Atheist bus ad draws Xian fire

The astonishingly successful Atheist bus ad campaign, which has already raised four times its target in less than a day, has drawn an equally astonishing – but for different reasons – quote from Stephen “Bird Shit” Green, head of the failed fundamentalist lobby group Stephen Green’s Voice (aka Christian Voice).

Commenting on the proposed ad, which will read “There’s probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life”, the irrepressible bible-thumper said:

Bendy-buses, like atheism, are a danger to the public at large.

I should be surprised if a quasi-religious advertising campaign like this did not attract graffiti.

People don’t like being preached at. Sometimes it does them good, but they still don’t like it.

UPDATE: Brand Republic has another quote from Green:

How funny that Richard Dawkins is so scared of the threat which evangelical Christianity poses to atheism and his beloved Darwinism that he has to fund a campaign to attack God.

How old it he, eleven? Accusing someone of being “scared” and then pretending to be amused about it is primary playground stuff.

Read the full CV response here. (Thanks, Tim)

We wonder how this atheist fundraiser compares to he hapless Green’s “Please save me from bankruptcy” campaign?


25 Responses to “Atheist bus ad draws Xian fire”

  1. “People don’t like being preached at. Sometimes it does them good, but they still don’t like it.”

    Let’s all hope that this quote is his own (weird) way of handing his notice in.

  2. Tim Ireland says:

    “I should be surprised if a quasi-religious advertising campaign like this did not attract graffiti.”

    Stephen sure knows how to veil a threat, doesn’t he?

  3. Tim Ireland says:

    Oh dear. Check out the full quote from Green. It’s not subtle:
    http://www.christianvoice.org.uk/Press/press109.html

    ‘I should be surprised if a quasi-religious advertising campaign like this did not attract graffiti. People don’t like being preached at. Sometimes it does them good, but they still don’t like it. The advertising space on a bendy-bus is just the right height as well. But the graffiti artists, and indeed the atheist advertisers will have to be quick or the bendy-buses will be off the road in Boris’s purge, taking the anti-God message with them. Bendy-buses, like atheism, are a danger to the public at large. It occurs to me that the addition of just a few words from Psalm 14 would make the entire message Biblical: “The fool hath said in his heart …” ‘

  4. Ian says:

    Richard Dawkins is a twat, so is Stephen Green. I cant stand either of them and i think this campaign is childish. Was not surprised when i heard Dawkins was attached to it in someway.

  5. martyn says:

    gods a twat

  6. Tim Ireland says:

    You’ll get smitten, you will. (Or is it smited?)

  7. Carl Eve says:

    I would like to see the hand of God come down upon this sacriligeous bendy bus and write on the side in beautiful copperplate…

    “GREEN IS A CUNT”

    THEN I’d believe like John the Baptist, repent my sins and follow the Holy Gourd… or the sandle… or the juniper bush, I’m not fussy.

  8. Joe says:

    What I’m really, really looking forward to is the first driver to complain that they’re being discriminated against either by being obliged to drive these evil atheist buses around, or by being disciplined for refusing to do so. It’ll take under a week, I reckon.

  9. jr says:

    Apparently this ad campaign is a response to one currently on the buses for the Alpha Course – according to the Guarniad. So fair play to it. Maybe a non-xtian bus driver will object to both the atheist ads and the god-bothering Alpha shite.

  10. Mark says:

    “Richard Dawkins is a twat, so is Stephen Green. I cant stand either of them”

    One of them writes books and gives talks. The other one wants laws to criminalise people for saying things he disagrees with or disapproves of.

    You might disagree with both of them, but they are not anywhere near in the same league.

  11. Alfster says:

    Dogshit Green on Richard Bacons 5live show now(Tuesday 11pm) worth downloading it if you can he accuses Atheists of wanting to get incest legalised.

    He is really a nutter. He thinks this is all very funny that athiests are advertising etc and yet he thinks everythink he does is quite sane.

  12. Scott says:

    Just heard the bendy bus atheism debate on the R.Bacon show on 5Live. Why do the BBC think its a good idea to have a representative for the counter arguement who plainly is unable to address the topic. The question was “Do atheists need to advertise their beliefs?”. Plainly they don’t with people like stephen green about the place.

  13. G. Tingey says:

    For more amusement on this topic see HERE

    The levels of (self) delusion by the believers is scary.

  14. Steve Hill says:

    Stephen Green is welcome to spray paint out the word “probably” – included at the insistence of Transport for London who said we could not substantiate the desired claim “There is no God”!

    Meanwhile mainstream Christians have welcomed the campaign since it gets people talking about God: http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/blog_post.asp?id=65155

  15. Jeremy says:

    Dawkins is the atheist Stephen Green. They’re both tub-thumping evangelists who serve only to polarise opinion and reduce the debate into ranting and finger-pointing.

    Neither should be allowed anywhere near the sides of buses, in my opinion.

  16. marc says:

    Bloody hell, I put the radio on and there’s the Rev. Rosemary Lane Priestly (talk about nominative determinacy!) bubbling on about how the Atheist bus contains the word, “probably”. Guess no on told her that was only put in at the insistence of London Transport.

    These people get on my moobs because they claim the right to be happy and fulfilled because of faith (implying we don’t enjoy the same; or perhaps even deserve it).

    @Jeremy (the difference between Dawkins and Bird Shit [if you bothered to listen to either] is that Dawkins invites debate; Dawkins has a debating website; Dawkins’ books invite people to think WHY religion is bollocks. Bird Shit just wants people to follow his line – period.

  17. martyn says:

    But at least Dawkins talks facts most of the time but while Green still lives in cloud cuckoo land.

  18. Roisin says:

    What a load of bull. Green may be objectionable and immature, but Dawkins really has no excuse for his base intellectual dishonesty; he really should know better. At least Green displays a sense of humor, unlike the atheists who have such a stick up their @rse lately they make the most fanatical bible thumpers everywhere look as chilled out and easy going as a party of pot heads eating chocolate.

  19. Roisin says:

    Btw, I’m with Jeremy 4:13pm on this: two sides of the same coin far as I’m concerned. Only maybe they should be allowed near buses–_very_ near. Think Dawkins will go ‘oh my god’ with several tons of bus progressing to him? Or will it just be ‘oh my reason’?

  20. Tony says:

    The piece by Green states that he found the idea amusing. This is actually a rare thing to see an invisible friend believing moron having a sense of humour. Lets be honest, the vast majority of religious representative’s never seem to have a sense of humour.
    Could we then, in theory, laugh them out of existence?

  21. marc says:

    “Dawkins really has no excuse for his base intellectual dishonesty”

    and example of which is… [fill in the blank, please 19]

    And for your further edification, Roisin, Dawkins does say “oh my God” – such an exultation is part of the language.

    See, if you’re going to bring people to book, you’d better be prepared to cite examples. Dawkins may be visceral in his approach, but I can’t find any examples of him being dishonest.

  22. martyn says:

    Aye Rosin, you be careful of those atheists and their truckbombs in the name of…err reason?

  23. Mark says:

    “Dawkins is the atheist Stephen Green.”

    I must have missed when Dawkins has tried to sue people for “being offensive to atheism”? Does he run an organisation that calls for law to be based on some made up book? Just take a look at the things that people criticise the Christian Voice for, and show me evidence for where Dawkins does anything near comparable.

    I often hear this comparison of Dawkins to theists like Green, or worse, and it’s complete nonsense. Dawkins writes books and gives talks. If that’s all religious people like Green did, no one would care about it.

    There’s a ridiculous double standard when it comes to atheism versus religion, and the fact that people moan about nothing more than an advert for the British Humanist Association, when no one cares about religious adverts, proves this point.

    The BHA are a charity – why aren’t they allowed to advertise, just like every other charity does?

  24. Ivan says:

    Stephen Green is talking Boswelox.