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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. You can see a photo of the real thing here: http://www.atheistbus.org.uk/launchphotos/DSC_0011.JPG
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, is just running the advert 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. We are used, Down Under, to see 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..... (the rest is over at Sola Panel)
