonstrable falsehood.

If Mars were to make a bus advert saying ‘Eating Mars Bars Makes You Thinner, So Stop Worrying And Get On With Your Life’, they would be forced to retract it whether or not they claimed the statement was ‘an article of faith’. In tge same way, there are strict guidelines over how fortune tellers are allowed to advertise their services. Whilst ASA are happy to impose those rules on the atheist bus sign, they have relaxed them for the Christian one.

Personally, I would leave the advert in place, because I am almost certain that whoever wrote the advert knew it was legally grey and was hoping to have it banned so that they can indignantly claim that the atheist get special treatment. The whole thing (on both sides) is utterly pathetic.

My word we have become a touchy country.

People upset about this and that .
A few years ago it just would not have happened.
We have become less tolerant of peoples beliefs and other points of view.
I think it must be the tone that has been set by the Labour government who are also not tolerant of any other points of view.
Since they came to power the country has become far less content with itself. They have picked on smokers.drivers.Tories, Lib/Dems, SNP,fat people,drinkers,police force,banks.etc etc.
if you look back thaey have had a go at everyone and everything. They have moaned at everyone whilst allowing the country to slide into bankrupcy.
If you look back to where we where as a country to where we are now it is just shocking.
I think the total frustration of the people shows in things like this topic.
They are doing what labour has done.

Its clearly false advertising Tom.

Surely its a matter for the Advertising authority to intervene.

Now if the sign said ‘There probably is a god’ then that would not be false advertising.

This is the problem with the regulation we have, why shouldn’t people be allowed (within the law) to say what they wish in an advert? Are we the people so stupid we couldn’t possibly work out when somebody is telling baloney?

In the old days we had these rules but we could at least trust people to use them fairly, not now. Our society is firmly turning against free speech, now everything has to be backed up and true (at least to an “independent” group of pen pushers) and it can’t be “offensive” to us, we’ve got the right not to be offended.

The only solution is the rules will have to go. Any anti-free-speech laws will be used to stifle debate and block opposing views (especially if the supposed ‘liberals’ in the atheist or ‘green’ movements have anything to do with it).

In the end, we shouldn’t have those laws then.

Doesn’t alleged certainty undermine a large chunk of your faith? Shouldn’t it be you who takes offence?

Where’s the struggle to believe in something that definitely exists?

Still if it helps keep the bus fares down a bit…

Yes indeed. I do indeed find outward displays of religiosity highly offensive. It’s an insult to Man’s intellect and an affront to reason. That includes the whole veil, burkha, cross pendant, yarmulke/kippah, mosque, church, temple, synagogue, eucharist/sacrament, praying etc, etc business.

It all absolutely makes my skin crawl. It really gives me the creeps. It’s utterly repulsive.

Incidentally, how come this ridiculous assertion was permitted when the recent atheist bus adverts were compelled by regulators to insert the word “probably”? Little equal treatment with these superstitious god-botherers there.

Atheist bus • Canadian Atheist bus • Atheist buses in Barcelona & Madrid
The National Federation of Atheist Humanist & Secular Student Societies

I am sure we can all agree that both sides are nutters wasting their money. Nevertheless the Advertising Standards Authority is surely there to prevent false and misleading advertising.

I think that’s an important role. Advertisers should not be allowed to tell lies. Call me a saddo but I made a complaint about one advert the other day. The advert claimed that if you use a particular styling product your hair will ‘remember’ its style even after you wash it.

That is just absolute rubbish. Perhaps the product’s manufacturers have conned themselves into believing that their product possesses these miraculous qualities (though I rather doubt it) but they are incapable of proving it. Because it’s rubbish. People should not be allowed to broadcast or advertise claims which cannot possibly be proven.

I would apply the same principle to this advert which is obviously a response to the atheist advert saying there is PROBABLY no God. If they had responded saying we think there probably is a God that would be fine. But to say there is DEFINIITELY a God cannot be proven and is therefore a false and misleading statement.

Let them away with it and what comes next? There is definitely a God and he can cure your cancer? Phone this number to find out how.

Actually he original atheist advert is also an unprovable assertion. By saying probably you are assigning a p value of greater than 0.5 to a statement for which the probability is unknown.

It’s not as bold as asserting that the existence of God has a p value of 1.0 but it’s still wrong and it annoyed me at the time; if you’re going to claim to be on the side of reason, at least reason properly.

Oh and there’s nothing wrong with either advert, they’re probably both at least as accurate as half the adverts I see! It’s a shame that people feel obliged to make these silly time wasting arguments. If you are genuinely offended by either of these adverts, you should take a deep breath, count to 10 and then go for a walk in the park. The daffodils are coming out and spring is arriving!

To Chris H: Your 0.5 is way off the mark. Of course you cannot “prove” the non-existence of various deities. It’s a basic of logic that you can never prove a negative. You cannot disprove the fairies at the bottom of my garden nor that there exists a Discworld – a flat world balanced on the backs of four elephants which, in turn, stand on the back of a giant turtle, Great A’Tuin.

I would put the probability of a deity at something of the size of (say) 0.0000001%. That’s good enough for me. It’s a ridiculous and demeaning nonsense. You can see how the artifice was (humanly) constructed; you can see the joins. How any educated person gives it even a passing serious thought is beyond me.

It’s also responsible for a great deal of harm; let’s mention a few of those:
- The Inquisition
- Torturing Gallileo (and not apologising until 1991!)
- The Crusades
- The alienation and persecution of lepers
- Witch burnings
- The defence and prolonging of slavery as an acceptable practice
- Female genital mutilation
- Fatwas
- Circumcision
- The Catholic stance on contraception, particularly with reference to AIDS-ridden (yet devout) parts of Africa
- Repression of sexuality
- Constant, unyielding misogyny, homophobia and general retarded backwardness (e.g. California’s Proposition - Everything ever done by Scientology
- Human sacrifice
- Every murder, rape and genocide in the Bible
- Ooh and religious genocides like the Holocaust and Rwanda
- The election of George W. Bush

(In case anyone’s puzzled about the smiley in the above post, that’s the effect of typing an 8 then closing brackets. Simon was talking about Proposition 8.)

I’m an agnostic, veering towards the atheist, but I have to say the Secular Society people don’t do themselves any favours. Simon Gardner’s list of crimes attributable to religion (to which he might well have added sectarian troubles in Ireland and elsewhere) is extensive, but then the secularists aren’t extending to people of faith the freedom of choice they’d want people of faith to extend to each other and to the rest of us. If people want to believe in a deity, and their belief doesn’t harm others, they should be free to do so.

What really annoyed me about the atheist bus, though, was the fact that they asked for donations through the charity website justgiving. It set me thinking about how many people might have been more able to enjoy their lives if the money spent to fund a stunt that’s not going to change anybody’s mind had instead gone to more deserving causes.

The big difference between the two campaigns is that Christians try to glorify the Almighty and atheists seek praise only for themselves.

The police only investigate if it is a politically correct complaint. If it is something serious they hide.

So Tom, Do you think that Carlsberg should be allowed to change _their_ advertising slogan to ‘definitely the best beer in the world’?

I assume you would not agree with this, in which case _why_ do you think that one rule should apply to a company and a different rule should apply to a church when it comes down to advertising.

Basically I agree with the last 4 paragraphs of Indy’s comment, though I would argue that the atheists who put up their ad first are not ‘nutters’ in the same way as those on the ‘sky farie’ side of the argument.

I’m not sure you can solely blame religion for the election of George W. Bush.

Ah Tom – but you miss the point; the advent of New Labour has allowed everyone in one way or another, to class themselves as victims. All that is , bar white males.

My favourite victim shit of the moment is the Labour councillor in Bristol, a black woman, who called an Indian colleague a “coconut” (i.e. brown outside, white inside).

When it was suggested to her that this was a racist comment, she cried

“I can’t be a a racist. I’m black”

WTF has happened to this country?

Caroline Spelman has announced what will happen when the Tories win the next election.

Unelected Regional assemblies – abolish
Select Committees for the English regions – abolish
Regional housing quangos – abolish
Regional planning quangos – abolish
Regional spatial strategies and housing targets – abolish
Targets and surveillance of Councils by Whitehall and regional government – abolish
Many of the specific grants – abolish – to be replaced by general grant
Council Tax capping – abolish

If councils try and increase the rates to much there will be a local election about it.

This may start to go some way to get rid of all these people interfearing and telling us what to do.

Power back to the local area.

With thanks to John Redwood.

The complaints on the Christian ad are fully justified.

“There definately is a God”

Really? Prove it. They are advertising as fact something that they can’t prove. Hey everyone? I have magic beans that can cure the common cold! Would I be able to advertise that do you think?

The atheist ads were, in contrast, accurate. “There’s probably no God”. Not a statement of fact, but a statement of probability based on the total lack of any evidence that God exists.

If you want to advertise a positive, then there is a requirement to prove it. If you can’t, then you’re deliberately misleading.

Ban all advertisements advertising that God exists until they can prove it.

It’s just common sense.

Call me naive (“Oi, Harris! You’re naive!”), but I believe that the great British public are just about capable of telling the difference between an advert for a consumer product and an advert for a particular faith. Statements of faith, either in the existence or in the non-existence of God, are just that: statements of faith, and cannot be subject to the rules that govern more general advertising.

Tom,
Stu at 11.10 pm: “However, it IS factually inaccurate to say ‘There Definitely is a God’?”

Of course it is.

Of course it is!?

It is not factually inaccurate, there may or may not be a God. Whatever is true is a fact.

Using definetely may offend Stu, put whoever paid for the poster may have received a revelation not granted to either Stu or you.

All one can say is, prove it. Both parties have to agree what constitutes proof and I suspect Stu and a Christian won’t be able to come to an agreement.

So for a Christian the claim is correct, for Stu it is incorrect. One of you is wrong of course; we just don’t know who is wrong.

@Mark
obvious untruths

Am I correct in assuming that that consists of anything you don’t agree with?

The original atheist advert got the same attention, in fact one man even refused to drive a bus with the advert on, is he a “delicate little flower”? I think I would of called him a bit more than that if I was waiting in the cold for the bus he was meant to be driving.

Links > http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/mar/11/god-advert-christian-complaintshttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hampshire/7832647.stm<

I would also point out as others have, that paying to advertise in the public domain falls into a different remit to a poster on private property. That precedent was set by ASA ruling on the atheist advert. I doubt there would have been so many complaints if the Christian one had followed suit saying “There probably is a God” rather than a stating it as a fact. Overall it’s just become tic for tac, as these types of subjective arguments usually do.

So, Tom, by your argument, this bus advertisement would be exempt from any advertising rules, based as it is on a ‘statement of faith’?

The other thing that’s bothering me about this discussion is that everybody seems to think you need to be ‘offended’ in order to make a complaint. If a referee makes a poor decision on a football pitch, fans don’t need to find his action ‘offensive’ in order to lodge a complaint with the FA about it.

It’s perfectly reasonable to lodge a complaint due to something you consider to be a breach of rules or of law without having to be ‘offended’ about it. Companies file complaints with the ASA about their competitors’ advertising all the time, I don’t see how this is any different. Rules, and official complaints, keep the fight clean and fair.

“If people want to believe in a deity, and their belief doesn’t harm others, they should be free to do so.”

But religion almost invariably does harm others. I cite as the commonest example that all god-botherers (I think without exception) try to brainwash their own children before those children are old enough and able to defend themselves enough to know better.

I find that particularly revolting.

And religion stunts the intellect, harms human aspirations and is profoundly anti-intellectual.

Historically it has always been anti-science. Believe it or not huge numbers of nutty god-bothering Americans teach their children (and themselves believe) our planet is from 6,000 to less than 10,000 years old. It’s hard to credit.

We now have the biggest threat to all of our security coming from religion-crazed Islamicists.

I’m sure others can expand on the short list I’ve already mentioned.

No, religion is neither neutral nor harmless. You are labouring under a complacent and bogus sense of security if you think it is.

Atheist bus • Canadian Atheist bus • Atheist buses in Barcelona, Madrid & Malaga • Bus Kampagne, Germany • Bus humaniste (français), Québec, Canada • Campagna Bus, Italy
The National Federation of Atheist Humanist & Secular Student Societies

“Call me naive (”Oi, Harris! You’re naive!”)… …Statements of faith, either in the existence or in the non-existence of God…
”

Not so much naïve as misinformed – apparently.

Atheism is not a “faith” of any kind. Disbelief is not any kind of a “belief” and never has been.

Atheist bus • Canadian Atheist bus • Atheist buses in Barcelona, Madrid & Malaga • Bus Kampagne, Germany • Bus humaniste (français), Québec, Canada • Campagna Bus, Italy
The National Federation of Atheist Humanist & Secular Student Societies

I agree Tom, but as Labour has told us time and time again, we, the great unwashed, aren’t fit to make those kinds of judgements ourselves. That’s why we have the “one size fits all” nanny state to protect us.

I feel safer already )

I used to like the idea of a ‘glass and a half of milk’ going in to every bar of Dairy Milk. That’s a lot of milk, that’s milky, I used to think (I had weaning problems, or rather, my poor long-suffering mother did. Luckily for her, I was happy with a bottle – Bell’s Glenmorangie, any bottle).

Finally spotted the catch in the Cadbury’s advert when I was, ooh, 46?

Chris Wills: It is not factually inaccurate, there may or may not be a God.

You’ve just contradicted yourself. There may be a God. There may not be a God. Therefore the word definitely is inaccurate. This isn’t a matter of opinion, it is demonstrably true that there is some doubt in the existence of God. Therefore there is not definitely a God.

That’s all I’m saying.

And, as I said in my last comment, the idea that there may be a God doesn’t offend me in the slightest – nor does the idea that somebody else thinks there definitely is a God. I don’t take a fence. I would argue that it’s a clear breach of the advertising standards rules, though.

Simon Gardner at 3.54 pm: “Atheism is not a “faith” of any kind. Disbelief is not any kind of a “belief” and never has been.”

Untrue, Simon. You clearly have a deep, profound and unshakeable belief that there is no God. Such faith is impressive, but it is no more than faith, since it is based on absence of evidence rather than evidence itself. I find most atheists cling to their faith with a religious fervour.

“All one can say is, prove it. Both parties have to agree what constitutes proof and I suspect Stu and a Christian won’t be able to come to an agreement.”

As I understand it (and my knowledge of theology is rudimentary – being as it’s all nonsense) god-botherers pride themselves in not dealing with tricky things like objective “proof” or “logic” or “reasoning”. Instead they rely on a deliberate non-reason they call “faith”.

So I don’t think your god-botherers are at all interested in “proof” at all. Well, let’s face it, they haven’t any anyway. And they don’t understand reason when it’s staring them in the face. Else they wouldn’t be god-botherers in the first place.

@Tom Harris
Untrue, Simon. You clearly have a deep, profound and unshakeable belief that there is no God. Such faith is impressive, but it is no more than faith, since it is based on absence of evidence rather than evidence itself. I find most atheists cling to their faith with a religious fervour.

Haha! Nonsense! Every word!

A conclusion based on the absense of any evidence isn’t a “faith” of any kind, it’s a conclusion!

Based on the evidence, I can conclude that the Moon isn’t made of cheese. By your argument, that’s faith based. No it isn’t.

You can’t prove a negative, only a positive. So if something can’t be proved, such as the moon being made of cheese, the conclusion that it isn’t, isn’t remotely faith based.

Ergo, atheism isn’t a faith, because it’s not a belief in anything. It a conclusion based on evidence. You know, with facts and stuff.

“Ergo, atheism isn’t a faith, because it’s not a belief in anything”

I disagree, John. Atheism is a belief – a profound and sincere one – in nothing.

“You clearly have a deep, profound and unshakeable belief that there is no God.”

I have no “beliefs” – unshakeable or otherwise. Disbelief is not and never has been any sort of a “belief”. I think I already gave you a ball-park probability on the existence of deity in an earlier post. This hardly constitutes any sort of a “faith”.

“I find most atheists cling to their faith with a religious fervour.”

Then you betray your ignorance.

You underestimate how serious is the threat to mankind that religions constitute. That’s what annoys me. I no more think they are harmless than is smallpox.

Of course religion is very, very silly indeed, too.

Use of the words ‘god-botherers’ is interesting. We’re not allowed to be offended on Tom’s site – house-rules – but I do find it intriguing – as someone who has no religious beliefs himself – that some atheists have to be quite so aggressive towards those who don’t share their absence of faith.

You might say, why not? Look at how agressive some people are in proclaiming their religious beliefs. OK, some are, some aren’t. But given that atheists are supposed to prize the rational above all, you might have thought that they would be particularly careful to avoid invective of any kind in putting their case, the better to show their strictly rationalist credentials.

Seems not.

Simon: “Of course religion is very, very silly indeed”

I think you missed out “So ya boo sucks to you with knobs on.” Do you want me to add that to your comment at this end?

“I think you missed out “So ya boo sucks to you with knobs on.” Do you want me to add that to your comment at this end?”

By all means. Be my (or your) guest.

And still you choose to ignore the reasons (some of which I have laboriously cited) why religion is neither neutral nor harmless.

I have perfectly sound reasons to be anti-religion rather than just ignoring it as an eccentric past-time for the deluded. No doubt you have your compelling reasons for being a member of the Labour party?

The sheer utter silliness of religion doesn’t subtract from the fact that it’s also very dangerous. It is not enough to stand aside and let that go unchallenged – as our society lamentably so often does.

Atheism has no code of practice or doctrine of faith. It has no expressed guidelines or belief system. It has no code of practice, no organised institutions, no centralised governing body. There are no atheist services or, no induction ceremonies, no recognised practices of atheists. There are no requirements one needs to fill in order to be an atheist. There are no core beliefs one must ascribe to.

All of that makes it hard to classify it as a religion in any traditional sense of the term.

It’s also a term applied to a rather disparate group of people, so I don’t know if a statement like ‘Atheism is a belief – a profound and sincere one – in nothing’ really make sense. Nihilism is a sincere belief in nothing. Atheism is just a lack of belief in a deity. It isn’t really anything. Buddhists can be atheists. Wiccans can be atheists. That would not be possible if atheism was a religion.

Also, I don’t want to be associated with the fervently anti-religious crowd. Many of them seem to be boring idiots who lack the ability to think for themselves – the very essence of what they are supposed to be fighting against. I reserve the right to be considered an atheist who doesn’t believe in nothing. Since there are no rules, I could be an atheist who believes in things.

So there.

Religion is far from silly. It gives hope to many whose lives might be hopeless without it, and it brings a lot of social cohesion where it is strong, as it does in the USA. That it has been the cause of wars is less true than might first appear. Wars are usually about resources. Religious differences might be hi-jacked by belligerents to rally the unawary to their cause but the cause is usually money. The Crusades were about loot.

Let’s not forget that two atheistic states went to war in 1941, producing more causalities than all previous wars put together. Pretty much, give or take a ‘statistic’ or two.

Blimey, twice in one week for Barbarossa on here and it’s not even Friday, never mind June.

Tom, you could have copied and pasted this thread from a million other blogs.

Atheists are always angry. Angry that anyone that has faith dares to imagine that their opinion matters.

They talk nonsense about mixed fibres and seafood, not knowing (or really caring) about the Mosaic Law.

They like mentioning horrible things from history that were ordered by people who used Christianity to gain great power and then use it for evil.

They revel in confusing the issue by talking about suicide bombers, fatwas and human sacrifice.

I don’t remember Jesus recommending any of these things. Or inquisitions. Or witch burnings.

Funny thing is that I get upset with myself for sometimes not having as much faith as I see in others.

Perhaps this is the thing that really upsets atheists most. It must be hard seeing someone with something they value that you don’t have yourself.

Why should faith based advertising be exempt from the rules which govern all other forms of advertising?

Simply believing in something does not make it true.

If it did I might pay for some advertising saying the following:

‘Labour are definitely going to lose the election. If you don’t want to be governed by the Tories vote SNP’.

I believe that to be true. Should I be allowed to hire an adtrailer emblazoned with that message to drive around Glasgow South during the election?

Indy: “Should I be allowed to hire an adtrailer emblazoned with that message to drive around Glasgow South during the election?”

Indy, you are allowed to drive round Glasgow South or any other constituency displaying that message.

But you might want to go for something more believable – you know, something like “Smoke fags – they’re good for you”.

Here you go! D

http://scottklarr.com/media/atheism/motivationalPosters/atheism_motivational_poster_34.jpg

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/31/atheism_good_enough.gif

http://www.bodhipaksa.com/images/atheists.jpg

@Stewart Cowan

‘They like mentioning horrible things from history that were ordered by people who used Christianity to gain great power and then use it for evil’.

Exactly. Gallileo was threatened and Bruno was burned for challenging political power which cloaked itself in religion. It happened to call itself the Christian church but in the USSR and its satellites the same thing happened – it’s just that in those places in those times a different ideology was used to front the politics of totalitarianism.

Ah! False advertising at its finest. Im sure some of the big multi-nationals still carry wounds for being more truthful in their advertising.

Completely agree with Simon Gardner (15:44) – hope noone tries to call him a bigot for expressing those views!

Mr. Harris,

Of greater concern than the great deal of heat and very little light generated by these bus ads is the ongoing effort by many in Scotland’s public life to turn the nation into an atheocracy.

Three years ago, the Most. Rev. Mario Conti, outgoing Archbishop of Glasgow, was subjected to the indignity of being reported to Strathclyde Police by Patrick Harvie MSP. His alleged ‘crime’ had benen to public pronounce established Catholic doctrine on the nature of sexual sin. You might not agree with it, but it stands as it is; causa finita est. Mr. Harvie’s behaviour was an unconscionable attack on religious liberty straight from the Tudor and Stuart playbook. There are too many Scots who seem programmed to accept only what they want to hear. If we are the tolerant society that we proclaim ourselves to be, we should learn to accept that being tolerant includes tolerating what you yourself might find intolerable.

@Simon Gardner: “I cite as the commonest example that all god-botherers (I think without exception) try to brainwash their own children before those children are old enough and able to defend themselves enough to know better.”

I assume you have met and spoken to all “god-botherers” before making such a ridiculous claim ?

I have three children and have left them alone to come to their own conclusions. If they have a question about, (any), religion, I am happy to answer it, but have no intention on imposing my beliefs on them.

Re “Tolerance”.

There’s such a thing as to be so open-minded your brain falls out.

Such is the lamentable situation we have reached with the arrant, anti-reason nonsense that is religion.

Atheists are impossible to offend as they all have the hide of a rhinoceros.

Simon “I have three children and have left them alone to come to their own conclusions.”

You don’t know how delighted I am to stand corrected.

Mr Harris,

Having read all the comments the main point appears to have been missed: the claim made by the church is not backed up by any facts. BUT that is not what gets people upset, it is the link on the ad that leads to a site saying all non-Christians will burn in hell for eternity and various other religious niceties.

Imagine LG having an advert with a link to a website claiming that all Sony users would perish for eternity, would the ASA not be entitled, no, obliged to do something about it?

As for people’s harmless beliefs, whilst in most cases this is fairly accurate there are always the extreme cases. AND there is the legal child genital mutilation that is celebrated as a religious ceremony by some groups of believers. (A covenant with God, it’d be hilarious were it not so serious. And WE allow it, I am ashamed and I hope others will be too.)

The reason for the original atheist bus was in response to distress felt by comedy writer Ariane Sherine who – on her commute – saw adverts on London buses featuring the Bible quote, “When the Son of Man comes, will He find Faith on this Earth?” [sic].

A website URL ran underneath the quote, and when Sherine visited the site she learned that, as a non-believer, she would be “condemned to everlasting separation from God and then spend all eternity in torment in hell”.

It wasn’t the only such ad’. They’ve been quite common. Eventually she got mad as hell and wasn’t going to take it any more. Money flowed in.

I’m still trying to find out what has happened to the Australian atheist buses – which got tied up in bans and then litigation.

Paul & Simon.

I suspect that Christian groups are trying to emulate the bullying tactics of certain Islamisist groups, by denouncing non-believers and somehow conemning them to eternal hell-fire. Funny how when you scrach the surface there is nothing between Christianity and Islam.

Of course any aetheist will laugh at this latest attempt at bullying us into believing this guff. Unless they threaten us with eternal run’s of X-Factor.

“Completely agree with Simon Gardner (15:44) – hope noone tries to call him a bigot for expressing those views!”

How about ‘self-absorbed narcissist’..?

@JuliaM

While Simon may have appeared to be vehemently anti-religious (appeared???) his central point that religioun is dangerous in modern society is well founded.

Yes, even the warm and fuzzy Christianity in the UK can be dangerous. Take a look at the great and worrying documentary from the BBC: Deborah 13: Servant of God. She is a pleasant and intelligent girl who has been taught that she is a worthless sinner and deserves to go to hell for thinking the slightest bad thought just as much as a murderer.

I would like Tom to comment on that program if he gets a chance to watch it as it is worth of a seperate blog.

If that is just an isolated incident then how about the troubles in NI? Yes, there are huge parts of the problem that are political but the parties of hate would have a much harder time recruiting people and gaining public support were it not for the sectarian divide.

So while the vast, vast majority of religious people are good people it is just plain wrong to say that religion itself is harmless.

The Times [18-3-09] – The Times = March 18, 2009 – John Paul’s 1990 speech ‘sentenced millions to die’

The [18-3-09] Guardian The wrong message on condoms – The pope is trying to take away one of the few things ordinary Africans can do to help themselves