Ron Heather is the Christian bus driver who has refused to drive the UK atheist buses, creating a news story which has been in the press a lot over the past 24 hours. He and I have something in common: we’ve both taken exception to websites promoting belief systems different to our own.

The website I took issue with was JesusSaid.org, advertised on buses and tube cards in June last year, which – as you can read here – promotes the idea of God’s wrath and eternal punishment. It insists:

“God’s wrath includes the prospect of eternal punishment – it is appointed to men to die once and then comes the judgment (Hebrews 9:27). You will rise from the dead and will face the Judge and know that you rejected His kind and merciful answer. You will be condemned to everlasting separation from God and then you spend all eternity in torment in hell. Jesus spoke about this as a lake of fire which was prepared for the devil and all his angels.”

Our adverts were designed to counter these rather alarming ideas.

Conversely, the website Mr Heather didn’t like much was… er… this one. The Guardian revealed today that “Heather said he had been particularly offended by the name of the website featured on the ad, atheistcampaign.org.”

Maybe the words “atheist” and “campaign” unsettled him for some reason, but they really shouldn’t have, because this campaign is as gentle as any. I truly don’t think he’s visited this site, because we’ve taken great care to make it very peaceful and upbeat (as we have with the entire campaign). We wanted to create a calm place where people could talk freely about their beliefs – the very opposite of JesusSaid.org, in fact. We believe in freedom of speech, so we rarely delete comments, but the main content of this site is very mild, friendly and straightforward.

If Ron ever does visit, he’ll be very welcome here. But somehow we don’t think he will.

Here’s the quote I gave to the press yesterday:

“We live in a democratic society, which will only function as such if we are allowed to peacefully express different viewpoints. The bus companies have accepted the adverts, and nobody imagines that bus drivers wholeheartedly endorse everything advertised on the sides of the buses they drive.“

We’re truly sorry that the site has been down since this time yesterday. We’ve fixed the bandwidth issue now and it won’t happen again.

To apologise, here’s a brand new video of last Tuesday’s launch from our advert and website designer Graham Nunn:

You can also see the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation video below (you have to scroll to halfway through):

http://www.cbc.ca/national/latestbroadcast.html

(To get involved with the brand new Atheist Bus Campaign in Canada, please visit http://www.atheistbus.ca)

And if you haven’t yet seen the official campaign launch video by The Guardian, here it is:

There’s also been lots more global press coverage:

Los Angeles Times
New York Times
Le Figaro, France
Dallas News
Sydney Morning Herald
Toronto Globe & Mail
PerthNow
The National (UAE)
Washington Times

And lastly, I was really excited to be asked to give the first non-religious Thought For The Afternoon on Radio 4 last Saturday. You can listen to it here at 4.35 minutes in:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00ghmbp/iPM_10_01_2009/

Thanks for all your support!

The presenters of Australia’s biggest television show, Sunrise, are not just very funny and great with puns – they’re also the most freethinking people I’ve come across in TV since the start of the campaign! Watch this and feel hopeful…

If you can speak Castillian or Catalan then please check out Bus Ateo, the site of the atheist buses in Madrid and Barcelona. If you’re in the United States then atheist buses with ads in a different style have appeared in Washington. If you’re keen on organising similar campaigns in other countries please do drop us a line via the contact page and we can put you in touch with humanists in the relevant countries.

We’ll also be doing a comprehensive press and blog review over the next 48 hours. We’ll manage to cover the mainstream media and blogs in English, French and German and some people have already sent us links (like this excellent list of the Spanish and Italian coverage) but if you’ve yourself written something, or have seen something interesting please comment here or contact us.

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In the autumn when the idea of atheist buses first took off the major press coverage outside the UK was in the USA, Spain and Italy. This time around the picture is rather different – at the launch event and subseqently the campaign has been receiving excellent coverage in Germany. A long piece today at Spiegel Online has been so popular that it’s the ‘Most Wanted’ article on their website.

There was also plenty of coverage in RTL Aktuell and RTL Nachtjournal.

Wenn jemand Interesse hat irgendwas ähnliches in Deutschland zu organisieren schrieben Sie bitte im Kommentarformular hier!

Thanks to Josh there are more launch photos available, and also a video of the launch from Zoe Margolis.

Also a few more photos from site visitors – click each photo to view the full size version. Route 73 in London from Carlosfelipe Pardo, route 122 in running from Cardiff to Tonypandy in South Wales from Gareth Rosser, and a bus in Manchester sent by Phil Moss. Keep sending those contributions to photos {at} atheistcampaign(.)org

A bus on route 4 in York, sent in by Leon Dumont with his enthusiatic colleague in the photo!

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