There's probably no God.

Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.

So, are you convinced that there isn't a God yet? I hope you found my argument satisfactory. But that is not my argument, it is from the atheist bus campaign in Britain. (Don't worry, theists, God isn't taking this sitting down.)

I'm not sure what to think about the bus campaign. On the one hand, I like that some people are proud enough of their - well, not their atheism - agnosticism to spend money to put that message up on the double decker buses and on the Underground trains. I seriously wonder what would happen if there were an atheist bus campaign in the US. (But let's not mention that again until the end of this entry, and let's defer serious discussion of atheist advertising in the US until TBD.)

Unfortunately, there are plenty of reasons why I don't care for this atheist bus campaign. Starting off with - it's not atheism with the word "probably"! That makes it harder for me to write this blog entry, because I'm not sure if I even want to say "atheist bus campaign" - yes, Richard Dawkins is involved, but that "probably" means it's not an atheist bus campaign. But I'm going to call it an atheist bus campaign, because atheists funded it. Mmkay. But more important than my linguistic headaches is the other thing. Ads generally can't get me to watch 24, so how are they going to convince anyone that their religion is wrong? Think about it: Oh, I've decided to stop going to church because of some message I saw in London. That won't ever happen. If they work at all, it will be more in the sense of giving a nudge to someone who has doubts about God but isn't ready to let go of religion: It's alright, there are other people with money to spend who don't believe in God either. I think that Dawkins and the other folks who funded this are smart enough to know that the ad campaign won't make anyone quit believing in God. My guess is the ads' purpose is twofold: the nudging, like I said, and "coming out." We're here, we're sods, we don't believe in your God.

But alas we come to another problem with the bus campaign. It's in the UK! I remember Douglas Adams (what would he have thought of this?) commented in some essay of his that the UK had moved from a wishy-washy Anglicanism to a wishy-washy agnosticism in the course of his life. I've been to church services in the UK (not making this up), and it's actually kind of a shame: there are all these grand edifices built to the glory of God, not at all like Lakewood Church (formerly Compaq Center), and few people go to them. The people who do go to church in the UK tend to be pretty old. Of course, on Christmas and Easter probably lots more people go to church. But I tend to assume that folks who go to church on Christmas and Easter are probably not super-serious about their Christianity. (I know that's a horrible generalization.) Anyway, my point is that atheists don't need a coming out campaign in the UK, and they certainly don't need to be spending money to publicize agnosticism, because plenty of people in the UK already agree with them, and plenty more are not hostile to them.

Now that I think about it, here's another reason for the ad campaign: For fun. For the hell of it. I can't argue with that, but I can say that I dislike spending money, and if I want to spend money on fun, I'd rather go see Slumdog Millionare, or buy a Hillary campaign tellall book (oh, I can promise you there will be many of those), or maybe not spend any money at all and learn another Chopin mazurka.

As for an atheist bus campaign in the US: wait, just how often do I see buses in Houston? I'm not terribly good at keeping track of the bus system in Houston, but I do know that if you are carless, you probably should not move to Houston. There aren't enough buses in Houston to warrant an ad campaign (at least I don't think there are), and there definitely aren't enough light rail trains. Nay, God is one step ahead of American atheists, as I showed at the beginning: God knows that Americans don't take public transportation, and that's why He erected those billboards! Dammit, the atheists need billboards! Plenty of super-ugly billboards in Houston!

If an American atheist group decides to buy some billboards, that's cool with me. I won't be donating money.