Richard Dawkins on board with a pro-atheist message

'The God Delusion's' author, a backer of a British Humanist Assn. bus ad campaign, talks about the collision of science and religion.

By Henry Chu
LA Times
January 11, 2009

REPORTING FROM OXFORD, ENGLAND — All they are saying is give atheism a chance.

Earlier this month, 800 buses rolled out of depots across Britain plastered with advertisements cheerfully informing people that "there's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

Sponsored by the British Humanist Assn., the ad campaign is the brainchild of a comedian who had seen Christian messages on buses, looked up the websites of the organizations behind them and found warnings that, as a nonbeliever, she was destined to go to hell.

The new ads have attracted little controversy in Britain, a secular country that finds religious fervor a tad awkward. Perhaps the biggest kerfuffle has been over the word "probably" in the slogan, which the British advertising authority said should be thrown in to keep the ad from being potentially misleading, on the grounds that no one can say with 100% certainty that God does not exist.

The campaign's highest-profile backer is Richard Dawkins, a biology professor at Oxford University and the author of "The God Delusion," a defense of scientifically based atheism that became a bestseller in Britain and the U.S. Dawkins pledged to match donations to the campaign up to $8,250 -- a figure that was quickly reached.

(More here.)