Non-Magic Bus

Last June, writer Ariane Sherine wrote an article on Comment is Free complaining about the amount of religious advertising on the side of London buses. As part of the research for the article she calculated that it would take about 4,500 atheists donating £5 each to get together enough money to have an atheist advertising campaign on the side of a bus. This idea caught on and a pledge was set up to try to make it happen. This original pledge failed, but the idea had taken root and several people started beavering away to try and turn the idea into a reality.

The campaign relaunched today. This time, some recalculations have been done and the project team have worked out that they for £5,500 they can get adverts on 30 buses for four weeks. Richard Dawkins is involved and has said that he will match all donations up to a limit of £5,500 – effectively doubling the purchasing power of the campaign.

The donations page on Just Giving went live this morning. When I gave my donation at about 10am the total stood at about £4,500. As I write this, it’s approaching £15,000.

The response has been phenomenal. Atheists obviously really want to get their message out to more people. It looks like the campaign will be able to put posters on far more buses than expected and therefore reach far more people than they hoped for. This is obviously an idea which has struck a chord with a great many people who are tired of being presented with religious advertising which largely goes unquestioned.

So it looks like it’s going to happen. The adverts will probably start appearing on buses in the next few months. They will say “There’s probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life”. The “probably” there is to satisfy the bus advertising people that they aren’t leaving themselves open to accusations of blasphemy. Seems a little weak to me as the religious adverts make the most ridiculous claims with no need to back them up in any way.

If these adverts raise a smile then it will have been worthwhile. If they stop just one person from taking a religious advert too seriously then the campaign will have been a great success.

The campaign are still accepting donations on the Just Giving page. Most people seem to be giving £5 or £10. Please consider giving a little bit to the cause.

Sherine has another piece about the campaign on Cif today. The story has also been covered by the BBC and the Times. I expect it to get more coverage tomorrow, once it becomes clear just how successful it has been. I can’t wait to see how the Mail covers it.

Now. Who’s up for trying something similar in the US?

7 comments

  1. You do know the backlash is going to be more amusing than the original campaign :-)

  2. In some ways it is a shame that Stagecoach withdrew from running services in london, I am sure it would have been interesting to see Brian Souter do his nut over this.

  3. Yes I was also puzzled about the “probably” wording. Still, it makes the message come across as more reasonable and invites discussion.Also, I thought the blasphemy laws had been scrapped recently? Or is that still a work in progress?

  4. Thanks for alerting me to this. I’ve given my donation.justgiving is a nice idea, but the overhead of giving was a bit of a pain, and why is anonymous giving not the default? They tried to store my credit card details, they tried to put me on a mailing list, they want to publish my name.More people would give if anonymity was guaranteed./R

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