Atheism must advertise (Part 1)

The British Humanist Association is running a bus campaign. I had heard about it a month or so back, and was bemused; I thought the slogan they were running was a bit daft, but only a bit. But recently I saw a bus in Oxford with the advert upon it.

Photo © Jon Worth / British Humanist Association. Used with permission.

There’s something about seeing such a thing on a bus that helps focus the mind a bit. One sits there and actually thinks over the message and the values that produces such a sign. As a consequence of actually thinking about the Humanist Association’s advert for a more sustained period of time, I no longer think it is a bit daft; I now think it is one of the strangest things I have seen for a long time.

To begin with, it’s daft to be running the campaign in the first place. I think it would be hard for Aussies reading this blog to get how disinterested in God the British are. Down Under, we are used to seeing ourselves as living in a very secular society. That’s true by any standard of measurement. But the average Australian doesn’t have the almost passive aggressive indifference towards God that I sense over here. It is almost an active lack of interest, if it is possible to have an active absence. It is almost as though the British find the God question socially embarrassing, and so deal with it by ignoring the question until it shuffles shamefacedly out of the room.

So, in such a context where a practical atheism rules the country by default, because no-one wants to consider the question one way or another at all, why on earth would you run a campaign to provocatively put the God question back on the agenda when you want people to not believe in God? They already don’t believe in God in any meaningful sense; you’ve already won. By reopening the question, humanists can’t do any better than maintain the status quo—most people not believing in God in any meaningful sense. But even that is only possible if the Humanist Association does very, very well with its advertising campaign. Anything less and they end up going backwards. This is because muddle-headed practical atheists have a tendency to start recognizing God and coming to some kind of theism when:

  1. they start thinking seriously about the God question and
  2. there is some kind of Christian witness going on.

Accordingly, where there’s a small number of genuine theists (who are, by and large, relatively clear as to why they believe in God) and a large number of non-theists (many of whom are just confused as to what they believe and why, because practical atheism is the ‘default option’ in a secular society), and both sides seriously examine their beliefs, then the most likely outcome is that you’ll end up with more theists at the end of the process. It’s just the way human people work in the world God made. More theists isn’t necessarily a ‘win’ for Christianity, but it’s definitely a loss for atheism. So, given sheer pragmatics, the presence of the campaign is an own goal.

But let’s put that aside for the moment and focus on the advert itself. It’s self-defeating on multiple fronts.

Probably

Firstly, there is that wonderful word ‘probably’: there’s probably no God. At one level, it is very British understatement. The British seem to have an almost pathological dislike for certainty. For a while, a café here in Oxford claimed not ‘the best coffee in Oxford’, but ‘probably the best coffee in Oxford’. That sign really captured the way in which the British seem to draw back from making definitive statements. So, at one level, it is very culturally appropriate.

But when the sign is self-consciously in dialogue with Christianity (as the supporting website makes clear), ‘probably’ is just dumb. ‘Probably there is no God’ means that it is quite conceivable that there is a God; it is just that the speaker has, in their personal judgement, concluded that the balance of probability is against such a possibility. But that clearly invites the person reading the sign to consider seriously themselves whether they think God’s existence is that unlikely. And when such a question is asked seriously, very, very few people are prepared to accept that the balance of probability is against the existence of God. Atheism is like designer drugs: it’s a lifestyle choice for a small westernized elite.

For my money, even if someone concludes that God ‘probably’ does not exist, that still does not simply translate into taking up atheism. There are many things that probably will not occur that we still take steps to make even more unlikely, because the consequences are so significant if they do. The entire health and fitness enterprise is predicated, at least in part, on people’s desire to take a two-in-five chance of illness/medical condition x occurring and reducing it to something less, even though it probably won’t happen if they take no steps at all. For example, to prevent some overwhelmingly unlikely foetal abnormalities, mothers will often still take tablet x and avoid food y to reduce that chance even further. The God question, like global warming, can’t simply be resolved by deciding that one’s rubbery figures end up with odds greater than 50 per cent against, and therefore, concluding that, the entire question can be shelved.

So ‘probably’? That’s an own goal.

Now stop worrying and enjoy your life

Secondly, there is the great imperative: “Now stop worrying and enjoy your life”. Why is God’s non-existence the reason to stop worrying and ejoy your life? The attending website for the campaign argues that it is because the atheist adverts are responding to a prior Christian advert campaign which, on its supporting website, mentioned that unbelievers face eternal hellfire. It’s a telling point: one aspect of the Christian message that wasn’t even directly part of the original advert campaign (but merely supporting web-literature) has become a key focus of the atheist campaign.

At one level, I think they’ve again chosen a defensible strategy from a rhetorical point of view. The Humanist Association seems to think that most people are going to find the notion that God will condemn them personally and sentence them to an eternity of suffering the most offensive aspect of the Christian message. And so they are trying to capitalize on that in promoting atheism. I think, at this point, they are dead right. It’s a sound strategy: as a teenager who was gripped by a fear of hell, I think I would have found a strong belief in the non-existence of God a more enjoyabale alternative, even though I could also see it meant that my life was inherently meaningless. It was just that, well, the non-existence of God didn’t seem probable. But sure, there’s no question I had a vested interest in trying to believe that God didn’t exist.

I would suggest that this part of the humanist campaign feeds in to a debate occurring within Evangelicalism about how the gospel should be preached. This tactic they are using indicates that those voices in broader Evangelicalism who argue that we should displace justification to the side in our evangelistic preaching in favour of more relational categories (because issues of guilt and forgiveness just aren’t that important to contemporary westerners) are wide of the mark. Forensic categories (guilt, righteousness, forgiveness, justification and the like) are clearly still something that people react strongly to, which suggests that they haven’t been rendered irrelevant by the slow march of time. People care about the idea that God will judge them, and resent it. That suggests to me that self-righteousness continues to be a big issue for human beings, even if some of its particular details might have experienced generational change. In the relationally starved context that is life in the big city, we may want to give the relational aspects of the gospel more prominence than has been previously the case, but I think we have here a good argument for ensuring that such a move complements and does not compete with a strong focus on the notes of objective guilt, judgement, forgiveness and justification. People don’t react badly to things they don’t care about.

That to one side, this is another own goal for atheism. One of its greatest rhetorical tools, used to devastating effect throughout the last century, was to run the Freud/Marx play-the-man argument against theistic belief. It went along these lines: “Religious people project a bigger version of themselves into heaven, and call it God, because they need to believe in that to cope with life”. Belief in God was the invisible security blanket for adults who were still craven and weak at heart, but who couldn’t suffer the social embarrassment of carrying their childhood fluffy toy around with them. As an argument against the existence of God, it was a poor effort. As CS Lewis indicated in The Pilgrim’s Regress, it was on a par with saying that “You only say that 1+1=2 because you’re a mathematician”. But then popular atheism has never seemed overly scrupulous about the intellectual integrity of its arguments.

Against weak God-believers, atheists were able to position themselves as the religious equivalent of the ideal journalist or scientist: self-sufficient, caring only about evidence and reason, having the courage and inner pluck to stand on their own two feet and face life for what it really was without the need for any comforting lie. It was a bizarre bringing together of Enlightenment values with the lonely Byronic hero of Romanticism, but it was still an effective rhetorical device—as seen in the way that Richard Dawkins is the latest in a long line of celebrity atheists being presented along these lines.

But “Now stop worrying and enjoy your life” kind of blows both sides of the critique out of the water—a nasty case of friendly fire. On the one hand, it turns out that it isn’t that comforting to believe that God is up there and is going to pass judgement on us. So the argument that theistic belief is a crutch made up by people who need to believe in it and who do so in the face of compelling evidence to the contrary simply evaporates. It can’t be true that belief in God is both a comforting crutch and a barrier to not worrying and enjoying life. So this part of the advert, which seems to be part of a broader move on the part of contemporary atheism to try and argue that God is evil, primarily serves to undercut what has been one of their greatest rhetorical tools in the modern era—presenting belief in God as a crutch for the weak. That’s an own goal all by itself.

But this argument also serves to undercut their positioning of themselves. Suddenly, it turns out that atheism is not the consequence of brave warriors for truth, letting the evidence lead them to the only rational position; rather, atheists have a vested interest in the question as well. Go figure. They are not the disinterested referees they make themselves out to be. If God exists, then they cannot stop worrying and enjoy life. They need God to not be there, otherwise life will lose its savour.

So the conclusion that God ‘probably’ does not exist is being offered by someone who really wants God to not exist. How trustworthy do you think their weighing of the issues is likely to be? Probably does not exist? Would you buy a used atheism from this salesman?

Again, this has nothing at all to do with whether atheism has any credibility; good beliefs can be held by people of dubious credentials. But it does have loads to do with whether atheists have credibility. In an era where atheism’s popular appeal (such as it is—a muddle-headed practical atheism that only rarely translates into a clear-minded ideological atheism) seems very much tied to an implicit “Trust us; we’re the disinterested, rational ones in this debate”, this is an own goal of massive proportions.

No doubt this is more than enough for a single blog entry, gentle reader, so we’ll finish this in a concluding post.

24 thoughts on “Atheism must advertise (Part 1)

  1. Thanks for your very interesting analysis, Mark.

    I had a quick look at the humanism.org.uk bus campaign site, and find their comments fascinatingly illogical. For example, they say:

    There’s another reason I’m keen on the “probably”: it means the slogan is more accurate, as even though there’s no scientific evidence at all for God’s existence, it’s also impossible to prove that God doesn’t exist (or that anything doesn’t)”

    and yet further down the same page they highlight this unqualified sentence:

    if you are not religious, there is absolutely no reason to worry about that

    So “probably”, which they have agreed is more accurate, has all of a sudden changed to “absolutely”.

    And, why does it have to be “scientific” evidence, anyway? Even in a court of law, we allow other types of evidence.

  2. Thanks Mark.
    I have been thinking about “Probably” too.
    Gotta love an own goal.
    And this is absolutely a good one!

  3. 1. “Probably”
    Put in there mainly to appeal to and be inclusive of agnostics as well as to ensure that fewer people got upset and angry about the ad.

    2. The “reason” for the ad
    …was the person who came up with it seeing a Christian ad on the side of a bus, about Jesus loving them, with an included website address. The person, out of curiosity I suppose, visited the site, only to be told all non-Christians are going to hell, Armageddon is coming soon, world will end in this generation, etc. etc. and wanted an ad to counter such hate.

    3. To the first commenter: “probably” is in reference to the existence of God absolutely is in reference to how unworried a non-believer should be. They are NOT describing the same thing, they are NOT both about the non-existence of God. It is in fact yourself who is being illogical.

  4. I think having a go at them about “probably” is somewhat unfair because they’re responding to the usual canard that the non-existence of God can’t be absolutely proved, so they’re being honest with “probably”. That does kind of leave an attack angle for a Pascal’s Wager kind of argument – how low a probability is needed to “not worry” anymore?

  5. If you say “there is no God” Christians claim you are an arrogant. If you say “there is probably no Gog” Christians claim it is an own goal.

    Our world is saturated with religious messages, yet when one humanist message appears Christians immediately attack with staw man arguments.

    The ad was probably directed to the people in the middle ground and to get people talking and thinking. It has been very successful in what it wanted to accomplish.

  6. Firstly, there is that wonderful word ‘probably’: there’s probably no God. At one level, it is very British understatement. The British seem to have an almost pathological dislike for certainty. For a while, a café here in Oxford claimed not ‘the best coffee in Oxford’, but ‘probably the best coffee in Oxford’. That sign really captured the way in which the British seem to draw back from making definitive statements. So, at one level, it is very culturally appropriate.

    Great post Mark. Very helpful.

    Just a comment on the British use of the word ‘probably’. As you say, it is a very culturally appropriate way to say it in Britain. For years Heineken beer was marketed in the UK with the slogan, ‘Probably the best beer in the world’. This fed into the classic British understatement. We know it is really the best but we want to be modest and we don’t want to be sued. So the Oxford Cafe is playing on that campaign – they are actually claiming that they do have the best coffee in Oxford but they don’t have to boast about it!

    Therefore there is a subtle play on this in the humanists’ campaign. ‘Probably’ here is supposed to mean – everybody knows that there isn’t really a God but because of polite sensitivities we are going to leave it understated. It is trying to distance the campaign from fanaticals and fundamentalists. This is trying to be the voice of temperate, reasonable, liberal England speaking here.

  7. Kamron

    To the first commenter: “probably” is in reference to the existence of God absolutely is in reference to how unworried a non-believer should be. They are NOT describing the same thing, they are NOT both about the non-existence of God. It is in fact yourself who is being illogical.

    I took it that there was a link between the two. Surely you can only be absolutely unworried if you are absolutely sure there is no God.

    Ian

  8. I hate to display my ignorance, but what exactly is an “own goal”?  I’ve never encountered this phrase before and, at first, thought it was a typing error until I encountered it again later in the piece.  I really enjoyed the article by the way.

  9. Doug Short

    “own goal” is a term from soccer (or perhaps, in the interests in setting off a whole new thread where the fans of the different sporting codes can thump each other for our amusement, I should say ‘football’).  A quick scan on the web gave me this definition:

    a goal that results when a player inadvertently knocks the ball into the goal he is defending

    It’s a great set of challenges regarding my ‘probably’ critique from the four comments from Kamron Brooks through to Roger Gallagher.  I’m glad people have put the case for the advert’s use of the word more strongly than I apparently did with my nod to English ways of speaking.  I still think my critique of it stands, even with what people have said, and I‘ll try and briefly spell it out here.  It’ll involve four separate comments, as people tend to complain when I join my responses together into one large comment.

    Peter Lastname said:

    If you say “there is no God” Christians claim you are an arrogant. If you say “there is probably no Gog” Christians claim it is an own goal.

    I strongly disagree with the idea that it is arrogant to claim to know that something doesn’t exist (which I’m presuming is behind the first sentence that I’ve quoted). 

    It seems obvious to me that can be responsible to conclude that something does not exist (e.g. the existence of Santa, whether something can be both right and wrong at the same time, whether there can be a morally justifiable rape, whether Adolf Hitler was the third President of the U.S.A. and gave the Gettysburg Address in Swahili while wearing a pink tutu).

    I don’t use the argument, and will attack it if it is run by a Christian in an argument that I am part of. 

    I think atheists have a responsibility to stand against poor arguments against them, even if they find it hard to beat the rhetorical force that sometimes bad arguments have.  If atheists think that the non-existence of God has the kind of certainty that it is possible to have outside of mathematics (not absolute, but for all intents and purposes something that can be taken to the bank) they should state that and try and defend it.  Despite what the website claims, ‘probably’ is not a verbal equivalent of ‘almost certainly.’

  10. Kamron Brooks:
    Put in there mainly to appeal to and be inclusive of agnostics as well as to ensure that fewer people got upset and angry about the ad.

    If you are right (and I hope you are not), I would suggest that there is a lack of integrity in the advertisement. 

    Agnostics are no more naturally aligned with atheism than they are with theism.  Agnosticism holds that the God question simply cannot be answered with human knowledge abilities one way or the other

    I’d suggest that atheists shouldn’t be trying to be inclusive of that view – agnosticism is a rejection of something fundamental to atheism and so therefore the appeal to agnostics cannot be made on agnostic terms without falsely representing atheism.  You can’t just get all the non-theists together into a ‘coalition of the willing’ against us nasty Christians. 

    And as to ensuring that fewer people got upset and angry, well yes, not being unnecessarily offensive is generally a good strategy.  But when you remove the offence by watering down something fairly central to atheism—that we can be effectively certain that God does not exist, then I would suggest that you have paid too high a cost.  Every view that is worth saying has something in it that might give offence.  Say it as inoffensively as you can, and defend it, that is just basic to civilized discourse.

  11. John Smuts—thanks, a much better description of what I was trying to get across than I was capable of.  I still think my critique holds though. 

    English understatement does not appear (at least to this Aussie) to be an absolute value here in the UK.  When the issue moves from aesthetics (like beer and coffee) to moral questions the English often seem far more given to strong absolutist statements than even us shoot-from-the-hip Aussies.  I have yet to see any discussion of animal rights and welfare couched in anything approaching polite understatement. 

    That is, when the issue is important, and of moral weight, it seems me (and correct me if I’m wrong) that it is permissible in England just to state baldly things as they stand—it is reprehensible to torture small fluffy animals, for example.  In fact I wouldn’t be surprised that if someone suggested a bus ad stating “It’s probably wrong to torture cats” that the relevant body might require the ‘probably’ to be removed so as not to create widespread offence.  Atheism, by and large, thinks that belief in God is a moral issue, not an aesthetic one—that it is wrong to believe in God.  I think therefore, that even in England, ‘probably’ is an own goal and not simply non-fanatical understatement.  (Please come back to me on this one if you think I’ve misunderstood English culture at this point and that it is never appropriate to state things without understatement – as an Aussie living over here it might be arguably considered to be a basic survival skill…)

  12. Roger Gallagher, I don’t think there is anything weird about sticking up for the opposition.  I’m glad you did it. 

    I was aware of the issue of the legal advice the campaign got regarding the truth in advertising legislation.  I don’t think it is a good defence of their use of the term though.  First, even if such a qualifier is legally required, they still have to own the statement if they choose to go ahead and run the advert with that qualifier.  They are still the ‘speaker’ of the ad.  So the ad can and should be critiqued on its own terms.  But there’s a bigger reason why it’s a bad defence.

    Not all laws are good, and sometimes civic disobedience is necessary.  I am offended at the idea that it might be illegal for atheists to say that God does not exist.  I find the statement itself offensive, but to make it illegal in any sense is a serious betrayal of the principles of freedom of speech, and so cuts against one of the key building blocks that makes a liberal democratic state possible. 

    Atheists should have taken the law on (or the way the law was applied by the relevant body if that was where the problem lay), and struck a blow for freedom of religion (which includes the freedom to be against religion) and free speech—particularly as they are supposed to be the fearless warriors for truth.  I don’t think they covered themselves in glory by acquiescing.  Their lack of any kind of moral courage on this point certainly reinforces my perception that their rhetoric about how atheism is the position of courageous intellectual integrity so rarely seems to match the reality.

    As I said, I really appreciated all the comments, even though I have tried to explain here why I don’t think they are an effective defence.  But if anyone would like to take this further I’m keen – I don’t want to be unfairly rapping the advert over the knuckles on this point.  However, at this stage let me put my tongue firmly in cheek and say that, notwithstanding the issues raised so far, I think on this point the advert probably scores an own goal.

  13. Doug – An ‘own goal’ is an expression used in football, for when a player accidently scores a goal in his own net, as opposed to the one he is attacking. A common used term in British English.

    Mark – Thanks for your article, it was very interesting, from the angle of an Aussie living in Britain. As a Brit living in Britain!, I have a few things to comment.

    1. Yes we are a very secularised country, but other European countries are the same or worse in people being generally practical athiests – France a case in point.

    2. In some respects, Britain and Europe not having the influence of ‘religious right’ agenda that the US has stemming from the bible belt and its ‘Christ haunted people’ (Flannery O’Connor) – people who have conservative values and say they are ‘evangelical’ or ‘born again’ with nothing to show for that.  I think that ‘religiosity’ like this can innoculate people aginst Christianity as much as agressive secularism. The great and very deep polarisation in the US of secular America verses ‘religious right’ America is very damaging. Australia, more Americanised than perhaps any country outside North America, has had a Family First party representing ‘religious right’ principles, and has influenced the policies of the main parties – will this lead to a polarised political culture in Australia if Family First type groups grow and gain influence, similar to the US? Time will tell.

    3. Of the above, the trajectory of American politics has been that George W has put forward numerous ‘religious right’ policies, only for the Democrats to come along and stike down many of them, one of the main reasons being 80% of ‘evangelicals’ vote Republican, whereas 30-40 years ago the ‘evangelical’ vote was roughly evenly split 50-50 Rep and Dem.

    4. And finally, at a church planting and evangelism conference I attended yesterday, one of the pastors who has planted a church on a new housing development, was asked about knocking on doors, and whether it was still effective or not. He said yes, very much so, as he had knocked on 700-800 houses and only five or six people, were openly hostile to the visit of a Chritian pastor. My church planting friends say, even though its a tough environment, used correctly, people are open to church activities and therefore the gospel – the ‘liberal elite’ who are secularist and secularising weild power in media and government, but are a small minority in the whole of the population.

  14. Hey Doug!

    To quote from the Macquarie,

    own goal noun

    1. Soccer, Hockey, etc. a goal scored for the opposing team when a player puts the ball into his or her own team’s goal.
    2. an action initiated by someone on whom it then rebounds badly.
  15. Speaking of own goals, and in the interest of poking a little fun:

    … the British seem to draw back from making definitive statements.

    Seem? Just the Brits, then? Or is this perhaps contagious?

    Aargh, I said perhaps! I might have caught it too…

  16. Hi All

    Watching Dawkins pontificate about “nasty religionists” in general here in Oz on Sunday TV I realised he’s actually arguing against belief that motivates violence. Based on God’s and His faithful’s behaviour in the Tanakh it doesn’t really surprise me that he’s actually very scared of religion’s potential for violence. The fangs of Christianity, and Judaism before it, were pulled quite some time ago, but Islam was forged in violent opposition to the State (other Arab tribes, the Byzantines etc etc) and thus it’s core texts are full of violent rhetoric and revolutionary fervour dressed up as piety.

    In my mind that’s a better argument against the claims of religion – that God is really a genocidal ogre.

    Yet it runs up hard against the flip-side of God, which is only faithfully expressed by Trinitarian Christianity, that God was willing to sacrifice Himself for us, share in the sufferings of humanity, and calls us to the same. Judaism learnt that lesson collectively, by being on the receiving end of Greco-Roman prejudice dressed up in ecclesiastical garb for 2,000 years, but Islam still can’t accept a vulnerable God, and a Jesus who really did suffer and die. Strains of Islam amongst the Shia especially, identify with the sufferings of Ali, even deifying him, but the Sunni (especially the violence-preaching Wahabbi branch) see many of the Shia teachings as heretical and to be suppressed.

    Perhaps atheism and agnosticism wouldn’t be so appealling if Christianity hadn’t so readily let power go to its head when it once dominated the West.

  17. The rules regarding factual claims in adverts (in UK) are quite strict. What you can get away with in the USA for example, you would not do so here.

    One poster has made a reference to the use of the word probably in adverts for Heineken beer. How would they factually prove their beer was the ‘best’ in the world?

    If I have understood correctly, if you cannot prove it, you cannot claim/state it.

    Are we perhaps being a little unfair to the atheists in their use of the word ‘probably’, particularly If the law prevents them from stating what they believe in much stronger terms.

  18. Kevin Blow

    There are a lot of things that matter that cannot be ‘proven’ but shouldn’t have an agency requiring ‘probably’ thrown in every time someone makes a truth claim: the existence of love, human beings should be treated with basic dignity, the wrongness of child abuse (the fact that most people feel very strongly that these things are true is hardly evidence if we are going to speak of ‘factual claims’).  I would have thought that by its ruling the law is being applied to areas it should not be addressing, and it shouldn’t have been accepted.

    Let me put it another way.  By accepting this, atheists have set themselves up for a response along the lines of:

    Atheism does not pass truth in advertising requirements. 

    With the follow-up to go along the lines of:

    Recently a neutral expert body ruled that belief in the existence of God was so poorly supported by the facts that it would void the law to state that God did not exist.

    Tell me that is not an own goal.  I’ve already said I find it outrageous that they were put in this situation in the first place.  But I’d want to suggest that they have harmed their cause in how they responded to the ruling.

  19. ahem.  Let’s try:

    Recently a neutral expert body ruled that belief in the non-existence of God was so poorly supported by the facts that it would void the law to state that God did not exist.

    It really does matter whether or not there is a ‘non’ in that sentence.  smile

  20. Mark,

    since I was commenting on the rules around advertising (as I understand them), I am not sure why you seem to go off at a tangent in relation to my post, or to make reference to child abuse. Whether or not there should be any requirements around what can or cannot be said in adverts (is it censorship etc) is a completely seperate issue and a different debate.

    I am no lawyer, so I offer no comment relating to the findings of the neutral expert body and what implications if any it has for advertising.

    Unless you can enlighten me, I have not come across any adverts etc that claim Jesus is the only way. I do recall a while back a church got into trouble with just such a claim in a poster- but I do not recall the facts clearly.

  21. Good comments from everyone. I actually think “there
    is probably no God” is really good conversation
    starter and get people thinking and blogging. Many
    humanists who are behind this campaign are not
    atheists and must feel better with the word
    “probably”. As a bonus if Christians do not like it
    the slogan writer must have done something right. wink

    Mark Baddeley,
    I have noticed that many Christians feel that
    atheists are arrogant claiming knowledge and making
    “there is no God” statement is usually a conversation
    stopper not starter. Most Christians are not happy if
    atheists compare disproving God to disproving Santa,
    so softer approach is usually more productive. I
    believe Sydney Anglican approach to public statements
    are the same. Many elders tell the congregation that
    Catholics go to Hell, but avoid the subject outside
    the Anglican circles. I don’t think that is “lack of
    integrity” like you implied or what do you think. In
    a same way many atheists state and defend the
    non-existence of God, but bus ad is not the best
    place for it.

    You also stated that <i>“Atheism, by and large,
    thinks that belief in God is a moral issue…”</i>
    This is not the case. Most atheists think that belief
    in God(s) is an issue of truth (knowledge).

    Your suggestion that <i>“Atheists should have taken
    the law on”</i> is again very controversial. Whenever
    non-Christians go to court about religious issues,
    Christians get upset, if they don’t go Christians
    claim <i>“lack of any kind of moral courage”</i>. You
    just can win according to Christians.

    Maybe this ad gives an opportunity to people who feel
    lonely in their agnostism/atheism to contact
    non-believing organisation for support. I have met
    many ex-religious people who are looking for support
    after been shunned by their
    parents/partner/friends/church/temple because of they
    doubts or controversial views.

  22. In conversations I have had with Atheists it became clear to me that most claimed to be ‘weak’ Atheists. This means that they do not claim to believe that there is no God, but rather they just do not believe there is a God. Their actions, however, showed that they were indeed ‘strong’ Atheists (who pays for an advertising campaign for something they lack belief in?). This means that they believe there is no God. A weak Atheist claims to have a passive stance, and therefore places the burden of proof on the Christian who claims there is a God. It is the better position to debate from. Some Atheists have admitted this to me, saying in public and in debating forums they claim to be weak Atheists while in actual fact, amongst their Atheist friends they are strong Atheists! Why? So as to try and win an argument! Is it honest? No, I don’t think so! It seems to me, that just as much as possible advertising restrictions, this could be the reason why the word ‘probably’ is used.

    I have even asked Atheists what the definition of an Atheist is, and they have only given the definition of a weak Atheist, even when I have specifically asked what you call someone who believes there is no God. It is a strategic position for them!

  23. Kevin Blow,

    I think we might be talking at cross purposes.  If I have read you correctly you seem to be saying that the presence of the law is sufficient justification for the inclusion of ‘probably’ and see any discussion of the suitability of that law and how one responds to that law as a tangent.

    I disagree, and think that simply obeying the law without some assessment of its morality is not a good defence.  I think between us both sides have been stated sufficiently for readers to see the issues.  Certainly, I think you’ve put your position forward well, hopefully mine is sufficiently clear as well.

    Peter Lastname,

    I can’t claim to be an authority on Sydney Anglicans, but in my nine years located in the Diocese I cannot remember a single authorative statement in a Church context to the effect that Catholics cannot be saved. 

    It is commonly held that Catholic doctrine (where it contradicts the Bible and pertains to salvation issues) cannot save a person, but that is not quite the same thing as saying that Catholics cannot be saved. 

    I have had debates with students studying theology who seemed to hold what you suggest – that one cannot be justified by faith unless one believes in the doctrine of justification by faith, but my impression is that this is not only a denial of the doctrine itself (replacing trust in Jesus’ death with a belief in a correct understanding of how that death saves) but is a minority view in the Diocese.  (And I’m sure readers will feel free to correct me if I have misunderstood the state of play here, and the view has more support than I have witnessed.)  So I don’t accept the precise analogy you’ve offered.

    Dealing with the issue beyond this specific example, it won’t surprise you that I disagree a bit from your position.

    People can make a decision to not put forward some parts of their beliefs, as long as that does not misrepresent things.  A Christian advert does not have to mention that the Lord Jesus Christ is the only way, for example. 

    But that is different from presenting a view that is not your view. For example, a Christian advert saying “Jesus Christ is probably the only way.”  Or an evangelical saying, “All (or most) Catholics are saved.”  And I would suggest that atheists saying, “God probably does not exist” is of this nature.  It reduces the offence, opens up discussion, is marvellously humble – all those great things you mention.  But it is not what atheists actually believe.

    Suggesting that it is ok because the ad is an alliance between atheists and humanists and the latter includes agnostics, is like suggesting that a combined statement from the Catholic church and evangelicals could read:
    “You probably do not need to be in relationship with the Pope to be saved.”  The compromise betrays something fundamental to both groups.

    If a compromise statement that had integrity was desired then the ad should have avoided the question of whether God existed at all, and focused on where there is some common ground between atheists and agnostics – that human values should be based purely rational reflection on human experience, for example.

    And briefly your quick point:
    You also stated that “Atheism, by and large,
    thinks that belief in God is a moral issue…”
    This is not the case. Most atheists think that belief
    in God(s) is an issue of truth (knowledge).

    I would want to challenge this opposition of morality and truth.  Yes, some ethics see good and evil as having no objective existence but are simply human fabrications (existentialism, Nietzsche, cultural relativism and the like). They would agree that there is no relationship between truth and good.

    But most accounts of morality see right and wrong as an issue of truth (knowledge) – a particular subset of the field of human knowledge.  Saying it’s not a moral issue but an issue of truth would be like saying that 1+1=2 is not a mathematical issue but an issue of truth. 

    That to one side, when Richard Dawkins can indicate that teaching religion to children should be seen as a form of mental child abuse, and atheists generally suggest that religion is responsible for much of the world’s evil, and dismiss the good produced by religious people as having little to do with their religious belief, then I suggest this truth issue is also a moral one for atheists.

    In case there aren’t many more comments, let me just say how much I’ve appreciated all the contributions, especially the ones I didn’t interact with – given my comments are so long anyway, I tend to respond only to things where I think my comment might advance the discussion a bit.

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