Hurrah for common sense. And more likely the truth.

Did they learn nothing from the protests about Jerry Sprinter:the Opera giving the show oodles of publicity and increased sales?

Apart from the posters Rob refers to there are any number of car stickers and churches everywhere with messages ranging from mild to practically fundamentalist and I can’t remember any of them saying “there probably is a God”. They all seemed pretty certain on the matter.

Religious people, especially Christians, make a great deal out of the concept of faith, saying that it does not matter that you cannot prove the existence of a god and in fact it is better that you can’t because then you have to show faith in order to believe. Given that the religion is based on the principle that god’s existence can’t be proved the amazing thing is that there can be such a fuss about a statement that does not even say he doesn’t – just that he probably doesn’t.

And the fact is that if, despite no shortage of searching, there is no evidence of something existing then you have to say that it probably does not exist – but if there is also no firm proof that it doesn’t exist you can’t totally rule it out. How can it not be free thinking to take the position that, although the probabilty lies heavily in one direction, nothing is proven or certain?

The Christian church is still part of ‘the establishment’, holding a unique position, with Bishops being part of the Lords, prayers being part of parliament, and church schools getting public money to promote their ideology. I spent all my childhood in secular schools that still had hymns sung at assembly every day. With so many years of being assailed by so much pro-religious material a few posters on buses hardly makes a dent does it?

And another thing: the religious beliefs that England has its roots in are pagan beliefs. Christianity is a relative newcomer to these shores

Rude and hurtful? Really? How rude? Why is it hurtful?

“I honestly don’t understand why atheists are doing a 360.”

Do you mean a 180?

” I thought the whole point of it was ‘free-thinking’ your not being very free-thinking now.”

So is expressing the existence of a contrary life philosophy to the religious one, by definition, “not free-thinking”? Is one not allowed to do that?

“I was shocked when my mother showed me this in the Metro. How can you do to someone else ”

It’s an advert. Paid for by a private campaign. Go and find something to get really upset about, like tobacco advertising. Or, simply grow a pair. Incidentally, the atheist poster campaign was inspired by a poster campaign on London buses by this group: http://www.jesussaid.org/ which was explicitly religious evangelism.

But the bus is not ‘imposing’ anything on anyone, it just puts forward a point of view – one that is not often seen publicly.

Christianity is still the State religion, with Bishops in Parliament and TV companies obliged to put religious programmes out. No-one is closing churches or oppressing religion. Perhaps you need to calm down a but, Ire.