I am rather late in covering this, so by now I imagine everyone is familiar with the Atheist Bus Campaign, which has probably generated more publicity than the eventual bus adverts ever could. It started when Ariane Sherine (pictured) wrote an piece in the Guardian’s Comment is Free section complaining about one-sided religious advertising:

“Yesterday I walked to work and saw not one, but two London buses with the question: “When the son of man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8). It seems you wait ages for a bus with an unsettling Bible quote, then two come along at once.”

The website featured on the advert contained dire warnings about hell fire and damnation, which is really not what you need on a Monday morning when you’re late for work. Ariane did some homework and suggested that with moderate support a similar advert could be bought by atheists - one with a more tolerant, uplifting message. She suggested:

“There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and get on with your life.”

The atheist bus campaign caught on well and has so far raised over 117,000 pounds - enough for several bus adverts. However, the proposed wording of the advert has caused dissatisfaction amongst some atheists. The “probably” is described as a cop-out, too weak, too uncertain. A friend of mine expressed her disappointment by saying, “It’s more of an Agnostic Bus Campaign really isn’t it?”.

There are two things I want to discuss. Firstly, the philosophy geek’s question of whether the slogan is Atheistic, Agnostic or something else? Secondly, is it a good message to slap on the side of a bus?

An Agnostic Atheist Slogan?

Here’s a quick summary of the non-believing spectrum as I see it:

Strong Atheist - “I believe there is definitely no god and I have no doubt about this.”
Weak Atheist - “I believe there is no god but I do not have absolute certainty about this.”
Agnostic - “I do not know if there is a god.” (literally ‘without knowledge’)

Naturally these are not hard either-or distinctions and many people are somewhere between the above positions. There are also several other non-religious positions some of which I covered previously.

In practice the vast majority of those who speak of themselves as atheists are of the “weak” variety (aka “Agnostic atheists”). The reason is that it’s notoriously difficult to prove the non-existence of anything, whether it’s gods, unicorns or a teapot orbiting the sun. The problem with trying to find any of those is when to stop searching. OK, so we’ve searched the world’s mountain ranges and the plains, but what if these mythical beasts exist in the Arctic, or the deepest oceans, or on the moon?

In science and philosophy no knowledge is beyond doubt. If it were, then we might still be believing that the Sun goes around the Earth or that light travels in a luminiferous ether. So strictly speaking a non-believer in unicorns should say, “There are probably no unicorns”. For simplicity this usually comes out as “There are no unicorns”. Not a strict provable statement, but simple enough for everyday language which gets the idea across.

You can however often disprove specific religious claims - for example geocentrism or an omnipotent deity who doesn’t allow lightning.

I said it was a philosophy geek’s question.

Probably the best bus in the world

So does the word “Probably” trammel the proposed advertisement’s intention? Can it still make people stop and think?

I know some believers have responded to the uncertainty of the slogan with ridicule, apparently amused that those noisy atheists aren’t so sure of what they believe after all. Others may think it cowardly.

Many religious people are comforted by the absolute certainty with which their beliefs are claimed. Uncertainty and dilemmas can be unsettling. For people who feel that way, believing something is “probably the case”, never mind contributing to an advert to tell people it is “probably the case”, is laughable.

But I think expressing doubt is a good thing. I’m certainly not the first person to say that, for example Bertrand Russell:

“I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn’t wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.”

Furthermore, I’m all too aware that believers regularly accuse atheists of being every bit as irrational as the religious. Some have even written books claiming they don’t have enough faith to be an atheist. In the case of strong atheism (or strong unicorn-disbelief), I think that accusation would be justified. What evidence could provide absolute certainty that there were no unicorns (or gods)? To have absolute certainty that gods or unicorns did not exist would require faith.

The “probably” has certainly caused surprise amongst some religious believers. American Evangelical minister, Clark Bunch reacted on his blog as follows:

What surprises me is that Dawkins would settle for such a weak position.  “There’s probably no God” is not spoken with nearly the certainty with which Christians recite the Apostles’ Creed.  I’ve never sung a hymn nor heard a street preacher shout “There probably is a God.”  The slogan even allows the possibility the God may exist.  If all atheists were this soft, I probably wouldn’t give them such a hard time.

Which is where the massive misconception comes in.

Most atheists wouldn’t say they have absolute certainty about their beliefs. Despite all the hype and accusations of atheist fundamentalism, Richard Dawkins doesn’t claim absolute certainty of his beliefs. If someone says, “I don’t believe in god”, they’re not necessarily claiming that their belief is beyond doubt. If I said, “I don’t believe it will rain tomorrow” would it be taken as read that I’m so sure about it I’d be willing to bet my life on it? Would I be called a fundamentalist meteorologist? Of course not. But for many believers, ordinary non-belief in deities is taken as a statement of absolute certainty requiring irrational faith. Perhaps this is a kind of psychological projection of their own attitudes to belief?

The slightly dull reality is that the inclusion of the word “probably” was at the insistence of the bus company selling the advertising space, who don’t want to offend religious believers.

Nevertheless, I like the phrasing of the slogan. Atheists know only too well how irritating it is to have other people’s unquestionable certainties shoved in their faces and should be slower to commit the same effrontery. The advert makes a point, without having to make the bold claims of absolute certainty usually used by those lacking good evidence.

A Christian friend of mine (No, not that one, another one) recently mentioned in his Facebook status that he’d witnessed miraculous healings at a Christian gathering. Ever the sceptic, I responded by posting a video of James Randi’s investigation of faith healing. In this video, Randi exposes US televangelists Peter Popoff and WV Grant.

He responded to me by asking:

“… Ever wondered what evidence you would need…”

Which is a very sensible and reasonable question. If I couldn’t say what evidence would convince me that I’m wrong about faith healing, I could be accused of holding my sceptical position irrationally, dogmatically, “No matter what”. Adam Lee covered this idea in respect to religious belief in general and the result is his Theist’s Guide to Converting Atheists essay which I’d recommend to everyone.

For me it’s not enough to be able to say, “This could have been a miracle” - not getting rained on when you forgot your umbrella could have been a miracle, but it could just as easily be chance. I’m trying to find something which could only have been a miracle. Recovering from a particularly nasty cold might have involved divine intervention, but this also happens naturally, so we can’t be sure a miracle occurred in that particular case. So I’m not interested in evidence of improbable healings, but impossible healings. Impossible that is, without miraculous supernatural intervention.

The evidence has to be reliable and evaluated in a way that does not allow bias, whether intentional or not, to creep in. To start with, the patients should be carefully assessed to ensure that they genuinely suffer from the claimed illness in the first place. Then we need to be able to judge easily whether or not they have been cured.

Ailments such as back pain, migraines or depression are probably not worth investigating as it is too hard to independently assess them - you can only rely on what the patient tells you.

Ideally we should also be reasonably confident of what caused the healing. If the patient visited mystical healers of all stripes then a few weeks later finds themselves cured, we still have some unanswered questions.

So to summarise, the miraculous healing would need to be something which:

• Could only occur due to a miraculous healing.
• Can easily be judged a success or failure by all around.
• Can be linked to a specific faith healing claim.

A good example of this would be an amputated limb regrowing. If a group of Christians gathered around a multiple amputee and prayed for him to regrow his limbs and it they did indeed regrow then you’d have a very convincing case. I’d like to witness this myself, but also have other independent witnesses there to check I wasn’t hallucinating or missing some sleight of hand (or leg). This idea is examined in detail by the website Why Won’t God Heal Amputees, which says on the subject of healing amputees:

Notice that there is zero ambiguity in this situation. There is only one way for a limb to regenerate through prayer: God must exist and God must answer prayers.

That may seem very stringent and a very narrow way to define faith healing, but I think it’s warranted. It’s the only kind of faith healing we could really be sure about. Furthermore, I’m just an ordinary person and I could easily be fooled. I’ve seen enough stage magicians do tricks I couldn’t explain, heard (and believed) enough tall tales and been swayed by enough anecdotal evidence to know that I’m as gullible as the next guy.

So I think it’s reasonable - prudent even - to ask that these standards of evidence are met. Incidentally, these ideas are by no means exclusive, I’m sure there are other tests which could potentially provide excellent evidence of faith healing. I’m keen to hear other people’s suggestions. If we could agree on a reasonable experiment that could discern real faith healing from false faith healing, I’d be happy to try it out and post the results here.

[BPSDB]

Faith schools are an issue that feature regularly in the British news. About a third of the schools in this country are faith schools, of which the majority are Church of England. We’re sometimes complacent in the UK to think that the established religion in this country is benign, but faith schools give us a reminder that this is not always the case.

Firstly, faith schools are allowed to discriminate, both in their admissions and employment policies. For example, they can prefer children whose parents are regular church attendees. Predictably, in areas where the best school happens to be a religious one, desperate parents attend church for the requisite number of weeks to get their child into the school, before leaving again. Quite apart from the absurdity of this, discriminating on the grounds of religious belief contravenes the Human Rights Act, 1998, Article 9 “Freedom of thought, conscience and religion”. Denying entrance to a school - especially a publicly-funded one - is a clear example of discrimination.

In many cases, faith schools are exempt from having to comply with discrimination legislation:

Schools cannot discriminate against gay or lesbian pupils or their parents during the admissions process or in lessons. But guidance accompanying the legislation makes it clear that faith schools will not face prosecution for teaching in strict accordance with their religious views.

Some Christians, such as Melanie-Mcdonagh, have commented that discrimination is a perfectly normal and acceptable way to run a religious school.

But it’s precisely the fact that they are discriminatory that makes them Catholic, or Anglican, or Jewish, or Muslim.

I’ve heard as much from Catholic colleagues planning to send their children to the local faith school. Worse, there are plans for more faith schools on the horizon.

Thankfully, there are other Christians who have their heads screwed on properly regarding faith-school discrimination. Simon Barrow of Ekklesia writes:

If church schools are overwhelmingly funded by the general taxpayer, as they are, then the public as a whole has a reason to expect that they will be run for all by all.

Simon Barrow is co-director of Ekklesia, a Christian think-tank which regularly comes up with progressive and humanistic suggestions. Together with organisations such as the BHA and The Association of Teachers and Lecturers they have formed a coalition aimed at ensuring inclusive education for all. The organisation is called Accord and includes amongst its supporters people from a wide range of religious and non-religious backgrounds. I’ve already made a small donation to them and I’d encourage those who agree with Accord’s aims to do likewise.

So why are some religious people so keen on faith schools? I think part of it is the popular misconception that people of their own religion are inherently better people, more moral and no doubt they’d like their children to grow up being good people. But another aspect is about the argument from religious confusion.

The argument from religious confusion points out the vast differences in religious beliefs and perceptions of a god or gods across the world. It suggests that this is more consistent with people inventing diverse imaginary gods, rather than with a genuine deity influencing the world and communicating with humanity. There is a plethora of religions out there, each with numerous sects and variations, so what makes any one of them so special? As Ebonmuse puts it,

“The religions on this planet cannot all be right - but they could all be wrong!”.

The great thing about this argument is that it’s so simple, there’s no sophisticated philosophical concepts required. At the age of ten years old, my wife stumbled on the argument from religious confusion while looking at an Atlas. Until then she’d be taught in a convent school with a predictably narrow religious focus. The human statistics she saw showed her that a large number of people in the world weren’t Christian. She still cites this as the first doubt she had about religion.

Faith schools, by separating children from those who believe differently, can keep the argument from religious confusion hidden under the carpet for longer. If everyone you know is a Christian, it’s harder to see the other options as valid. Stereotypes about other faiths can be maintained more easily, their beliefs kept in mysterious shadows, not in the real world, seeming more like fiction than anything which “real” people believe.

I think it’s important that children are taught about religion (aka “Comparative religion”), where lessons are phrased something like, “Some people believe…” rather than “The Truth is…”.

Furthermore, as the religious atheist observes, religious segregation very often means de facto racial segregation too.

The new Hindu Krishna-Avanti school has all Asian pupils. In the same education authority, I suspect that St John Fisher RC School has almost no Asian pupils, nor the Moriah Jewish Day School.

I can’t think of a single instance where social segregation has been a good thing. I don’t expect faith schools to be an exception.

A post on Clark Bunch’s blog recently included Biblical quote indicating that the gospel is to be preached to “every creature“. Naturally, this conjured some amusing images of Christians talking to rabbits, so I could hardly resist commenting.

lonelypilgrim replied to me, explaining that the interpretation was not reasonable, because early Christians apparently did not preach to animals.

Of course this isn’t the only strange or ambiguous passage in the Bible. For a few examples, see Ebonmuse’s article on Biblical absurdities, in which it becomes apparent that God is also “against pillows”. I’m sure that many Christians are aware of some of these oddities, but it doesn’t seem to bother them. In cases where more than one Biblical interpretation is possible, they simply assume the one which fits with their opinions must be correct. They don’t all agree, either; for instance, some Christians think there is a literal hell, others don’t.  In cases where one interpretation would be completely impractical, nonsensical or doesn’t fit with the way they see their religion, they simply ignore that interpretation.

To be fair to lonelypilgrim, he’s done a bit more than that. He’s also considering the actions of early Christians. Because there is apparently no evidence of early Christians preaching to animals, he argues that the author must’ve meant something different. On the face of it, this might be a reasonable way to understand an ancient text. The earliest readers of scripture would probably have read something closer to the original author’s words, with fewer hops, skips and jumps in the form of copying and translation. So their understanding might well be better than ours. This still leaves a few problems, however.

Firstly, can we be sure of what early Christians understood about the Bible - if some of them did believe they should preach to animals would we necessarily know about it now? Accounts of their lives must have been translated and copied with at least as much chance of error as the translation and copying of the Bible.

Secondly, if modern Christians must rely on historical evidence to interpret the Bible, that makes the Bible no better than any other historical text. In any case, most people reading the Bible don’t consider the opinions of early Christians - except when asked facetious-sounding questions on the Internet.

Thirdly - although I haven’t researched this thoroughly - let’s assume that early Christians didn’t preach the gospel to animals - even if it is a great image. I don’t that would solve the problem entirely for Christians. As I responded to lonelypilgrim,

“…If we do have evidence that “creatures” meant “only humans”, then presumably the fact that we ended up with this English wording is the result of naive translation - by people not aware of this evidence. In this case, as you pointed out, it’s fairly obvious which interpretation makes most sense, so the error introduced at some point has no effect (at least I doubt anyone has tried to preach to animals as a result of this). But if errors or misunderstandings like this can creep into the text through the copying or translation process it casts doubt on the accuracy of the rest of the text. In other areas such changes might not be so obvious…”

It seems that they’re working from the assumption that the Bible makes sense and contains sensible advice relevant to modern readers. This could be seen as an appeal to consequences. If something in the Bible is nonsensical, that would make Christian beliefs seem flawed and Christians would no doubt consider that a bad thing. Therefore the whole Bible must make sense.

On the other hand it could be a form of the argument from incredulity. Christians find it impossible to imagine that any part of the Bible might be nonsense. The word of God, the holy book of the one true religion contains things which sound completely ridiculous? Unbelievable. There must be some other explanation.

They’re not just putting their faith in the Bible being accurate, but that their interpretations of the Bible are the right ones. I think the assumption that the Bible makes sense is unwarranted.

Plenty of people have written about whether atheists should evangelise, but that’s not quite what this post is about.

Most people, especially atheists, are acutely aware of how annoying evangelism can be. This might be one reason why I think the vast majority of atheists don’t talk about their beliefs. Not only do they not wish to become an irritating preacher, they fear that expressing their beliefs may invite tedious religious lectures. We don’t go knocking on doors asking if people have thought about atheism partly because we know the reputation Jehovah’s Witnesses have for being irksome evangelists.

For the record, I do think atheists should evangelise, although in a passive and respectful way. I’m in agreement with Ebonmuse when he says we should: “…inform people of our existence without intruding directly into their lives…”.

So I’d like to hear your opinions on what kind of behaviour is acceptable when evangelising. I’m talking about evangelism in the broadest possible sense. Where you are evangelising Christianity, atheism, healthy eating, a political party, feminism or your favourite music, I think similar guidelines should apply.

So what is reasonable? What is effective?

I think in many cases what is most effective at getting your message across is likely to coincide with what is thought to be reasonable and respectful behaviour. People are less likely to want to hear about your alternative rock band if you barge into their house, insult them and make their children cry. However, there may be cases that are not so obvious.

I know evangelism of any kind rarely converts people on the spot, but it may generate some sympathy or curiosity for a point of view the listener had not previously considered.

I’d start by suggesting the following:

1. Be willing to take “No” for an answer…