Friday, January 09, 2009

A day on the witness stand for God?

It appears Stephen Green, of Christian Voice, has complained to the Advertising Standards Authority about the Atheist Bus Campaign adverts running on buses across the country on grounds of ‘truthfulness’ and ‘substantiation’, suggesting that there is not ‘a shred of supporting evidence’ that there is probably no god.

Whilst the British Humanist Association are enjoying the joke, I do find myself wondering if this might be the moment when Mr Green discovers that there is a point beyond which his campaigning leaves behind what vestiges of credibility it might once have had.

Now don't get me wrong. Whilst I'm not an active church-goer, I still retain a sense of faith in some sort of divine presence, call it a god or whatever. In the absence of rules which dictate exactly what will happen in every circumstance, the element of randomness, for me at least, reassures me that science does not have all of the answers.

However, whilst it might be difficult to supply supporting evidence that there isn't a god, it's going to be even more difficult to provide evidence that there is one. And, whilst the idea of a distinguished elderly gentleman with a white beard and flowing white robes appearing before the Advertising Standards Authority to give evidence is an appealing one, I won't be turning up in the expectation of his arrival (sorry, my upbringing involved a patriachial deity concept - it's very hard to shift...).

On the other hand, if he did, I'd like to think that he might find the time to smite Stephen Green with a lightning bolt...

5 comments:

Paul Walter said...

Agree. Christian Voice are a complete joke. I say that as a Christian.

Liberal Neil said...

Ah, bless him;-)

Niles said...

If you don't think science has all the answers, do you think that science should aim to get them? Or at least most of them? Or do you think that some things are essentially unknowable and they shouldn't even try?

Mark Valladares said...

Alex,

Progress is linked to man's desire both to experiment and to 'push buttons and see what happens', so I for one am perfectly content for science to probe our universe for answers. I'm just not convinced that they'll find all of them.

For example, science has established that the universe was created by means of the 'Big Bang'. How the ball of dust and gas appeared in the first place remains unexplained. There is scope for the argument that something put it there, lit the blue touchpaper and retreated to a safe position...

Faith is about more than a deity and belief therein. It is about moral codes and optimism, about the human spirit. There is no reason why, in a rational world, science and faith cannot co-exist...

Niles said...

Oh absolutely - science can no more disprove god(s) than theism can prove them :)