Polly Toynbee, Guardian columnist and President of the BHA, wrote a fantastic article in this week’s Guardian declaring that the Atheist Bus Campaign slogan was her Christmas message. You can read her article here:
Atheists comprise 2.35%, but when combined with the category “non-religious” we’re up to an impressive 14.27% – making us the world’s third-largest belief category! That’s 924,311,385 of us and counting – and we’re also the UK’s second largest belief category, with 23% either stating “no religion” or refusing to state one on the 2001 Census form.
WE’VE REACHED INDIA!
Okay, so there’s no Indian Atheist Bus Campaign. But the Economic Times, affiliated to the India Times, have run an upbeat (if inaccurate) story on us:
Firstly: lots of you have been asking when the atheist buses will roll out onto the streets. We can’t give you a date yet I’m afraid, but it will definitely be in January – so not long to wait now! We’re very grateful for all your support – and with the help of the fantastic Simon Bishop, we’ve just broken the £130,000 mark, which is amazing when you remember that our original target was just £5,500.
Secondly: the American Humanist Association’s ABC-inspired bus campaign has been running across Washington DC for over a month now, and though it hasn’t met with approval across the whole of the US, it’s a big step forward. For more on the AHA campaign, please visit its official website.
Lastly: an atheist has taken out a quarter-page advert in a Hong Kong newspaper, saying “Consider – you don’t need to believe in a god or have any religion, just take a break, celebrate and enjoy the holidays with your loved ones – that’s the reason we need holidays, and that is all we need!”
This campaign has a habit (ba-boom) of generating notable atheists with ironic names. As well as our fantastic top donor Simon Bishop (and fellow donor Joanne Vickers), an atheist called Graham Nunn has also contributed. But as well as being the fifth person to donate, he also, entirely for free and quite uncredited by the press, created every single design element for the campaign, from the now-infamous colourful Atheist Bus Campaign slogan, to the ABC t-shirts available here, to the banner for the site you’re reading now. This campaign hasn’t been about big corporations, media buyers or advertising agencies, but hardworking individuals in unrelated jobs who feel passionately about the cause and have volunteered their time and talents to help us. Graham, we salute you!
As well as producing all our design and holding down a ten-hour day job, Graham also started an (often very funny) project in October called My Creative Year, during which he has pledged to produce one piece of design a day for 365 days. As it’s a big, time-consuming project, he produced this GIF (click to enlarge) as one of the pieces, in order to put his endeavour into proper perspective – and succeeded in creating an amazing visual history of the universe, from the Big Bang all the way through to the (eye-wateringly brief) existence of humans. I think this timeline represents just how short our lives really are, and how we have to make the most of them – because in the great scheme of things, they’re over before you can say, “But I’d just started to find happine -”.
I was asked on to talk about the new Churches Advertising Network nativity adverts. Apologies – I meant to say “more apathy” rather than “less apathy” (that’s a 5.40am start for you) – but on the plus side, I know all about cathode ray tubes!
This campaign has gone well and truly global. We’ve inspired organisations around the world to launch atheist adverts on buses, including a Christmas campaign from the American Humanist Association, which you can view here – but sadly, one place you’re not going to see the ads is Australia. The Atheist Foundation of Australia have come up with the mildest slogan of all (“Atheism – Celebrate Reason”) and yet the company responsible for transport advertising has balked, ironically giving no reason whatsoever for this strange decision. Here’s the press release:
ATHEIST FOUNDATION OF AUSTRALIA INC
MEDIA RELEASE
BUS SLOGAN REJECTED!
‘APN Outdoor’, the company responsible for Public Metropolitan Transport Advertising, says no to atheism.
The bus slogan campaign proposed by the AFA with the thought provoking sentiment, “Atheism – Celebrate reason!” has been refused for display by ‘APN Outdoors’. Various other phrases have also been deemed unacceptable.
Following the lead of Humanists in London and Washington in the USA, with their intended bus signs, an international programme by humanists and atheists was to commence on the 20th January 2009 using buses to express the secular viewpoint.
Richard Dawkins is supporting the London bus signs, and has stated that such a campaign “will make people think”.
President of the Atheist Foundation of Australia Inc, David Nicholls said: “I am flabbergasted. This is extremely disappointing and a severe blow to freedom of expression in Australia. We are witnessing the result of seemingly paranoid executives interfering with pertinent social comment. This action has thwarted the right to state peacefully and openly a legitimate and timely message without violence.
Australia is going to look provincial and narrow in outlook to the rest of the world because of this decision. The planet is moving to a more enlightened era but apparently, public transport advertising agents in Australia have missed the bus.”
You can send the AFA a friendly email to show your support: info {at} atheistfoundation.org(.)au
If Mary Kenny is a journalist, I am a brass rooster collector. (And I promise you, I’m not a brass rooster collector.) I didn’t think it was possible to get every single fact wrong in an article, but reading through Kenny’s latest piece in the Irish Independent is like playing a game of “spot the error”. I honestly think there’s one in every line, and it’s not a short piece:
But it’s not just Kenny’s errors which are startling – it’s the way she attempts to equate atheism with all that is wrong with the UK, including child abuse, unforgivably using the tragic case of Baby P to generate emotion with no relevant context (Kenny has no evidence to suggest that his killers didn’t believe in God, or that their religious beliefs (or lack of them) were a factor in the case in any way).
In addition, Mary Kenny is a Roman Catholic, so she’s on very shaky ground indeed when writing about any link between religion and child abuse. Catholic priests, anyone? Magdalene Laundries? Kenny seriously believes the world would be a better place if we all believed in God. 9/11, Mary? Iraq? The Middle East? The Balkans? Northern Ireland?
You can write a letter to the editor of the Irish Independent here:
A BIT OF CHEERING NEWS
