What is it With Some Christians?
I do mean some Christians, of course. They get in an uproar if anybody question or challenge them when they aggressively proselytize. They cite the First Amendment/Freedom of Religion to defend their hateful tirades against LGBT people. They become agitated when others proclaim that they don’t want to hear, for the tenth time, what the Bible says about situation XYZ. “Why are we being silenced?” they cry.
You’d think such people would be open, therefore, to a marketplace of ideas where all are free to speak their minds. Of course you’d be dead wrong. The people who scream loudest about having their right to speak their minds and so on are often the ones who are first to throw tantrums when others exercise theirs. Case in point, the reactions to a bus ad campaign currently running in Scotland, England and Wales. The ad reads, “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life” .
Needless to say the professional reactionaries are having the vapors over it. Apparently while Christians are allowed to express their opinions and thoughts all they want, atheists are not.
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But organisation Christian Voice has complained to the Advertising Standards Authority saying they break rules on substantiation and truthfulness.
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No, it doesn’t. The ad says there’s probably no god. Given that there’s no empirical evidence whatsoever for any deity ever dreamt of in the course of human history, that statement is in no way false.
But Stephen Green, national director of Christian Voice, said: “There is plenty of evidence for God, from people’s personal experience, to the complexity, interdependence, beauty and design of the natural world.
People who have schizophrenia have plenty of evidence, at least in their own minds, for what they experience via their hallucinations and delusions. That doesn’t make it real, merely a manifestation of their brains. And the natural world is indeed complex, interdependent and beautiful but that doesn’t mean “godidit”. It might behoove Green to pick up a science book once in a while.
“But there is scant evidence on the other side, so I think the advertisers are really going to struggle to show their claim is not an exaggeration or inaccurate, as the ASA code puts it.”
How amusing that he’s claiming we have no evidence. But then if you consider his notion of evidence, all we’d have to do is say we felt the non-existence of god and that would qualify. Case closed.
Then there’s Ron Heather, a bus driver from Southampton. He refuses to do his job because he’s in such a tizzy over the bus ads.
Ron Heather, from Southampton, Hampshire, responded with “shock” and “horror” at the message and walked out of his shift on Saturday in protest.
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Mr Heather told BBC Radio Solent: “I was just about to board and there it was staring me in the face, my first reaction was shock horror.“I felt that I could not drive that bus, I told my managers and they said they haven’t got another one and I thought I better go home, so I did.
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If Mr. Heather is so easily offended by differing viewpoints perhaps he should retire and confine himself to his home. To expect his employer to coddle him because of an ad that’s on the outside of the bus he drives (one that simply suggests god doesn’t exist) is outrageous.
Of course this is happening in the UK. I can only imagine if this were attempted in the US. Were the ads to even be approved (which they likely wouldn’t), they’d probably meet with immediate virulent protest, be quick removal, and possibly even vandalism. Sadly those who scream loudest about having their beliefs and opinions heard refuse to give others the same respect. It’s truly a one-way street with them.
