The United Church just gained big points in my book for their response to the athiest bus campaign in Toronto. The ads read: “There’s Probably No God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” The United Church responded by adding an alternative response and running their own ads as a poll (highlighting the false premise in the original that to believe in God is to be worried and not enjoy life).
Though, the Torontoist coverage is pretty funny, in and of itself:
While the ads have definitely garnered a fair bit of attention, it may not be the kind the Church was hoping for. The latest Wondercafe poll results show the atheist position bringing down the house, with 53 per cent of voters agreeing there’s probably not a God, compared to 47 per cent insisting there probably is a God.
Since when does a 53/47 split constitute “bringing down the house?”
But it doesn’t end there! The Freethought Association provides even more to chuckle about:
“It’s just kind of funny,” says Katie Kish, vice-president of the Freethought Association of Canada, the organization spearheading the Canadian Atheist Bus Campaign. “They’ve put this huge ad in the Globe and Mail that links to Wondercafe. Then you go to their discussion and we’re winning, so that gives us more press and more people coming to find us.”
The Atheist Bus Campaign runs ads that generate a ton of talk and debate about God and religion in the public square, in places (like the Torontoist) that aren’t normally talking about God. And they think that getting attention from an ad campaign that’s purpose is to play off there’s is ironic? The efforts of the United Church aren’t to “win” in some poll on their website. It seems to me that the most ironic thing here is that athiests are getting people to talk about God.
2 thoughts on “There’s Probably A God, Now Stop Worrying and Enjoy Your Life”
I agree wholeheartedly. This is excellent irony. The UCC has got it right: it doesn’t matter if there is or isn’t – just pick one and stop getting angry and those who picked the other. Both sides (religious and atheist extremists) could learn from this.
There’s probably no God, now stop worrying and ENJOY your miserable suffering nonsensical and meaningless life
There’s probably a God, now stop worrying and ENJOY your miserable suffering nonsensical and meaningless life.
Have I illuminated the false premise? – The assumption that everybody’s life is ENJOYABLE. It’s simply NOT so for a vast number of people stricken with either the daily search for proof of the existence of God, or insisting one way or the other.
You may draw from this that I see the word “worrying” as poorly defining the mental state and extent of anxiety and despair of these people – another false premise.
One needs to ponder the range of human conditions that may give rise to the experience or at least, the perception of life as miserable suffering nonsensical and meaningless.
Clever irony, despite its flawed false premises, that may satisfy those who have an enjoyable life to get back to in the meantime, but abandons all those who do not.
I believe Dawkins speaks the truth, but all of humanity is not ready to believe it and won’t be while there is no escape from misery suffering nonsense and meaninglessness. The idea of God is all too comforting in that scenario.