Friday 16 January 2009

Let them be offended

Since the beginning of the atheist bus campaign, the controversy triggered the cowardly reaction of many Christians, and as it was to be expected it carries on. Because you will not make me believe that this is not cowardice disguised as principle. Granted, it's just a bus driver, but one does not ask a bus driver to give us his personal beliefs when he drives a bus: he just has to do his job and drive the damn bus! It is a sort of professional blackmail he did here, not only showing his disagreement with a message, but trying to keep the humanists quiet, or contributing to the cowardly attempt to shut them up, to censor the campaign. But a much worse attack came from elected people, which really angered me. So the advert is "religiously offensive and morally unhelpful"? Who the Hell are they to tell me what moral to follow and what to consider moral or not? If anything, the advertisement makes a moral statement that is, indeed, helpful: that one should not lead his life according to a most likely fictitious God and should therefore not worry about an afterlife we know nothing about. In other words: don't be afraid of Hell. Is it religiously offensive? Only if you want to be, if your faith is so weak and groundless that it cannot be challenged by rational arguments. Anyway, it is not the duty of an MP to decide whether or not something is offensive. And when was offensive the same thing as illegal?

Ariane Sherine, who started the bus campaign, is my new heroine. I wish her and the British Humanist Association good luck against all those self-righteous cowards who are trying to shut them up.

1 comment:

Ariane said...

Aww, so sweet of you to say that! Thank you. x