No God on this Bus

Against my own better judgment, I can’t keep myself from wading in to this debate. I mean, who could stop themselves? It involves buses, and we all have an opinion about buses. And advertising – people feel really strongly about advertising. Oh, and, I guess, there’s one other wee factor in this discussion.

“There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

Oh, right.

It’s pretty hard to raise questions about the existence of God without creating controversy, but a group called the Freethought Association of Canada is diving headlong into these waters by implementing a nationwide transit advertising campaign that states directly: “You can be good without God.” (There’s also a second group, the Humanist Association of Canada, which is waging a similar campaign.)

According to the website atheistbus.ca, the Canadian Atheist Bus Campaign was modeled on a campaign which began in the UK, and which had its Canadian launch recently in Toronto.

The atheistbus website says the campaign was created as “a rebuttal to the multitude of religious advertisements on city buses, subways, and roadsides,” and that “there is currently a terrible lack of dialogue between people of faith, and those of non-faith. …We want to open up communication between faith communities and secular organizations. Only through these discussions will we come to know one another better.”

Proactively, the United Church of Canada has responded with a counter campaign which states, “There's probably a God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” There’s even a poll on the church’s wondercafe.ca site where folks can vote for either side of the argument. When I last checked, votes were 71% on the “no God” side.

The Freethought Association’s plan was to bring their campaign to other Canadian cities, including Halifax.

But in an interview with the Chronicle Herald last week, a Metro Transit spokeswoman said they have rejected the ads on the grounds that they are too “controversial” and could “upset a number of people.”

I get upset when I see ads for Hummers and fad diet products and the Conservative Party, but nobody appears to be prepared to pull those just to prevent offending me. Should Metro Transit and their advertising agency be the arbiters of free speech in Halifax? The atheistbus website suggests that Halifax and the Vatican are “the only two organizations in the western world still in the dark ages when it comes to allowing non-believers the right to free speech in public spaces. That’s quite an accomplishment!”

When it comes to the existence of God, we have to agree that there’s simply no single thing to agree on. A quick wiki search yields a list of worldwide religions and spiritual traditions that’s over sixteen pages long, including everything from Bábism to Restorationism to Gnosticism to Sufism to Hindu Revivialism. Clearly, everyone has a right to his or her own beliefs, and informed debate can only be good.

Besides, the campaign doesn’t appear to be mean-spirited in intent. Wouldn’t those upset by the ads be more justified if the posters suggested “There’s probably no God. Now go out there and wreck everything”?

Surely Haligonans of all faiths (and lack thereof) are sophisticated enough to acknowlege that there’s room for free, open discussion on this subject, and that we need not be protected from a controversial slogan simply because Metro Transit and their ad agency fear raising the question.