On The Busses
It is both pleasing and infuriating to me that today, in a number of UK cities, busses carrying a variety of self-proclaimed ‘atheist’ slogans are out doing the rounds. You can read atheists patting themselves on the back about it all over.
And to be fair, it is a worthy achievement, and one I support with but one reservation. That one reservation, though, is not far short of being a deal-breaker for me. Because the slogan that’s getting the most play is this one:
There’s probably no God.
Which, you know, is a fine, worthy and appropiately qualified thing to say. What it’s not, however, is an atheist thing to say. It’s an agnostic statement – the atheist equivalent of it would be There is no God. Atheism, after all, is the belief that there is no God. Not the assertion that there may be no God.
But it appears that Richard Dawkins may be a more corrosive influence than I previously realised, and that his enormously hypocritical willingness to distort facts, statistics and language in the service of his goals (which I’ve already ranted about previously) is becoming a tactic as common to atheists as it is to their fundamentalist opponents.
Being an agnostic among atheists is a little like being in a relationship with someone obsessed with appearances – they really only want you around for show, so that the thing looks better and bigger than it is. Under no circumstances should you ever open your mouth, let alone do so in order to call them on their bullshit.
So.
Agnostic slogans on the side of busses. A victory of sorts, but a one tainted by the dishonesty of the victors. Maybe next time.
