Posts with the tag 'Bus'
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.“
Tags: Atheist, BBC, Bus, Campaign, Driver, First, Ron Heather, The Guardian, UK
17.01.09
Due to some excellent work by site visitorBase on Mars (the Photoshopping) and his friend Josh (the pic) we have our first high res mockup. Click here for the high res version! Please credit the two of them if you wish to use the picture. More on what we’d like people to submit here.
Tags: Adverts, Bus, Images, Mockups, Photos, Photoshop, Pictures, Slogan
23.10.08
I’ve been e-mailed these fab mockups by a visitor to the site, D. Mason. Click on either image above to see the full size image.
So, you ask, as we’ve exceeded our fundraising target, where else will the banners appear? The first stage will be to investigate more ads, for longer, on more buses, in more cities (across the UK and maybe beyond) but frankly all of this needs to be decided among the organisers, and we haven’t had a moment to even meet yet… So please bear with us! In the meantime enjoy the designs, and also a new bus mockup sent to us by R. Longuir.
[UPDATE]
I’ve also been sent this excellent bus shelter image (to the right here) by T. Kaye, released under a Creative Commons License. Click the small image to see the full size one.
Tags: Adverts, Bus, Images, Mockups, Photos, Photoshop, Pictures, Slogan
23.10.08
We need to make some higher resolution Photoshop mockups of buses with the ads displayed on them as the images on our press page are not so wonderful at the moment. So can you help us? Here’s how!
(1) Get hold of a decent digital camera, ideally a digital SLR.
(2) Go out on the street and take pictures of some buses*, ideally red bendy buses but others are also fine.
(3) E-mail these pictures to us at photos {at} atheistcampaign(.)org and, if you wish, upload them to Peter Theakston’s Flickr group.
If you’re feeling even keener, then make a mockup of the bus with the banner…
(1) Download this image of the ad banner that will appear on the buses, and use Photoshop or an equivalent (GIMP is free and will do the job) to mockup the bus, putting the ad on the side. You should ideally also blank out the logos of the bus company on the bus.
(2) E-mail the mockup as a JPG or PSD file to photos {at} atheistcampaign(.)org
Please only use our banner in your mockups – this is the design and slogan that was used for the donation page and it cannot be changed now. We’ll credit you if you provide us with good pictures, but as we’re all volunteers in this we can’t pay you for your work.
* – if people think you’re a bus-spotter when you’re taking your photos be ready to tell them you’re doing the work for an atheist campaign!
[UPDATE]
The first new mockup submitted is now shown above, thanks the excellent work of R. Longmuir. Click here to view the high resolution version.
Tags: Advert, Bus, Images, Mockups, Photos, Photoshop, Pictures, Slogan
22.10.08
A number of people have concerns about the slogan containing the word ‘probably‘. There’s also a lively debate about this at our Facebook Group Discussion Board. I’ll quote what Ariane wrote there:
…transport advertising regulations are more stringent than normal advertising regulations (for billboards, etc) and the decision of whether to run the ad or not is very much at the discretion of the bus companies. It’s their private space, and their criteria for this (I know it’ll make all atheists reading this bang their head against a wall, but here goes) is that the advert “must not offend religious people”.
In their view, the “probably” gets us around this (and even with it, I’m anticipating that the Advertising Standards Authority will receive several dozen complaints from religious people and organisations). Also, as Dawkins writes in The God Delusion, being an absolute “7″ on the faith scale (insisting “there is no God”) doesn’t make sense, as nobody can ever state this as an absolute. The alternative Dawkins proposes is “almost certainly”, but “there’s almost certainly no God” doesn’t make for an overly catchy advertising slogan!
In short our priority is to get these ads out on the buses, to get people thinking about atheism. That’s the major goal. So we hope plenty more people can back our efforts to reach that goal!
Tags: Advertising, Atheism, Bus, Facebook, Probably, Richard Dawkins, Slogan, Transport, Wording
21.10.08
