A-Religious

From Zanecorpwiki

A friend recently invited me to join the Atheist Bus Campaign. The story goes something like this: Evangelical Christians in the UK bought up some bus adverts that directed people to a website that said non-Christians would burn in hell. The atheist naturally too umbrage at this so got together to run an atheist bus campaign.

The campaign advert reads: There probably is no God. So stop worrying and enjoy your life. Personally, I agree, there probably is no God as meant here--in the western Judea-Christian sense. According to their facebook group page as of 2009-01-13, the group originally wanted to run There is no God. etc., but feared or was told that wouldn't be acceptable.

Which is my first problem with the campaign. While part of their intent may be to say lighten up, the group cannot get away from the desire to get a dig in. In a tit-for-tat conflict, it rarely matters who's right because it always sucks.

There probably is no God is a much lighter statement, and the group is lucky if they were forced to go with it because I have no doubt it'll be the much more effective statement. With a probably, the rational actors on the other side can say, Boy, maybe we should lighten up. Look what our hard line tactics have motivated the other side to do. Without the probably, you give them no quarter, no point on which to engage and you force a irreparable split.

There is a more fundamental problem, though. The modern constitution of atheism is itself religious. There is no God, or even There is probably no God are both religious statements that presume knowledge far beyond the boundaries of what we know. It's as arbitrary as there is a God.

To me, both personally and as a policy I'd recommend to others, it's time we engage in being a-religious. Live a good life because it's the only thing you can do. You can't do anything about whether there is or is not a God, whether Jesus died on the cross or Siddhartha found enlightenment. Perhaps these things are. Perhaps they are not. Perhaps they are both in some ineffable way which we can't now comprehend.

The Evangelicals are on one side, the atheist are on another, but it's all the same coin. I want to say: there is no coin.