Atheist Bus Campaign Lookalike?

Perhaps those of us who’ve dabbled in professional design see life differently, but I can’t get away from a disturbing Lookalike comparison: The Atheist (Agnostic?) Bus Campaign & Dunkin Donuts.

Are they by any chance related?
Are the Donuts people covertly subverting the Eucharist?
Is Dawkins new model Upbeat Evangelical Atheist Religion, in fact, Baptist and thus potentially into dunkin’?
I think we should be told...



seeking lasting hapinessssssssssssssssissss sseeking fleeting happiness
by profound life philosophysssssssssssssssssby sugared comfort snacks of
sweeping the nationsssssssssssssssssisssssssdubious nutritional value

London Atheist ads: Shome mishtake?

I’m with Simon Barrow about the new London bus atheist poster ads campaign:

To those without a huge vested interest in promoting or dissing religion, this probably looks a slightly odd initiative. Frankly, the slogan is a bit anodyne. It's the non-believing equivalent of "God may very well exist. Now have a nice day". But it will probably still be enough to upset counter-evangelists of the kind who like to tell everybody they are going to hell for not subscribing to their particular doctrine, and who think atheism is very, very naughty.

I wonder what impact this kind of campaign has, though? It will appeal to those who like that kind of thing, no doubt. And in part it seems to have been born out of resentment towards comparatively prodigious (and extremely well-funded) religious advertising. But apart from raising brand awareness, I suspect that the vast majority of people will be as sceptical about being sold unbelief as they are about being sold belief. Well, unless someone is thinking of throwing in a free set of wine glasses or something.

Perhaps this particular ad is more agnostic than atheist, and we still have to await a genuinely atheist poster ad. The wording puts me in mind of a brilliantly funny song by the world’s first Atheist Gospel Singer, Susan Werner, which I sometimes play in the car for a chuckle.

Actually I suppose, like the ads, the song’s more agnostic than atheist, really. The humerous twist at the end is a refreshing break from the characteristic grinding pig ignorance associated with Dawkins and chums over here. Nothing in the ad isn’t in the Bible anyway — its line is characteristic of some strands in the Wisdom Tradition. And because God is implicit in everything, anything that raises the question actually helps people on their own journey towards him — as the sermon on the mount says, those who seek, find. It happens every day, and whilst these ads may well annoy people of a fundamentalist persuasion, they will raise a big question creatively for some people who might not have prayed Psalm 49 at a Cathedral evensong or read the book of Job recently...

Post-Christendom: rafts or trawlers?

Steve Hollinghurst works for Church Army in Sheffield, researching the cultures of people who don’t go to Church in the UK. He came to our local Deanery Synod last night with simple facts and figures about post-Christendom England.

• It’s an immensely fluid and complex picture out there. Fewer people buy into institutional church and the whole “Christian England” thing. Denominations are a thing of the past — a phase we went through, that means nothing to most people now. We are also globalizing massively.
• As “Religion’s” stock (genteely) declines, “Spirituality’s” increases. There’s a lot of curiosity out there. Steve contrasted the ubiquitous modernist “Scooby-Doo” interpretation of paranormal phenomena 30 years ago with multiple wall-to-wall ghosthunter shows now... Tech is cool, but the Eagle Comic optimistic scientism with which we all grew up has, worryingly perhaps, collapsed into widespread pessimism and cynicism about Science. People are massively switching off assertive fundamentalist certainties. Experts are now as good as their last job; Richard Dawkins is, in fact one of the best recruiting sergeants the Churches have.
• People find Churches spiritual places, but most of all when we’re not there! More people are passing through and by Churches (now up to 82% of the population a year), but far fewer committing themselves to the gathered twice-a-week experience.
  

So what do we do? We could retreat fast into the bunker, clinging on to what we fondly imagine were the certainties of the past. We could get the wagons into a circle for vigorous “Judaean People’s Front” debates around then camp fire. Alternatively, we can get the wagons out onto the trail, and see who we meet along the way. Where we decide to do the latter we will find ourselves needing the same kind of utter versatility St Paul talked about in I Corinthians 9 — Greeks to Greek, slave to slave, Jew to Jew. We need to distunguish clearly the gospel from its cultural wrappers. It’s a simple story — love is strong as death.

• Keep the core simple and authentic.
• Don’t rob the Word of its power as mystery — embrace the subtlety and poetry of it.
• Get engaged. Be holy pragmatic / entirely versatile about the wrappers.

Purely Secular Society — Historical (Norman) Wisdom

There was a slightly whining piece in yesterday's London Times by Carol Sarler, wishing everyone would just shut up about religion. The op-ed comments, which pretty much conformed to John P. Murdoch's Law, included a suggestion from Mr Chris Thomas from Oxford that "there never has been such a thing as a purely secular society." Not so, Chris. There have been various purely secular societies, embracing atheism as a public truth.

So for the historically challenged, here's a brief cut out 'n keep guide to those purely secular societies you may have missed during the twentieth century:

Soviet Russia — Most enduring (1917-1989): Atheists sometimes imply Stalin was some kind of closet Christian because he trained for the priesthood, but forget to add that he dropped out and embraced views on God that sound eerily identical to Professor Dawkins'. Anyway the whole thing was far bigger than Stalin. Estimates of deaths vary from 37 million to the high 70's, depending on whether you restrict the body count to those the régime killed directly during its various purges, or include famine and war victims. Produced Good Hatchet-faced Heavies and lousy submarines.

Honecker's East Germany — High culture in a dreary climate. Grey was the new Black, and the trains ran on time. Highly efficient secret police (Stasi) with pretty much everyone spying on everyone else, and the Trabant Car — proof that environmental disasters do come in small packages. Bred the world's finest androgynous female athletes, for those with Benny Hill/ Professor Peach sexual proclivities.

Chairman Mao's China — a great inspiration to secular idealists all over the world a few years ago. The literature is just being written that chronicles the concomitant violence, and there's no reliable body count yet, but we are talking millions. Gone soft on its atheist principles of late, but Tiananmen Square showed there was still some life in the old dog in 1989, even without the Great Helmsman.


Emver Hoxha's Albania — Balkan atheist societies made up in quality for what they lacked in quantity. Bible bashing Pastor Wurmbrand in Roumania was locked in a hole for four years. Albania was the most efficient, with very few movements in and out for forty years, and a seemingly endless supply of Norman Wisdom movies to fill the gap left by organised religion.

I wonder which of these purely secular societies Chris would like us all to live in?

Can anyone think of a society that espouses/ espoused atheism as public truth they would care to live in?

Critiques of pure reason

Father Ted's Housekeeper, Mrs Doyle doesn't get it about various things:

Football! Football! Football! What you men see in it, I don't know! A load of men kicking a bit of leather around a field! Tscha! I don't know... you men. The things you think are great fun! Like going to the films. A load of men sitting around looking at films. And rollercoasters! A load of men in a big rollercoaster going up and down on a metal track. And fishing! A load of men fishing! And sailing! A load of men in a boat, floating about in the water! And shouting! A load of men going around shouting! And so forth.

Now, imagine Mrs Doyle got her own TV show to pontificate about Soccer, films, rollercoasters, fishing and sailing. You don't have to imagine. She has been, only it isn't Mrs Doyle, it's Mr Dawkins, and the subject isn't any of the above, it's religion, superstition, homeopathy and faith — topics he has as much feeling for (and understanding of) as Mrs Doyle has about her pet hates.

However fluent and vituperative someone may be, however clever they think they are, anyone who can't see all kinds of difference between water dowsing, fortune telling, Roman Catholicism and Islamism, plainly doesn't know diddly squat about any of them. Soccer, film, rollercoasters, fishing, sailing and shouting are manifestly not variant forms of the same thing, as anyone who knew anything much about any of them could tell you.

The simple fact is that millions of people all over the world experience God in all sorts of diverse ways all the time. Like all personal encounters these experiences are multi-faceted, unpredictable, impossible to standardise or often even to describe. Yet it happens every day. You could try and understand what's going on, or you could simply rubbish anyone who doesn't share your own antique brand of naïve materialist positivism as mad, bad and/or dangerous.

One reviewer (Wackos IV: the child of science) suggests the whole show is essentially infantile. James Hannam gives one historian of science's view ("I suppose his fans will lap it up, but Dawkins is rapidly turning into a caricature of himself"). I'd also like to note two other reactions.

(1) The UK Guardian newspaper carries a perceptive and thoughtful analysis by John Cornwell, director of the Science and Human Dimension project at Jesus College (University of Cambridge) called The Importance of Doubt. Cornwell suggests that Dawkins

simply does not get the point of pluralist societies under secular auspices. Nor does he credit believers with the capacity to be pluralists and democrats, even though members of the great world religions have contributed to the formation and preservation of pluralism, and resistance to its opposite - totalitarianism - in the modern period.

Cornwell's socio-political conclusion makes the whole current antsy atheist enterprise look rather self-defeating:

Put bluntly, The God Delusion is liable to persuade religious fundamentalists that a pluralist secular society is every bit as hostile to the practice of faith as they ever thought it to be. By urging the elimination of religion in the name of all that civil society holds dear, Dawkins is inviting fundamentalists to be even more fundamentalist. His book, then, is a counsel of despair as well as an incitement to the very thing he deplores and seeks to remedy.

Meanwhile the UK Satirical magazine Private Eye, has its own spoof script for the Dawkins show. This piece isn't on the web, so you'll just have to go get it from the news stands, but here's a taster:

Professor Richard Dawkins (for it is he): It is frightening to think that in the 21st century there are millions of people all over the world who believe they can change the future by a simple act involving a birthday cake.
cut to shot of family group clustered around Marks & Spencer chocolate cake covered in lit candles. Woman blows out candles while the rest of her family shout 'go on, mum — make a wish!." Close up of woman with eyes closed, accompanied by sinister music. Cut to Dawkins, looking shocked and incredulous.

Dawkins (interviewing woman): Mrs Simpkins, can I ask you what you think you were doing just now?

Mrs Simpkins: Well, I just made a wish while I was blowing out the candles, like I always do.

Dawkins: And you really thought that what you were wishing for would in some mysterious way come true?

Mrs Simpkins: Well you never know... ... ...

Dawkins: As a Control test, tell me what it is you wished for?

Family: Don't tell him, mum, or it won't come true.

Well, you get the idea. Here's the conclusion

Dawkins: So there we have it. Everyone in the world is mad except me, and very, very dangerous.