Amusing, in a headdesky way, or headdesky in an amusing way?

[tree_and_leaf]

Dawkins and Sherine back bus ads reading "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

.... yeah. Atheist says: stop thinking and take my word for it!

(Actually, that's a little unfair, because the ads are intended as a response to a series of evangelical ones threatening non-Christians with hell-fire. All the same, the fear of hell is not exactly integral to the faith of most of the religious people I know†, and I cannot say that a sudden loss of my faith would improve my enjoyment of life; quite the reverse.)

On a side note, buried in the article is the information that Dawkins supports a Tory humanist group. I didn't know he was a Tory, but for some reason I'm not entirely surprised. (ETA: see comment from lizw below; this appears to be a misunderstanding.

† The only sense I can make of Hell is total alienation from God, and therefore all that is good, of becoming lost in myself and in hatred, which does indeed scare me quite a lot, but I suspect that's not the sort of thing Dawkins et al think I'm scared of.

Comments

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's targeted at believers, rather, like the evangelical Christian adverts it is targeted at the not-quite believers, the waverers, the ones who worry that they don't believe.

If the believers feel insulted by that then they ought to think about how the evangelical adverts are viewed by non-believers.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

This points to the other problem - that the campaign falls into the trap of the evangelical posters, that you can only either be for or against simplistic points of view.

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

the campaign falls into the trap of the evangelical posters

I don't think it does. I see it as pricking the balloon that is the evangelical Christian adverts: pointing out how stupid they are. It is saying that one doesn't have to take any notice of the evangelical adverts; this it OK to continue doubting the existence of God (if that is what one wants to do).

[tree_and_leaf]

I don't feel insulted, though I think I might do if I were 'wavering', in the sense of having serious questions about God, etc. I know a few people who have moved from agnosticism to Christianity, and in no case were they motivated by the fear of spending an eternity in torment.

they ought to think about how the evangelical adverts are viewed by non-believers.

Yes. I do. Every time I see one of them I cringe, because they're offensive, theologically dubious and, pragmatically speaking, stupid. Unfortunately I can't do anything about them, because 'believers', let alone 'Christians' aren't a homogenous block, any more than 'agnostics' or 'atheists' are.

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

Every time I see one of them I cringe

I know and you are not alone, there are many other people who feel similarly. The sorts of people who create such material aren't Christian, except in name.

[legionseagle.livejournal.com]

I've found this link here (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/20/transport.religion) which gives precise details of the campaign which sparked the counter-campaign, if that makes sense.

I have to say, I share the fury of the original writer about the first set of ads, but I can't see the logical connection between the fury and the response; surely she must have realised that many people who were offended were offended by the fact of advertising about closely held and personal matters of belief, as though they were comparative forms of soap powder, not the content of the advertisements?

FWIW I detest the notion of the Dawkins bus ads for more-or-less the same reasons as you state - offensive, so reductive of complex attitudes and beliefs as to be virtually meaningless and, essentially, stupid.

[tree_and_leaf]

Now I look at the article, I vaguely remember it, and I remember thinking that I would have been infuriated for by the ads, but, as you say, for a variety of reasons, none of which result from atheism.

surely she must have realised that many people who were offended were offended by the fact of advertising about closely held and personal matters of belief, as though they were comparative forms of soap powder, not the content of the advertisements?

Yes - there's something vaguely indecent about it, quite apart from the fact that it tends to result in a meaningless slogan (if you can dignify it with the name).

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

Hear hear. I speak as someone who was brought up in a state of ignorance about religion such that her first introduction to Christianity was probably the glow-in-the-dark plastic baby Jesuses circulating in the playground of the American School of Milan when I was in first grade, and spent the rest of her childhood surrounded by a Catholic majority in a sort of permanent identity crisis, torn between a sensation of exclusion and potential future damnation and vague attraction to the spirituality of Christianity tempered by distrust of the misogynist institutional thou-shalt-nots on the one side, and on the other the knowledge that I was half-Jewish but on the wrong side to actually be Jewish, and with my unbelief forming part of my identity.

I still think Dawkins is a prick, but the ad does address a state of mind that is very familiar to me standing as I do in a cultural crossroads. Periodically I worry that I am neglecting the spiritual dimension only to find that Judaeo-Christianity requires adherence to patriarchal beliefs and/or practices I find repugnant, Buddhism requires vegetarianism, and the Hindu priests in Edgware consider females contaminants and cross the road to avoid them. I've narrowed it down to Quakers or Unitarian Universalists, but that would mean commuting on Sundays as well as Mondays-Fridays.

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

I still think Dawkins is a prick

A disservice to pricks, but I agree with you and I speak as a non-Christian. ;-)

I prefer the term Constipated Arsehole. Everybody needs an arsehole, but a constipated one (a) isn't working, and (b) the person in question is full of...!

[tree_and_leaf]

a state of mind that is very familiar to me standing as I do in a cultural crossroads.

Which complicates matters, of course. Personally, I have problems with aspects of the Christian tradition, mostly to do with misogyny, but I think it's easier to argue with a tradition you were born into but want to remain part of than with one you knew first from the outside.

I think the only thing one can do, though, is try to follow truth as far as you can see it. I don't think any God who rejected someone for that, even if what they perceived as truth was objectively wrong, would be worth giving the time of day to, let alone worshiping.