Nihilism

A bus driver in Southampton, Great Britain, refused to get on the bus he was supposed to drive...because it offended him.

A Christian bus driver has refused to drive a bus with an atheist slogan proclaiming "There's probably no God".

Ron Heather, from Southampton, Hampshire, responded with "shock" and "horror" at the message and walked out of his shift on Saturday in protest

The slogan in question is from the British Humanist Association's recent ad campaign promoting atheism. The full text of the ad is "There's probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

OH THE HORROR!

Mr Heather told BBC Radio Solent: "I was just about to board and there it was staring me in the face, my first reaction was shock horror.

"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.

"I think it was the starkness of this advert which implied there was no God."

Ed Halliwell on the Guardian's blog makes what I can only assume is an attempt at a kind of charming, I'm-okay-you're-okay détente between believers and atheists in an otherwise benign post about the Buddha's unwillingness to delve into the question of the existence of a supreme being.

I suppose that's all well and good, but in his admiration for the Buddha's disinterest, he woefully mischaracterizes the atheist position:

Part of what makes the argument [over God's existence] so comical is how the concept of "God" onto which atheists project is rarely the same as the one defended by believers.

Whatever images of God some atheists might like to invoke in heated antitheistic rhetoric, the God whose existence is denied is not limited to one or another caricature, but all gods, all supernatural beings, all unknowable, mystical, cosmic consciousnesses. So not only is the concept of God that is refuted the same as the one defended by believers, but every concept of God (that is not merely a shorthand metaphor for what actually is).

Graham Preston at Online Opinion plays devil's advocate:

[link] Let’s take it as given that Richard Dawkins is correct: God does not, and never has, existed.

With that being so, what necessarily follows about life, the universe and everything?

He then proceeds to barrel wildly into wrong-headed, opinionated oblivion by treating "atheism" and the philosophy "nihilism" as synonyms.

More below the fold...