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Probably no worries?

January 11,  2009  - Dale

At last atheists in Britain have their own buses. At least buses with their religion advertised. 140,000 pounds has been raised to place the message – "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" – on 200 bendy buses, according to the Telegraph. More adverts will follow in other locations. A Christian group even contributed to the fund-raising, presumably on the grounds that it encourages people to talk about the Christian faith.

Some atheists apparently wanted to say “There is no god.” But advertising laws were thought to have prevented such a bold claim.

But, supposing that there is no God, does it follow that one should now stop worrying and enjoy life?  Might it not be more worrying to discover that there may not be a God? Does the alleged absence of a God make life more secure and certain? What is it about the absence of a God that takes the worry out of life?

Some would say, “No accountability.” No test at the end. No one to judge you. And no terrible torment afterwards.  So don’t worry. Do what you like. Enjoy yourself. Eat, drink and be merry. 

But enjoyment isn’t the only thing that humans like to do. They also like to be in control. If they don’t want a busy-body God calling them to account, they also don’t want other people interfering in their enjoyment. Ah, but who will be in control? In Britain and other nanny states, the individual is now much less in control of their enjoyment. At last week’s cricket test between South Africa and Australia in Sydney, ‘crowd safety officers’ reportedly deflated numbers of plastic beach balls being bounced around among the crowd – presumably they might lead to something bad happening.

The modern cure for social problems is to make new regulations. The big social problem this decade has been terrorism. So there are lots more regulations. Do we like this? No, but we generally agree that bad people should be stopped from doing bad deeds. And if they do bad things they should be punished. Not many people support the idea of forgiving terrorists, or murderers, or thieves, or corrupt public servants …

Why not? Because we still think that there should be justice. But if there is no God, there is no ultimate justice, nothing reliable and fair to all, just the justice of whoever has the most power. The more the power, the more the “justice” favours the powerful.

If it is really possible that there is no God, we should probably start worrying.

Dale

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