Atheist Bus Poster Campaign Spreads to Spain and Italy

Your roving reporter, Richard Wade here.
Several news services are reporting that the surprisingly successful bus advertisement campaign in the UK featuring banners saying “There probably is no god, now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” has been picked up in two other European countries.

The British Humanist Association aimed to raise enough money to run the atheist campaign adverts on a CBS Outdoor central London bus route; instead, public donations to the value of £130,000 mean the advert will run on CBS Outdoor’s national bus route packs and on London Underground sites.^[6] Spain”’s Union of Atheists and Freethinkers is launching buses across Barcelona today with the UK slogan translated into Spanish, Italy”’s Union of Atheists, Agnostics and Rationalists is also planning a bus campaign, while the American Humanist Association has brought out atheist bus adverts in Washington DC.^[5] Atheist slogans have begun popping up again on public transport around the UK in the second phase of the record-breaking Atheist Bus Campaign.^[20]

Britain, the US, Spain, Italy, where next?

yeahh

Groups like Christian Voice have complained to the ASA and are making their best efforts to stop this.. I can’t see them having much luck though… roll on the rest of the world 🙂
writerdd

Vatican City?

I’d love to see these in Lithuania. But I don’t know if they’d work because they’re still too tied to the idea of using their religion as a resistance against the Soviets.
Paul

Seems what everyone is so excited about is that “probably” word: gives people an excuse to be okay with what atheists might be up to.
bruce hood

Apparently they had to use the word “probably” to conform to advertising standards as there was no proof either way.

I find that quite remarkable as the same rules don’t seem to apply to the religious advertising!
hoverFrog

Norway? China? France?
Agersomnia

For news about Spain’s Atheist Bus (Bus Ateo), you can read in english here. I’m trying to keep an english-written account of events at my blog, just in case there was too much silence in press/blogosphere.

For donations, you can go here.

And BTW, you may donate via Paypal!
Agersomnia

Hey, people…

There is a Poll at a newspaper from Spain asking whether or not crucifixes at public schools should be removed… or not.
And right now? there’s about 80% people who have voted NOT to remove them.

Nominally there is Church-State separation in Spain, but the Church even receives money from the government…

Want to do a little magic and help change the poll?

http://www.elpais.com/encuestas/encuesta.html?id=11300

“¿Se deberían quitar los crucifijos en los colegios públicos?”
Should the crucifixes be removed from schools?

No is no, and Si is Yes.
timplausible

I noticed last night that the bus campaign appeared in the “Pop Culture” segment of the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC. Surprisingly, it didn’t get much of a negative reception from the annoying guy who does that segment, but he did apparently feel the need to make a joke about needing to believe in a higher power when riding one of those tourist buses.
Sean the Blogonaut

It won’t be happening in Australia despite several mainstream churches saying they don’t have an issue.