Atheist Bus Campaign
[1] It was created by comedy writer Ariane Sherine and launched on 21 October 2008, with official support from the British Humanist Association and Richard Dawkins.
[2] The campaign's original goal was to raise £5,500 to run 30 buses across London for four weeks early in 2009 with the slogan: "There's probably no God.
Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, agreed to match all donations up to a maximum of £5,500, providing a total of £11,000 if the full amount were to be raised.
[3] The first buses started running on 6 January 2009 – 800 ran around the UK and it was also planned to place 1,000 adverts on the London Underground featuring quotations from famous atheists.
She expressed her frustration that the Christian organisation JesusSaid.org was allowed to use bus advertising to promote the web address of a website that said that all non-Christians would burn in hell for all eternity.
Sherine called on atheists to counter this kind of evangelical advertising by donating five pounds towards a positive philosophical advert.
Sherine then wrote a follow-up Comment is free article, Dawkin 'bout a Revolution, detailing events since the original piece.
[11] In response, the British Humanist Association offered to lend the campaign its official support and undertook to administer all donations.
The BHA has reported a flood of interest in its activities and the Atheist Bus Campaign Facebook group has been growing rapidly since the launch.
[25]Television critic Charlie Brooker was the fourth person to donate to the campaign, giving £100 with the comment "I hope to God this helps".
[citation needed]The poet and musician Labi Siffre donated £1000 on 22 October 2008 with the verse, "As God knew / What Judas would do / In the final accounting / Who betrayed who?
Critic D. J. Taylor felt that this qualification let the campaign down, but admired it for introducing some tentativeness into an often polarised debate,[29] while atheists including A. C. Grayling[30] think that they can be certain there is no God and therefore the word 'probably' should not be used.
In November 2009, an ad appeared on billboards, not buses, in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, displaying a young girl's picture with the caption "Please don't label me" followed by "Let me grow up and choose for myself".
[31] On 21 November 2009 it was reported in The Times and the Daily Telegraph that the children featured in the 'Don't Label Me' campaign were from an Evangelical Christian family.
"[38] The Freedom From Religion Foundation had also launched a bus campaign in the United States, featuring buses with various quotations appearing during February and March 2009.
Significant attention and media coverage has been devoted to atheist roadside billboard campaigns, funded by various groups at the local level between 2008 and 2010.
In February 2009, a nationwide campaign was launched by the Freethought Association of Canada with Justin Trottier and Chris Hammond serving as spokespersons.
In British Columbia, Vancouver, Victoria and Kelowna adverts were barred on the ground that no religious advertisement is allowed on buses.
The campaign was intended to coincide with the launch of the Canadian Museum of Human Rights and featured opposition to the public funding of religious school boards in Ontario.
Thain launched a lawsuit against the City of Winnipeg and Pattison Outdoor Advertising in 2017 with a claim that his charter right to freedom of expression had been denied by the refusal to carry the ads.
On each stop the bus took people from the city on a sightseeing roundtrip with an emphasis on what they saw as scientific and religious historical developments in respect to secularisation and atheism.
[64] Among the general populace, the Atheist Bus Campaign was not well received, with some passerby viewing it as being reminiscent of the era of state atheism during the German Democratic Republic.
Like in Germany advertising on buses for religious (but also political) purposes was not allowed by the bus services that are usually operated by the cities and not private companies.
The Humanist Association of Ireland ran a series of advertisements on Dublin commuter trains which they called the Unbelievable Campaign.
[68] The city was chosen on the occasion of the nomination of its archbishop, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, as president of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI).
Quella buona è che non ne hai bisogno", meaning "The bad news is that God does not exist.
[71] As a reaction, the UAAR launched a new campaign in Genoa with a different slogan to comply with the advertising authority's rules: "The good news is there are millions of atheists in Italy.
[72][73] On 12 January 2009, Dutch philosopher, atheist activist and director of the Center for Inquiry Low Countries, Floris van den Berg, announced the intention to launch a similar campaign in the Netherlands.
[75][76] On 11 March 2009, Van den Berg was interviewed by the NOS when he took a new initiative to place a billboard along the A4 motorway near Schiphol, that for the first time in the Netherlands promoted an atheist message: "There is probably no god.
[79] In Russia in September 2010 activists of "Общественное объединение по продвижению секуляризма в России"[80] decided to make the same campaign in Moscow.
