The Atheist Bus Campaign launches today, Tuesday October 21 2008. With your support, we hope to raise £5,500 to run 30 buses across the capital for four weeks with the slogan: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.“

Professor Richard Dawkins, bestselling author of The God Delusion, is officially supporting the Atheist Bus Campaign, and has generously agreed to match all donations up to a maximum of £5,500, giving us a total of £11,000 if we reach the full amount - enough for a much bigger campaign. The British Humanist Association have kindly agreed to administer all donations.

With your help, we can brighten people’s days on the way to work, help raise awareness of atheism in the UK, and hopefully encourage more people to come out as atheists. We can also counter the religious adverts which are currently running on London buses, and help people think for themselves.

As Richard Dawkins says: “This campaign to put alternative slogans on London buses will make people think - and thinking is anathema to religion.“

http://www.atheistcampaign.org

Which is pretty cool and my only complaint is that it’s happening in the U.K. and not all across America. Still it’s good to see the message getting out. It does my heart even more good to know that in the two days the campaign has been soliciting donations it’s not only met its original goal but has gone on to collect a total of £ 88,237.45 so far! That’s a huge success that will see the campaign expanded to cover the whole of the U.K. and include more than just buses. They’re still accepting donations as well so it may grow even more before it’s done.

Thanks to SEB regular djbrianuk for letting me know about this wonderful campaign. Now we just need to get it brought over here to the states.

And I have to admit that the slogan would make a wonderful tag line for SEB.

This week we interview Les Jenkins of the the blog Stupid Evil Bastard. Once you get past the initial shock when first visiting the site and wondering what you did to upset him…you’ll find Les always brings an interesting perspective to the everything he covers, with topics ranging from the market meltdown to Spore DRM issues. My personal favorite part of the blog is that every blog posting has a picture of Les starting right back at you. It’s as if he’s right there reading you his thoughts!

Considering the previous interviews already posted with much better atheist bloggers mine is a bit anticlimactic, but it was still very cool to be asked and quite the honor to be included among some of the bigger names.

The sad part is I’ve actually had some True Believers™ use that argument on me.

Wright told Eurogamer: “I think our bigger fear was that we didn’t want to offend any religious people; but looking at the discussion that unfolded from this thing, what we had was a good, sizeable group of players that we might call militant atheists, and the rest of the players seemed very tolerant, including all of the religious players.“

Life in Spore is created according to the theory of panspermia - which hypothesises that it has been seeded on Earth from elsewhere in the universe. But it’s the mere presence of religion in the game’s civilisation stage that has raised hackles amongst some in the gaming community.

“I didn’t expect to hit hot buttons on the atheist side as much; I expected it on the religious side,“ Wright revealed. “But so far I’ve had no critical feedback at all from anybody who is religious feeling that we were misrepresenting religion or it was bad to represent religion in the game. It was really the atheists.“

Seriously, who out there thought that a game that is essentially “SimEverything” wouldn’t have at least some reference to religion in it during the civilization stage? There’s some research that religion itself is a by-product of our evolution, but even if that weren’t the case it’s still a viable and potentially interesting aspect of civilization to include.

“We have a number of team members that are pretty religious,“ he continued. “And so in design, on the team, in our small, little microcosm of players out there, we tried our best to make sure we weren’t overtly offending any religious people, but yet we wanted to include the idea, the concept of religion in the game.“

Wright, however, who described himself as an “atheist”, insisted that with Spore he was not trying to pronounce on the issue one way or the other:

“We didn’t want to go too far down that path: we leave the whole creation of the universe question open,“ he said. “Obviously as the player you’re coming in and playing something like a god, directing the evolution of a species, but we never really state who you the player are.“

When you think about it it’s not so much a game about evolution as it is “Intelligent Design” (I’m surprised the IDiots haven’t jumped on it as promoting their cause) so the inclusion of religion isn’t out of place at all. So lighten up you atheist game testers out there and try to keep in mind that, not only is it just a game, but you assholes got to play it before anyone else.

For years, my deepest, most fervent and heart felt opinion on the ontological existence of deity has been a passionate conviction that the question of whether or not god exists is boring.

This is probably one of the few areas where Paul and I differ. But my interest in the issue comes more from my own stupidity on religion than from anything else. I wasted my younger years not learning all the interesting concepts out there in the world. Which leads to my interest in just about everything nowadays.

The main point made in Paul’s post is his frustration of seeing how atheist are treated in this country. And it can be very frustrating at times for an Atheist. Take the simple definition of the word atheism. It means lack of belief, specifically any religious belief. So Atheists are being mistreated, and in some cases abused, because of their lack of a belief. If that last sentence sounds odd to you, welcome to the world of an atheist.

What is the reason for the bigotry and mis-treatment of atheists over their lack of beliefs? Please tell me it’s not from some misguided thought about how a lack of a belief in any religion predisposes someone to more violence or criminal activity. Hopefully it’s not that myth about divorce rates. Does it have something to do with our lack of beliefs threatening your beliefs?

Whatever the reason, take any question from above and even if the answer is yes, bigotry and mistreatment to any human being is uncalled for. Part of living in a civilized society is treating others fairly, justly, and not discriminating. As well as giving someone the civil rights they deserve so long as they do not remove or encroach on the rights from someone else.

So, as Paul did with his blog, I will be adding the “Scarlet A” to my blog. Not because I necessarily care about the movement of outspoken atheists and not because I am the sort of person to sum up my feelings and thoughts with a bumper sticker slogan. But because I am tired of being treated differently for my beliefs and I want others to know why.

I add the “A” to my blog because what Nicole (see video below) went through is bullshit and undeserved. No belief should exclude someone from treating others fairly and humanely.

I’ve registered an account under the handle SEB so I can participate and I’ll see if I can’t add a link to the list at the end of entries here for submitting stuff to the Atheist Spot.

Ever since news of the discovery made national headlines, local hoteliers have been overwhelmed by an influx of atheists from all over the country who have flocked to Huddlesfield to catch a glimpse of the scientific relic. “I have always been an Atheist and to see my life choices validated on a piece of toast is truly astounding” said one guest at the Huddlesfield arms hotel.

Sounds absolutely ludicrous doesn’t it? And yet newspapers around the world are filled with similarly ridiculous stories about True Believers™ finding images of Jesus or the Virgin Mary in various random inanimate objects and ascribing all manner of improbable benefits to the discovery and it seems no one bats an eyelash.

Found over at The Friendly Atheist.

Christian Atheism guy who stands quietly at Speaker’s Corner in London every Sunday, with signs that proclaim: CHRISTIAN ATHEISM: TO FOLLOW JESUS, REJECT GOD. Click to embiggen.

The picture was taken by Cory Doctorow and originally posted over at Boing Boing.