'Atheist Buses' hit the road in Scotland

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The UK’s first ever atheist advertising campaign launched on Tuesday January 6th 2009, with 800 buses featuring the slogan “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life” running in cities across Scotland, England and Wales, along with 1000 adverts on the London underground and two large LCD screens on Oxford Street.   The campaign, which is supported by Professor Richard Dawkins, the British Humanist Association and The Humanist Society of Scotland, is a response to a series of evangelical Christian adverts running on buses in June 2008, which featured the URL of a website saying all non-Christians were going to hell. Comedy writer Ariane Sherine suggested the rational, positive slogan to reassure people who may have been scared by the evangelical adverts.   The Atheist Bus Campaign’s donation phase launched in October, aiming to raise just £5,500. However, within four days it had raised £100,000 from individual donations from the general public. It has now raised over £135,000, smashing its original target by 2400%.   The campaign was launched in Central London at 2pm today by Professor Dawkins, Father Ted TV writer Graham Linehan, columnist, BHA President Polly Toynbee and the philosopher AC Grayling. Ariane Sherine, creator of the Atheist Bus Campaign, says: “You wait ages for an atheist bus, then 800 come along at once. I hope they’ll brighten people’s days and make them smile on their way to work.”   Jim Petherick, Chairman of the Humanist Society of Scotland says: “I am delighted, but not surprised by the response of non-believers who are now proud to describe themselves as atheists or, in increasing numbers, Humanists. The days of inequality are fast disappearing and I imagine most people will see this not as ‘fares please’ but ‘fair pleases!’"   The buses will be running in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, Edinburgh, York, Leeds, Newcastle, Dundee, Sheffield, Coventry, Devon, Liverpool, Wolverhampton, Swansea, Newport, Rhondda, Bristol, Southampton, Newcastle and Aberdeen.   Since its donation phase began in October, the Atheist Bus Campaign has inspired atheist organisations across the world to launch their own bus campaigns. Spain’s Union of Atheists and Freethinkers is launching buses across Barcelona today with the UK slogan translated into Spanish, Italy’s Union of Atheists, Agnostics and Rationalists is also planning a bus campaign, while the American Humanist Association has brought out atheist bus adverts in Washington DC.

 

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