Probably?
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!
37 comments 21.10.08
