The Daily Telegraph reports that the Atheist bus adverts given green light by watchdog despite 326 complaints.  So the total number of objections has risen substantially since I last posted on the subject.

The decision is a victory for the British Humanist Association, which organised the campaign, as it had insisted the posters were only intended to reassure non-believers and not mock the religious. The slogan was created by Ariane Sherine, a comedy writer, as an antidote to posters placed on public transport by Christian groups that “threaten eternal damnation” to passengers.

Whether or not the intention had been to reassure non-believers, I don’t know, but it really seems to have been successful in rattling the cages of the true believers, and demonstrated the poverty of many of the pro-religion arguments.

I wonder if the ruling will dampen the enthusiam of the religious bloggers for posting.  In a way, I hope not, as I find them rather fun to read.  I’ve only read the content of two of the objections.

The ASA ruling can be found at their website: Atheist bus ad campaign is not in breach of the Advertising Code.  One wonders how long it took to plough through all those complaints.  But if they were of the same high quality of the two that emerged on the web, I guess it was a quick decision to take…

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has concluded that the “There’s probably no God” bus ad campaign by the British Humanist Association is not in breach of the advertising code.  The ASA will therefore not launch an investigation and the case is now closed.

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At the back end of the Guardian report on the evangelical christian bus driver who objected to driving a bus bearing the British Humanist Association’s advert “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and go and enjoy your life“, there’s a statement that 231 complaints have been received by the ASA.

Now, we only know the text of a couple of these, the complaint from Stephen Green, the somewhat odd bloke behind Christian Voice, and one from supposedly respected religious affairs commentator Clifford Longley, which turned out to be an almost verbatim plagiarism from a religious website (and absolute bollocks to boot).

It’s to be hoped that the other 229 are equally vacuous.  And in the meantime the added publicity is all to the good.

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