When Truth in Advertising Meets the Unknowable

Britain's national Advertising Standards Authority typically has to rule on matters such as whether a lingerie poster shows too much anatomy or whether the brand name "FCUK" is likely to be read as something else. Now the agency may have to decide a loftier question: Is there a god?

For the past week, 800 buses have been crisscrossing England with a large advertisement on the side that reads "There's Probably No God. Now Stop Worrying and Enjoy Your Life."

The campaign is the handiwork of the British Humanist Association, with an assist from evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion. Its organizers say it's merely an in-kind response to the sorts of overtly religious advertising common throughout the U.K. (not to mention the U.S.)

But the faithful aren't taking it meekly. A spokesman for a group called Christian Voice maintains, with a seemingly total lack of irony, that the atheists' campaign violates fair-advertising laws because the non-existence of God can't be proven.

"It is given as a statement of fact and that means it must be capable of substantiation if it is not to break the rules," he tells the Guardian. "There is plenty of evidence for God, from people's personal experience, to the complexity, interdependence, beauty and design of the natural world. But there is scant evidence on the other side."

Perhaps so. But if there is a god, he/she/it will surely arrange for this man to debate Christopher Hitchens in a public forum very soon.