Stop Worrying? I Hadn't Even Started

Fear not, brave credit crunch commuters. As you sit in never-ending traffic queues at the rush hour, wondering if you'll have a job to go back to next week, a message of hope will pass you in the bus lane. That's right, stop worrying and enjoy life, because you'll probabably have no job.

No, sorry, I misread that, 'there probably is no God'. Well that's all your problems sorted then.

The agnostibus, or Atheist Bus Campaign to use the official title, was launched this week to great fanfare. £140,000, 800 buses and hundreds of ad spaces on the Tube are declaring the joyous news that there is probably no God. Responses have been many and varied, including Christian groups supporting the ads, arguimg that anything which gets people thinking about their beliefs is a good thing (I guess that's the 'no such thing as bad publicity' line). Meanwhile some atheists have lamented the 'probably', and there are worrying signs that the debate is being sidetracked by other matters.

Bus Stop

Complaints have already been made to the Advertising Standards Authority, predictably from Christian Voice but from more serious quarters too - see this submission by Clifford Longley, covered by Andrew Brown in the Guardian. Longley argues that the probability actually points towards the existence of God, and cites a number of prominent scientists, including Stephen Hawking, to back up his argument.

As yet, nobody has picked up on the other dubious claim in the advert, that faith causes you to worry and enjoy life less. For example, Richard Layard argues in his book Happiness: Lessons from a New Science that there are 6 major factors in human happiness which apply worldwide, one of which is belief in God. He writes about:

one of the most robust findings of happiness research: that people who believe in God are happier. At the individual level one cannot be sure whether belief causes happiness or happiness causes belief. But since the relation also exists at the national level, we can be sure that to some extent belief causes happiness” (p72)

It's a finding backed up by other research including this presented to the Royal Economic Society. In response to the latter, Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society, claimed "Happiness is an elusive concept, anyway - I find listening to classical music blissful and watching football repulsive.

"Other people feel exactly the opposite. In the end, it comes down to the individual and, to an extent, their genetic predispositions."

So according to the NSS your level of happiness, or enjoyment of life, is nothing much to do with whether you believe in God or not. This is

a) despite research suggesting otherwise (but when was the last time the NSS paid attention to anything which didn't support their agenda?)

and

b) a high-profile national advertising campaign saying exactly the opposite.

Whoops.

How Scary is Jesus?

So why are the adverts claiming that faith causes you to worry and stop enjoying life? Ariane Sherine, who thought up the campaign, argues: a new advertising campaign for Alpha Courses is running on London buses. If you attend an Alpha Course, you will again be told that failing to believe in Jesus will condemn you to hell. There's no doubt that advertising can be effective, and religious advertising works particularly well on those who are vulnerable, frightening them into believing. Religious organisations' jobs are made easier because there's no publicly visible counter-view to refute their threats of eternal damnation.

Anyone who's done the Alpha Course will wonder if they missed something - yes the course is designed to present the Christian faith and persuade people to try it out, but at no stage are people told 'believe this or go to hell'. And the adverts themselves are far from frightening: 'if God did exist, what would you ask?' runs the tagline, featuring very generalised questions like 'What am I doing here?' There's even a story doing the rounds of someone sitting in a very dull church who saw that poster, asked himself what he was doing there, and got up and left.

Any religion worth its salt will deal with questions of eternal destiny. Criticising religions for having an alternative scenario to spending the next life with God is like criticising water for being liquid. I very much doubt that Richard Dawkins would take kindly to spending eternity with the God he's spent his whole life trying to disprove. So if he's going to hate 'heaven', there has to be an alternative.

To be fair there are some crass religious adverts, such as those peculiar Authorised Version quotes which occasionally pop up at railway stations. But most religious advertising is aimed at raising money for charity (e.g. Christian Aid), and if anyone has been left quaking in fear by the Alpha ads then please leave a comment below.

Seatbelts Please

The 'stop worrying' tagline, conceived in those heady summer days of 2008 before the credit crunch, now looks woefully out of step with reality. There's even a photo at the official website which looks like two of the agnostibuses crashing into one another. This is going to be an interesting ride.

This is a cross-post from Touching Base, a column at the Wardman Wire.

Quote of last month

better late than never:

I don't actually mind being slagged off for my faith, or laughed at. I don't mind if folk think I'm bonkers. What would concern me far far more would be if I was being arrogant or pushy and deserving of the abuse.

Spoiled mollycoddled Christians in the comfortable West too often scream persecution when all that's happening is that their own lack of grace has rubbed folk up the wrong way, and those folk have, understandably, let them have it in return.

On the other hand, persecution is real and alive on planet Earth, and I pray for those who're experiencing the true variety.

posted by AnneDroid at Get out of Jail Free.

South-West Christian Resources Exhibition 29-31 Jan

The South-West CRE happens near Exeter on 29-31st January, summary details here, and you can view the full event brochure too.

Seminars include: Messy Church, childrens work, environment, debt, worship, fresh expressions, leadership, all-age worship, mission to 20's & 30s, and plenty of others.

there's also Book Aid, who collect used Christian books and deliver them to churches in the developing world - great idea, so now's the chance to have a look through your shelves for those duplicate copies of 'Questions of Life'.

About 80-90 of the exhibitors are listed on the brochure, and a further 50+ are expected to show up.

There Probably is A Flying Spaghetti Monster: Sightings in Lincolnshire

It must be true, reports of giant tentacles in the sky are in the Sun today, and less credibly, reported on the Today programme and the Telegraph. Said beastie has destroyed a wind turbine. The photos of the turbine are copyright, so you'll have to visit the Sun page to see them, but here's what the FSM is supposed to look like:

here's its church, and if you've never heard of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, just look out for any discussion thread with over 10 comments on whether God exists, or pretty much any national newspaper article on religion which has a 'have your say' section. Like this one.

Christianity, A History - New Channel 4 Series

New TV series starting on Channel 4 on Sunday at 7pm, there's a tie-in article in the Independent which looks at the changing face of religious TV, and a bit of the background to the series. Here's a snippet

The eight films in our series are each authored by a different commentator with a particular view or stake in the topic. For instance, the Independent's own Howard Jacobson rails magnificently against Christianity's denial of Jesus' Jewishness, and explores how this laid the ground for 2,000 years of anti-semitism. Michael Portillo investigates the political ramifications of Christianity's acceptance into the Roman Empire. Robert Beckford embraces the British conversion to Christianity as the defining moment of our history. Rageh Omaar considers the taint of the Crusades on relations with Islam today, and Cherie Blair asks whether, after the horrors of the 20th-century, Christianity has a future in the 21st. What all the films have in common is the idea that, believer or not, you can't deny the continuing influence of faith on almost every aspect of our world today – and that includes television.

It also got a spread in the latest Radio Times. That's print media, you know, the stuff where you pick it up and turn pages.

Here's the series homepage on channel 4.

There's Probably No Bus either

The Agnostibus campaign has gone national (it's a bit of a misnomer to call it the 'atheist bus campaign', given the slogan itself ), with £140,000 and 800 buses carrying the message to the nation, and 1000 ads on around London underground. I just love the idea of a commuter crammed like a sardine into a sweaty airless carriage thinking 'of course, the reason I'm not enjoying this is because I'm not an atheist, and the reason I'm worrying isn't because my company is about to go bust, it's because I paid too much attention in my church school assemblies'. With the debt crunch, the timing is deeply ironic.

It's been welcomed by various Christian groups, including Theos . I can't work out if they're just teasing, doing a 'love your enemies: it messes with their heads' thing, or whether they geniunely believe that more people will start thinking about issues of God and faith as a result of this. We could do with a few of the Christians also pointing out that everything in the statement is wrong, or misleading.

Well worth a read is this piece by Nick Spencer:
Let's leave aside the adverts' basic proposition, "There's probably no God". Where did that "probably" come from? It doesn't suggest the sales staff is overly confident about its product. If my pilot told me "This flight to Paris probably won't crash," I'd think about taking the train.

And let's leave aside the advice, "Now stop worrying and enjoy your life". You would have to go a long way to find a slogan less suited to our New Year, recession-looming, mass-unemployment gloom. The truly wonderful thing about the campaign is that it does that most un-English thing. It mentions God in public.

I wonder how long it will be before we get bus drivers careering round corners at high speed and calling back to their passengers, as they cling despairingly to the nearest solid object, 'stop worrying and enjoy life!'


And: if you're a Christian (or Muslim, or...) bus driver, what do you do if you find the advert plastered down the side of your bus? Did any atheist drivers object to carrying Alpha ads?

Pietersen quits as England captian

Breaking news, according to Cricinfo and the Times. Peter Moores has quit as well. Blimey.

Nothing on the ECB site yet. The main source seems to be Sky news. Another brief report here.

later: looks like Sky jumped the gun a bit. Which came first, the news or the event itself?

Roundup of all the 'day after' comments here. Not an ideal way to begin Ashes year.

Quote of the month so far

In case you missed it

"We need a reboot not a bailout, as the man said. It’s time to think different. The fantasy that the answer to one housing Ponzi is another is profoundly barmy. Debt fuelled growth is problematic. It makes everybody feel good for all the wrong reasons.

The wealth is like fairies in Peter Pan — fine as long as you believe it really is wealth, but every time a house is undersold, a fairy dies. It’s certainly no substitute for hard work, added value, goods and services. Borrowing to bailout has to be paid for by future taxation.

If we must borrow heavily off our children, perhaps even our grandchildren, as the UK did to defeat fascism in the 1940’s, at least let it be for a rational and worthy cause, not just more of the same."

Bishop Alan, on the credit crunch, Labours record, and critical bishops.