A friend pointed me in the direction of this. It’s an article announcing the launch of a new bus-advertising campaign from the British Humanist Association, inspired by an article by online Guardian writer Ariane Sherine. Its all in response to a campaign featuring Bible verses on London buses and underground over the last few months, followed by Alpha’s bus campaign ‘If you could ask God one question’.

Sherine’s point is that there needs to be a counter-view expressed, so that those ‘vulnerable’ to religious advertisting are not fooled into believing there is a God, and specifically for her a God who is angry and has power to cast into a Hell.

The comments left in response to the article are worth a read. Lots of people unhappy with being told there is a judgment. Lots of people complaining God’s validity is questioned by him not having recently put in an appearance. Yet also lots of people unhappy with ‘atheist proselytizing’ . Overall not much concern with whether or not the BHA have much ground for their claim, or likewise the reliability of the truth of the original campaign calling for faith in Jesus.Ironically the advert uses the word ‘probably’ (amusingly it’s the way to avoid being sued, a la Carlsberg). But surely if anything ‘probably’ should cause you to realise you can’t in fact ‘stop worrying and enjoy your life’ until you work out whether or not you’d put your money, make that your life, on the strength of that probably. It just smacks of carefree-I-don’t-care-if-I-sit-on-the-fence middleclass culture – that’s the world we live in at the moment.