‘Tis the season to be jolly? Not entirely.

An atheist billboard that calls Christmas “a myth” has sparked a growing controversy near the Lincoln Tunnel, a 1.5-mile-long twin tube that connects New Jersey to New York.

The full message, which appears with a nativity scene, reads: “You know it’s a myth. This season, celebrate reason.”

Its $20,000 price tag was paid for by American Atheists, a New Jersey-based atheist advocacy group, David Silverman, the group’s president, told CNN.

“We are addressing the 50 million atheists in this nation,” Silverman said.

He said the group erected the sign in a high-traffic area in an effort to challenge drivers to “think hard about whether or not they actually believe in what is, in reality, an invisible magic man in the sky.”

Silverman said he is uncertain if it will stay through Christmas or come down on December 21.

The sign, located near the tunnel’s New Jersey entrance, has stirred controversy among Christian organizations, prompting one group to erect its own pro-Christmas billboard.

“We decided to counterpunch after a donor came forward seeking to challenge the anti-Christmas statement,” said Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, a New York-based Catholic advocacy group.

The League’s billboard reads: “You Know It’s Real: This Season Celebrate Jesus.”

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/11/30/dueling-billboards-face-off-in-christmas-controversy/

The atheist billboard that you can't see in Russia

The Moscow city authorities have turned down an application from an atheist organization to erect a series of billboards quoting the Russian constitution.

Zdravomyslie, an organization that works to protest violations of the principal of the separation of church and state, filed an application with the Moscow Advertisement, Information and City Appearance Committee in September to put up ten billboards showing the quote: “Religious associations are separate from the state and equal before the law. – Constitution of Russia” against a plain white backdrop. But on October 5, the committee sent back a letter saying the request had been denied.

While no official explanation for the rejection was given in the letter, a press release from Zdravomyslie said that a member of the committee had told the foundation during unofficial talks that civil servants had found the text to be “provocational.”

In their press release, Zdravomyslie goes on to accuse the Moscow city authorities of lobbying in favor of the interests of religious organizations, and links this with the committee’s refusal to allow the foundation to erect the billboards. In particular, they pointed to mayoral deputy Sergei Baydakov, who has been awarded for his service to the Russian Orthodox Church. According to Zdravomyslie, Baydakov has proposed spending millions of rubles from the city budget on “state-church events.”

Continues: http://www.theotherrussia.org/2010/10/19/moscow-rejects-ad-quoting-constitutional-freedom-of-religion/

A New Zealand ad proclaiming that “there’s probably no God” attracted just one complaint, several months after a similar campaign became the sixth-most complained about ad in the UK in 2009.

New Zealand’s Advertising Standards Authority received a single complaint about The Humanist Society of New Zealand campaign, which deliberately mirrors the British Humanist Association’s “There’s probably no God” campaign.

The complainant argued that the ads were offensive and made a mockery of the Christian faith. The ASA acknowledged that, while the complainants concerns were sincere, the ads did not contravene standards.

The single complaint contrasts starkly with the 392 complaints that its British counterpart received. The UK ad was a riposte to a bus-side ad by The Christian Party which told consumers that “There Definitely is a God”.

The latter won the dubious honour of becoming 2009′s most complained about ad.

http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/news/rss/1023306/New-Zealand-theres-probably-no-God-ad-attracts-one-complaint/

Note: Actually the original genesis of the BHA’s Atheist Buses was a response to ads from jesussaid.org, and the Christian Party ads were a response to the response…!

The Humanist Society of New Zealand has been struggling to set up an Atheist Bus Campaign in the country after bus companies refused to run the ads. But now they have billboards!

Click to enlarge the New Zealand billboard

“Good Without God? Over one million Kiwis are”, reads the slogan, along with the original “There’s Probably No God” message from the ads originally run by the British Humanist Association with funding from a generous public.

This is one of three designs, the others read “IN THE BEGINNING, MAN CREATED GOD” and “WE ARE ALL ATHEISTS ABOUT MOST GODS. SOME OF US JUST GO ONE GOD FURTHER.”

Guilt, as all right-minded people know, is the unpleasant feeling that one has done something wrong. The source of this feeling, clearly, is one’s conscience. But how is one’s conscience formed?

Cardinal Newman, whom Pope Benedict will beatify when he comes to England in September, believed that God wired the human conscience, making right and wrong the same in any time or place. His, however, is now a minority view. Many more now agree with last year’s bus poster campaign, devised by the British Humanist Association and supported by Richard Dawkins, which proclaimed: ‘There is probably no God’.

Gone, then, from our collective consciousness is not just the vengeful God of the Old Testament, or the gentler but still judgmental Jesus. Now an anarchic libido is all the rage.

‘Stop worrying and enjoy your life’ was the advice appended to the posters.

Full article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1290607/What-Mafia-Sex-And-The-City-teach-guilt.html

The Advertising Standards Authority reports that a Christian Party bus ad was the most complained about advert of 2009, and the most complained about non-broadcast advert that it has ever handled.

A bus side ad campaign for the Christian Party that told people “There definitely is a God” has been named as 2009’s most complained advert by the advertising watchdog.

The Advertising Standards Authority said that the ad had received 1,204 complaints.

The ad was in response to another bus side ad from the British Humanist Association – which was named as the sixth most complained about ad with 392 complaints – that read, “There’s probably no God, so stop worrying and life your life.”

http://www.utalkmarketing.com/pages/Article.aspx?ArticleID=17786&Title=%27There_is_a_God%27_ad_receives_%E2%80%98most_complained_about%E2%80%99_accolade_

A bus poster which claimed “There definitely is a God” attracted more complaints than any other advert last year, Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said on Wednesday.

More than 1,200 people complained that the Christian Party’s advert was offensive to atheists and could not be substantiated.

http://in.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idINIndia-48813620100526

The ASA annual report reveals that a Christian Party outdoor ad was the most complained about ad of 2009 with 1,204 objections. The bus ad claimed “there definitely is a God” and was a response to a British Humanist Association poster that claimed that “there probably was no god”. This was the sixth most complained about ad with 392 challenges.

http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/news/asa-and-cap-plan-awareness-campaign/3013845.article

The Christian Party’s poster was a riposte to the British Humanist Association’s ad insisting “There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life”. The ASA did not investigate, on the grounds that political party ads are outside its remit, though it had 1,204 complaints asserting that the existence of a divine being was offensive to atheists, and in any case could not be proven. The ASA also did not investigate the atheists’ bus ad, though it was the sixth in the list of most complained about.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/may/26/does-god-exist-advertising-standards-authority

The response from ASA about the Atheist Bus campaign was that ‘the ad did not make claims about particular religions and had an upbeat rather than hostile or offensive tone. We concluded that the ad was an expression of the advertisers opinion and that the claim was not capable of being objectively substatiated’

The ASA’s Annual Report, which contains details of complaints about adverts in 2009, was published on Wednesday 26th May.

The Atheist Bus blog and the BHA website carried news early this morning that the annual report of the Advertising Standard Authority (ASA)  will name the Atheist Bus as the sixth most complained about advert last year.

But a Christian Party parody ad (which flopped) received well over 1,000 complaints to become the single most complained about non-broadcast ad ever handled by the ASA.

An Atheist Bus on London streets

The Christian Party bus slogan read, “There definitely is a God. So join the Christian Party and enjoy your life”, as a riposte to the Atheist Bus slogan, “There’s probably no god, now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

Unlike the Christian Voice effort against the Atheist Buses, there was no  push by secular organisations to report the Christian Party to the ASA. The BHA even welcomed the Christian ads, saying “We entirely support free expression and freedom of belief, and so fully support the right of these Christian groups to place their ads on buses. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” (The BHA has referred other adverts to the ASA only when something quite serious is at stake.)

So, with religious ads not a novel invention on public transport in London, and with no concerted effort to report “There definitely is a God” to the ASA, what did go wrong for the Christian Party buses?

A Nazi invitation to Dutch men to join the SS

Telling the world

Beliefs and propaganda have been “advertised” for a long time. Martin Luther’s theses were nailed to the church door in Wittenberg. Ancient leaders inscribed tales of glorious war and their own rise to power in the stone walls of monumental structures. Early twentieth century war propaganda has a distinct style, not too dissimilar on on either side of the battle lines, ranging from comic rosy-cheeked cartoons to unashamed glorification.

This is, I admit, a bit of a guess, but in recent years it seems the diversity of ‘campaign’ advertising has increased. Here are some examples of more or less successful recent campaign ads that we might draw some lessons from.

The NSPCC received criticism as far back as 2000 for its ad spend. Their ongoing “Full Stop” campaign has made its own headlines several times, either for the spend, or for the controversy of the ad. But they point out that preventing cruelty to children is not all about front line services. Raising awareness, letting people know that child abuse is something that they can talk about, tell others about, and report, is a preventative measure. The NSPCC have pointed out that awareness campaigns do also increase usage of their front line services.

Last year Greenpeace ran ads in the airport at Copenhagen aimed at the very specific audience of climate conference attendees – and of course at the media which would report the ads to a wider audience .

Barack Obama apologises for not doing more in Greenpeace ad

Amnesty in the UK raised funds earlier this month to place an advert in the Financial Times on the day of Shell’s AGM to draw attention to its activities in the Niger Delta. The campaign successfully raised the money, only for the Financial Times to pull the ad. The London Evening Standard and Metro did run the campaign.

About all these campaigns there is something novel. In the case of the NSPCC the Full Stop campaign is occasionally shocking enough that some would disagree with the approach, but even a climate change denier or Shell apologist is unlikely to object to the Greenpeace or Amnesty ads. From those organisations’ points of view it is “fair enough” for them to place the ad. It fits with their ethos. It is novel but fair game.

Atheist Bus versus Christian Party Bus

Atheistic advertising is novel enough that it can provoke minor outrages in some places, naming no names, the United States. But again, the response even amongst theists in the UK was usually that Atheist Bus ads were “fair enough”. The ads weren’t mean or churlish, they were at most a bit of a cheeky nudge back against religious advertising.

And the story behind the campaign was often reported and re-reported. The campaign had an organic origin with a small ask from a named individual. It was a response to advertising by an organisation which was threatening hellfire and against a backdrop of many years of religious advertising in the public space. So it was already the underdog. It had a grassroots feel. Its origin and motivation were transparent.

By contrast, the rationale behind the Christian Party ads just didn’t ring true for some. The party’s Rev George Hargreaves had written in the Guardian,

over the past month I have had to be at my most tolerant as the 149 bus passes my office bearing the words “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.“

Was it really so hard to tolerate? Even if it was hard, should it have been hard? After all, atheists saying chill out on a bus was a new thing, not something he’d had to put up with for all that long. Protesting that he was being tolerant and trying to make himself sound like the underdog was never going to fly.

Hargreaves’ article went on to call the BHA and the bus donors “foolish” (taking his lead from the Bible). In fact he uses ‘fool’ or ‘foolish’ six times in the short article, uncritically proclaiming that Atheist Bus donors and organisers definitely were ‘foolish’. This casual, biblically inspired cruelty, combined with the opportunism, by a political party no less, was bound to sour the campaign. It wasn’t “fair enough”. If the Atheist Bus was a cajoling nudge, the Christian Party Bus was a kick to the shins.

And there’s that word again, ‘definitely’. Many people wrote to the BHA about the word ‘probably’ in the Atheist Bus slogan (see the FAQ page). BHA Vice President A C Grayling pointed out that the word ‘probably’ is quite unnecessary when promoting atheism and the burden of proof is on the believers. But in the context of an advert for public consumption, about metaphysical issues on which many of the public is often agnostic, the word ‘probably’ probably helped everyone – from convinced atheists like me, to the agnostic just on the side of skepticism – to get on board. The word ‘definitely’, on the other hand, writ large on buses and billboards, will look arrogantly sure-footed about an issue that has vexed wise minds for millennia.

Finally, its worth considering money. The Atheist Bus ads, like the Amnesty Shell ads, were publicly funded. Thousands of individual donors gave to both campaigns. If the Christian Party asked existing members to fund its ads, this wasn’t part of the story. Instead of a grassroots attachment to a novel message, it came across as a one man band trumpeting the message of a party far too morally conservative for most British Christians. It wasn’t democratic, it was a little opportunistic dictatorship.

So, against a long history of Christian advertising, including the ads which the Atheist Bus was a response to in the first place, the Christian Party ad couldn’t be seen as novel. Its motivation – to find members for the Christian Party – was too partisan after the open and transparent approach of the Atheist Bus fundraising. It was too ‘definite’, seeming arrogant. It looked opportunistic rather than organic. It was churlish enough to motivate over a thousand people to write and complain.

But hey, maybe Hargreaves has a very long game plan, because today the media quickly picked up on the story. No publicity is bad publicity?

Bob Churchill is Head of Membership and Promotion at the British Humanist Association

Church Marketing Sucks, the blog “to frustrate, educate and motivate the church to communicate, with uncompromising clarity, the truth of Jesus Christ”, supports the view that banning Atheist Bus Campaign adverts in New Zealand was wrong. It’s okay to let others express their views and that you shouldn’t be afraid of the hard discussions.

[Archdeacon Glyn] Cardy has a great point here, and it’s one that we’d do well to heed as believers in our local communities. I see three great nuggets of truth for local churches to pull out of his response to the pulling of these ads:

We’re not the only ones who get to play. Too often, we have an “I’m going to take my ball and go home” mentality when things don’t seem to go our way. But it’s important to remember that just like we can advertise and communicate our ideas, so can anyone else. (And all the more reason not to suck at it.)

Support those you hope to reach. You’ll get a lot further in affirming and connecting with people unlike yourself if you support them. You don’t have to agree with them or adopt their theology, but you should affirm their right to speech and opinion.

Don’t be afraid of hard discussions. Topics like the existence of God and the virgin birth are admittedly difficult. We hold them very dearly, and it’s easy to feel attacked when someone challenges the ideas we hold dear. But we should be confident as we communicate those issues and communicate that confidence to those around us.

http://www.churchmarketingsucks.com/archives/2010/03/an_archdeacon_l.html

On the eve of the Second National Congress of atheism, whose main objective is to address important societal issues in a non-dogmatic, we decided to up the ante and join the Atheist Bus Campaign (www.busateo.org), to express our right to disagree with others and share our vision of the world citizens. We often see road overgrown with claims about the existence of deities and their properties, no one thinks he can offend an atheist, that’s why nobody should be offended if we contend otherwise or at least raise the possibility that the supernatural is just fiction.

We are probably the first to do it in Latin America, we have seen in some web figure was done in Brazil, but could not prove it.

Translated page at: http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http://www.ateosmardelplata.com.ar/?page_id=174

ATHEISTS have begun an advertising campaign on Melbourne buses, proclaiming ”Atheism – celebrate reason”, the first time they have entered the fray in such a public way.

The signs are on the backs of 24 buses until March 29, when the number will rise to 40 and the advertisements will be included on the sides as well, according to Atheist Foundation of Australia president David Nicholls.

”This is the first time we have advertised in public in such a big way – it’s a very significant move forward for atheists,” Mr Nicholls said.

Everyone seems to be getting on board since British atheists began the trend late in 2008, irked that Christians seemed to have a monopoly on billboard advertising. It spread to atheists in Spain, then other parts of Europe and the US. New Zealand atheists hope to follow suit.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/bus-advertising-just-the-ticket-for-atheists-20100301-pdlg.html

A group of atheists says it faced discrimination when a bus company rejected its advertisements and is now considering legal action.

The bus advert, which reads: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life,” has been used worldwide but was dismissed by bus companies in New Zealand as too divisive.

It was to run on at least 24 buses in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. But NZ Bus rejected the advertisements after staff and the public expressed “distaste and distress” at the campaign.

New Zealand Atheist Bus Campaign spokesman Simon Fisher said the move was discriminatory. “In a way, the rejection by NZ Bus has shown why this campaign is needed in the first place.

“The message of atheism is not accepted in the public, showing the double standard between religious and non-religious messages,” he said.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/national/3366649/Atheists-claim-bias-over-rejection-of-No-God-ads

Criticising ‘Atheist Bus’ ads, Richard Dawkins, the Nine Lessons and Carols show, and even anyone who talks about the Big Bang at a dinner party, comedian Mark Watson doesn’t think there’s any need to talk about either religion or atheism.

There’s “probably no God”, apparently. I read it on the back of a bus last year, courtesy of an advertisement paid for by the British Humanist Association. Mind you, then the Christian Party countered with its own series of ads claiming: “There definitely is a God.” For a period last year, in fact, all my spiritual guidance came from slogans painted on buses. If confronted with an ethical dilemma, I’d stroll down the high street and wait for the number 42 to trundle past with “Morality itself being a construct, only your conscience can be your guide” written along the side.

But now that the bus wars have died down, the consensus seems to be that it’s unlikely there’s a God. Ever since Richard Dawkins wrote his book on the “delusion” a few years ago, the anti-God industry has enjoyed a boom period. The shelves have been crammed with titles such as God Is Not Great, 2,000 Years of Disbelief, 1,000 Tiresomely Reiterated Anti-Church Arguments, and so on.

An atheist Christmas service at London’s Bloomsbury Theatre was a box-office smash. Dawkins is now the most popular God-basher since the days when Christians used to be fed to lions. You can hardly have a nativity play without the bespectacled bogeyman storming the stage, scattering the little shepherds and angels with a cry of “Where is the proof of this?!”

In short, atheists are becoming as annoying as believers used to be.

Continues: http://www.newstatesman.com/lifestyle/2010/02/god-bus-atheists-dawkins

The posters in the US are reminiscent of last year’s godlessness-promoting campaign on London buses organised by British atheists.

In a country where more than eight in 10 people regard themselves as religious, it takes more than a little guts to preach about a world without God. But that’s the message that is creeping across America, spreading ripples of dissent in its wake.

From Tampa in Florida, to Cincinnati, Ohio, and all the way across to Sacramento in California, billboards have been cropping up with messages that run across the grain of America’s normally devout discourse. “Don’t believe in God? You’re not alone!” were the first posters to be put up, in Arizona, Colorado, Texas and parts of the north-east. “Being a good person doesn’t require God,” read another.

The billboards are the work of a national group of atheists – or nontheists, as they call themselves – called United Coalition of Reason that seeks to encourage nonbelievers throughout America by bringing them together.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/17/american-atheists-nationwide-campaign

The Atheist Bus Campaign in the UK was supported and administered by the British Humanist Association.
http://www.humanism.org.uk/bus-campaign

Brigstocke, tonight staying true to his Morriseyesque fashion sense of floral shirts, kicks off proceedings with a great sequence about the bus-advert campaign of the British Humanist Association, whose posters read: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life”, and the riposte from a raft of Christian groups. What if all theological debate was conducted through public transport the bespectacled comedian wonders? Perhaps we would get used to announcements about engineering work along the lines of: “The only way to High Barnet is through the medium of prayer.”

Taking care to bash the foibles of the holy trinity of religious targets, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, Brigstocke leaves us in little doubt that the “God-shaped hole in his life” that he had recently started to feel, was never going to be filled by dogma. During his irreverent journey through religion he mixes up the shoes at a mosque, keeps Jehovah’s Witnesses in a near-hostage situation and takes a series of pot shots at the easy target of the Pope, including: “The Pope went to Poland last year – something he very much wanted to do as a younger man…”

Story Continues: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/comedy/reviews/marcus-brigstocke-god-collar-vaudeville-theatre-london-1894259.html

One month into his new role, the BHA’s new Chief Executive looks ahead at the challenges we face and the strengths of Humanism

2009 was a great year for humanism. In the 200^th anniversary of the birth of Darwin, evolution was placed for the first time on the primary school curriculum; for the first time the BBC gave humanists a place in their consultative mechanisms and humanism was introduced into new GSCE exams; the Accord coalition of non-religious and religious groups campaigning for reform of faith schools changed the terms of that debate, and of course, the Atheist Bus Campaign went global and brought thousands of new supporters to our cause.

As the British Humanist Association’s new Chief Executive, I find that a daunting year to follow, but the great thing about 2009 is that its concrete victories have also indicated the strong base of potential support which we have available to us if we can build on it. The Bus Campaign would not have happened but for the thousands of donors that supported it; we would not have evolution on the primary curriculum if the world-class scientists who joined our campaign had not done so; and we couldn’t have funded our faith schools campaign if we hadn’t raised the cost of it from thousands of donors giving just a few pounds each time to keep our dedicated campaigner for another year.

One of our strengths as a movement is undoubtedly the people we can call upon to help. Not only the public figures, but the many hundreds of volunteers that are active on their own communities, whether conducting funerals, lobbying their local councils, sitting on local advisory committees for Religious Education, running local humanist groups, writing and broadcasting in their local papers or radio stations and lobbying their own MPs. In the last few years, as the BHA’s Director of Education and Public Affairs, I learned about the strength of the religious lobby at the same time as I realised the commitment of our own supporters to challenge those lobbies and promote Humanism.

The year ahead clearly divides into two parts – before and after the general election. For the last few years we have had a pretty good idea of the political terrain in which we have had to operate, both positive and negative. The current government has promoted more state-funded faith schools and a greater role for religious leaders in community policy, but they have also made moves towards non-discrimination at the same time. More pertinently, on a wide range of issues, we have at least known where we stood. Whatever happens at the General Election, we don’t yet know precisely what future governments’ positions on our various issues will be. We can be sure that the subject of religion and education will remain firmly on the agenda, from worship in schools to RE to faith schools, and broadcasting likewise – our issues with the BBC are not going to go away. But in a whole range of areas, we just don’t know what to expect. All we can know is that, whatever the immediate political situation may be, we will not just react to it, but continue to pursue that aim of a free and open society which has always motivated reformist humanist social action and political activity.

Andrew Copson, Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association

In any case, while some individual causes are won and whichever new causes develop, the central and wider social challenge for us remains. We need to encourage and mobilise that massive proportion of the population who put human welfare at the heart of their ethics, who find meaning in the realities of existence rather than in their denial, and make the most of the one life they have without reference to a life to come. We need these people to realise that their values are credible and coherent and that they should be celebrated and advanced. We need to let people know that there is a word for what they believe, and make the word ‘humanist’ as widely recognised and mainstream a term as possible. Then we want those people to stand up and be counted. This most important task is perhaps the most challenging – we have to promote humanist beliefs and values as a coherent alternative to religions and as a recognisable description of the fundamental beliefs and values of most non-religious people in the UK today.

No one could fail to be daunted by the challenges ahead if that is the job. The basis of enlightenment values is under assault and popular irrationality is in many ways very strong. But I don’t think that the search for meaning in the twenty-first century will be satisfied by superstition and religion, and I think that the unshared values of religious extremists will prove unamenable to most people before they can ever really do serious harm to the liberal humanist values that we now have to promote and defend.

Andrew Copson is the Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association. He formally assumed the role on January 1st this year.

Starting today, the BHA is running a membership drive throughout February. Find out what we want to achieve and how you can help. www.humanism.org.uk/membership

The Church of England has been hit by a new slump in its congregations, with the latest figures showing its fifth year-on-year decline.

Also, the Church’s first analysis of its worshippers showed that nearly half are pensioners.

The established Church has lost more than 40,000 worshippers since 2003, shortly after Dr Rowan Williams became Archbishop of Canterbury in December 2002. Average weekly attendance fell from 1.187 million in 2003 to 1.145 million in 2008. In spite of a rise in the number of children and young people at services, the average age of a member of a Church of England congregation is 61, according to statistics published yesterday.

The figures also show a slight acceleration in the rate of decline in the past 12 months, indicating that there may be even worse news in years to come.

The most severe of the recent drops came between 2000 and 2001, with a fall from nearly 1.3 million to just over 1.2 million. A slight rise between 2002 and 2003, possibly in response to the appointment of Dr Williams, was more than offset by subsequent falls.

The figures are a particularly severe blow given the high hopes that had been placed on campaigns such as Back to Church Sunday, online prayers to match all crises and occasions and Lent, Easter and Christmas church marketing initiatives.

One reason for the decline, along with the rising age profile, could be the Church’s public quarrelling over homosexuality and women bishops. Another reason could be that atheist bus posters and other atheist campaigns led by high-profile scientists such as Dr Richard Dawkins could be working. The decline will add fuel to secularist campaigns for disestablishment.

Story continues http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6999268.ece

I’m currently doing my first tour of the UK, giving an hour-long comedy talk about the Atheist Bus Campaign (complete with music, animations and slides – it’s fun, honest), and signing and selling copies of The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas. I should have told you about this a long time ago, as I’m afraid I’ve already visited Liverpool, Oxford, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Cambridge and Brighton – but I still have seven dates to go over the next two weeks, so it would be lovely to meet some of you if you’re in any of these locations.

http://arianesherine.blogspot.com/2009/12/tour-dates-emails-ghosts-of-christmas.html