Holy Sign

If you have ever had the misfortune of, say, sitting on someone else's chewing gum, or being penned into a moist, festering corner and forced to endure a nonsensical drunken monologue with a beleaguered vagabond, then you'll no doubt agree that the worst thing you're ever likely to experience in your life will be on a bus. But, just for a change, it's not what's inside these trundling late-running behemoths that's causing a stir, it's what they've gone and written on the outside. As a riposte to the church's sterling PR work (more prominent at tube stops in London), atheists (more specifically, Richard Dawkins and the British Humanist Association) have retaliated with their own indifference by plastering their slightly more understated morals on the sides of buses: "There's probably no god," the poster reads, "now stop worrying and enjoy your life." The writing is now off the wall and on the buses, it seems.

Far be it for me to meddle in issues of truly biblical proportions, but you can't help but notice that the voice from those of the atheist persuasion appears to be altogether less, er, convincing. 'There's probably no god.' That's like saying, 'look, we've given this a lot of thought, and we've discovered that, well, those religious types might actually be right... but, of course, they could also be wrong. Personally, I'm finding this whole situation to be a bit of a grey area, let's just get a pint in at the pub and come back to it later." That's hardly justification to take the moral high ground, and, for the record, I'm fully aware of many people with practicing religious beliefs who don't worry half as much as I do and lead very enjoyable lives. If anything, a sense of belief - whether it be of some all-powerful deity or a healthy diet of wholegrain - is usually enough to conjure up a positive sense of purpose in most of us mere mortals.

Faith has been tested with enough condemnation over the centuries to survive this latest appeal from our bendy buses. And anyway, we live in a tolerant country that is proud of its culture and diversity: such an environment couldn't have evolved without believing that freedom of speech means freedom for all, no matter the sensitivity of the subject. So, really, we should probably be thanking those non-believers for turning our bus windows into theological talking shops rather than merely exercises in plugging hair products. I'm already championing the next possible campaign: is the Pope a Catholic?