Tag Archives: religion

Atheist Bus Campaign

Recently in London an evangelical Christian group ran a campaign of bus adverts for their website which claims that: all non-Christians will burn in hell for eternity.

Don’t be shocked. This is of course what should be believed by those who take the bible literally. (If you don’t then what makes you think you can pick and choose which parts you like!)

In response a British writer (Ariane Sherine) launched a campaign to run a positive ‘atheist’ bus campaign. The public pledged over £140,000 in support and now that campaign is a serious reality.

Buses all over Britain now display this message:

Atheist Bus Campaign

Nice. I like it. Catchy, friendly. Good stuff.

There has been quite a lot of debate about the use of the word “probably”. They went with “probably” because

  1. They wanted to keep the campaign light-hearted.
  2. More importantly atheists shouldn’t say that there is no God – you can’t prove that. They say there is “almost certainly no God” – which isn’t quite as catchy.

You can learn more on the campaign website FAQ or on the Wikipedia article

Creating life – mankind will do it

Those who thought that only God could create life are in for a nasty surprise. Wired has this article about a team of scientists who are close to creating life from scratch. The scientists are able to build protocells using fatty molecules (for the cell membrane) and inserting bits of nucleic acids containing ‘source code’ for replication.

These guys aren’t able to get the cells to replicate properly on their own yet – only certain DNA sequences get replicated. But they are close to creating a new form of life.

Islam overtakes Catholicism in numbers

Massive mosque at the Muslim holy site of Mecca

National Geographic has this article saying that Islam has now overtaken Catholicism as the world’s largest religion. According to the article this is the current breakdown (percentage of world population):

  • Islamic: 19.2%
  • Catholic: 17.4%

That said, Christians as a whole are still by far the largest religious group comprising 33% of the world population.