Atheist bus!

Interesting: There’s a campaign in the UK to buy atheist marketing spots on buses — Guardian tells the story, and the campaign has a website.

The proposed slogan is this: “There’s probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

My prediction is that the best thing out of this campaign won’t be from the ads themselves — no, I think the greatest PR boost for the fight against silly superstition is going to be the frothing, spittle-spewing, screaming response of the religious wackaloons that will protest this all. Their screams of “insensitive and ‘orrible! How dare those people show their perversions in public!” and “blasphemy and secular evil! This is worse than the Holocaust! This caused my dog to die! And baby Jesus to cry!” and “But won’t anyone think of the children!” will make many think about religion — and, like Richard Hammer-of-Reason Dawkins said, thinking is anathema to religion.

Maybe some sect will boycott the buses, and take alternative routes, suffer much bebotherment and feel tremendously pissed — ah well, then there’ll be more room in the actual bus. Win and win all around!

I won’t be surprised if some minor pastor with delusions of intelligence deduces that this is just a plot to get the buses moving on arcs that inscribe the ancient rune of a Forgotten God X — which then clearly is Satan — across the tender underbelly of unsuspecting London, unleashing the Hell itself and the End of Days!

Or maybe just causing the pavements to crack, the youth be unruly, and abortion clinics spring up rampant and without the proper Christian sense of self-loathing and longing for suffering.

Since I’m not in London or anywhere nearby, and don’t have the necessary tech savvy to donate across borders, I can only contribute a few slogans that I’d like to see on an atheist bus somewhere — mostly because the smell of frying religious brains would so brighten up my day.

• “By Christian dogma, Anne Frank is burning in Hell. Jesus is Love!”
• “Ask your local Muslim about the punishment for apostasy.”
• “Stalin didn’t put anyone in the gulag. It was their own pride that did it. God doesn’t put anyone in Hell either.”
• “God loves the world — witness earthquakes, tsunamis, parasites, famine, slavery and rape.”
• “All religions share one common feature — namely, that every other religion is false and wicked. (They’re all right, by the way.)”
• “Exodus 22:18 — Let’s remember Biblical values when we make laws!”
• “Elijah is dead. Jesus is dead. Mohammed is dead. The only people that can help you are those around you.”
• “Do you happen to remember the last time a country went to war with the phrase ‘Gott mit uns’?”
• “Remember the day you realized there’s no Santa? Isn’t it about time you had that kind of a day about God, too?”
• “Prayer: how to do nothing and still feel good about it.”
• “I cut off a part of my child’s genitals because hundreds of years ago a man heard a voice in his head — do you really want to hear the rest of it?”
• “Does God speak to you? Consider medication.”
• “Your God, your business. Just keep your children out of it.”
• “Read the Bible. It’s the easiest way to become an atheist.”
• “Atheism: The idea that this world is all we have, and we ought to love it.”
• “Love your fellow man and your own self. Do good deeds. Enjoy life. Believe in a better tomorrow. Oh, and screw God.”

Mind you, if any of these was implemented, there would be buses burnt and howlings to be heard for miles and miles. I don’t have the necessary polite mindset for this kind of a thing…

Edit: a few more.

• Christianity says love God over all else. Humanism says love your fellow man over all else. It’s your choice, friend.
• Religion is a private matter. Let’s keep it that way.
• “If anyone comes to me, and doesn’t hate his own father, mother, wife, children, brothers, and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he can’t be my disciple.” (That man was such a dick.)
• Not only is there no God, but most Christians don’t even believe in Him anyway.
• Atheists — they’re coming to your schools and making your children think!
• So you say God made the world? Could you ask him to include a few less earthquakes and intestine-eating parasites the next time?