The wheels on the bus (probably) go round and round...

There's been a story bubbling up for a while, which has reached the public conciousness this week. So, instead of writing about the substantial imminent change to my life, or stupid wars in the Middle East, I will discuss the Atheist Bus Campaign.

Back in the summer Ariane Sherine, a comedy writer and Guardian blogger, wrote an article about an advert she'd seen on a bus. The advert was placed by a religious group, and directed people to a website which as well as proclaiming the existence of God and the advantages of becoming a Christian (fair enough, I see nothing wrong with them evangelising if they want to), also informed visitors of all the horrible things in store for unbelievers.

So, she suggested a bus advert to promote atheism. A few people took the idea up, and in the autumn the campaign was launched with a target to raise £11,000 (£5,500 of which would be a matching donation from arch-atheist Richard Dawkins). Within a short space of time, it had raised £100,000 from small individual donations.

So, this week, instead of 30 adverts on buses in London, the slogan "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" adorns 200 London buses, as well as another 600 across Britain.

So far, so good. The 'probably' was added in because they were advised that just saying "There is no God" would be more likely to lead to complaints, but as it goes, it does satisfy the broad atheist creed as far as I understand it - we do not believe in a god, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we believe that there is no god (and logically it can never be proven that no god exists anyway).

But yet, the complaints have come in. over 50 so far to the ASA, led by the stalwart religious nutter, Stephen Green of Christian Voice. Green claims offence, and yet he's not above being very offensive towards Islam. He also claims that the ad makes an unsubstantiated claim, but the 'probably' means that it makes no hard claim in reality.

So, I was watching from the sidelines, until the Christians who seem to be able to take offence at anything stuck their oars in. Now, I have donated to the campaign.