Christian Won't Drive Atheist Bus

Ron Heather, a Southampton resident who drives for First Bus, was “shocked” earlier in the month when discovering the bus he was slated to drive carried an anti-God banner. (We first reported on the banners in our October 25 News to Note.)

“I felt that I could not drive that bus, I told my managers and they said they haven’t got another one and I thought I better go home, so I did,” Heather told the BBC. “I think it was the starkness of this advert which implied there was no God.” Heather agreed to return to work after First Bus pledged to do what it could to make sure he would not have to drive another “atheist” bus.

We’re not sure who could be surprised at this latest turn of events, since the advertisements have fallen under heavy criticism since even before they were launched. According to Agence France-Presse, Christians in the UK have asked the government’s advertising watchdog for “proof” that the banners are telling the truth.

Our guess is that the advertisements haven’t changed anyone’s mind, but we can hope and pray that the signs will actually encourage deeper consideration of the question.

An article in the Telegraph springboards off the anti-God banners, reporting the recent comments of former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey.1

In a speech delivered at the University of Gloucestershire, Carey argued that 9/11 opened the door for “aggressive” atheists to attack all religion. “For some writers,” Carey said, “such events are illustrations of the evils of religion—all religions.”

Carey’s criticism didn’t stop at atheists, however; he attacked creationists as well, calling creation “pseudoscience” and lauding Charles Darwin as “one of the greatest human beings of all time.” He continued:

Creationism is the fruit of a fundamentalist approach to scripture, ignoring scholarship and critical learning, and confusing different understandings of truth. The argument for intelligent design may have some appeal for many Christians but is ultimately a negation of what science is about, which is to make a hypotheses [sic] from what is observable and then conduct experiments in a constant process of testing.

As we’ve frequently pointed out, Darwinism is actually quite unscientific in that (among other things) it is not based on observation or repeatable experiments, nor are any beliefs about origins. Furthermore, the former archbishops’ claim of “different understandings of truth” is not found in Scripture.