THE Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has just concluded that the “There’s probably no God” bus ad campaign by the British Humanist Association is not in breach of the advertising code. The ASA will therefore not launch an investigation and the case is now closed.
Stephen 'Birdshit' Green has shot himself in the foot. Again!
The ASA said it had:
Carefully assessed the 326 complaints it received. Some complained that the ad was offensive and denigratory to people of faith. Others challenged whether the ad was misleading because the advertiser would not be able to substantiate its claim that God “probably” does not exist.
This was the argument put by Christian Voice’s serial whinger, the pitiful Stephen “Birdshit” Green, who was defending his complaint to the ASA this morning on BBC’s Southern Counties Radio.
I was invited by the producer of SCR’s Breakfast Show to put the case in favour of the campaign, and must say I took enormous delight in crossing swords with the ghastly Green, who accused atheists of lacking a sense of humour!
Virtually all the callers who joined the subsequent phone-in indicated that they thought the complaint was plain silly. These included a woman claiming to be a “born-again” Christian.
The ASA Council concluded that the ad was:
An expression of the advertiser’s opinion and that the claims in it were not capable of objective substantiation. Although the ASA acknowledges that the content of the ad would be at odds with the beliefs of many, it concluded that it was unlikely to mislead or to cause serious or widespread offence.
At last, a quango showing a bit of sense.
I read ‘unlikely to mislead or to cause serious or widespread offence’ as meaning ‘this is a rational, tolerant and secular society, so get with the programme’. But then I’m an eternal optimist.
Not only was the ad not misleading; I think the ASA would also have taken into account the fact that it was financed wholly by unsolicited public donations.
At the time of writing the campaign has raised in excess of £150,000 from around 10,000 individual donations.
Rather puts Green and his 325 fellow whinging shit-wits into perspective.
I saw this on Twitter, and thought I’d share:
P.S. Does Barry or The Freethinker have a Twitter feed?
I wonder what the ASA would have made of my idea for such an ad.
A picture of a box of washing powder branded REASON next to a pile of dirty laundry (a pile of pants!) captioned ‘religion’.
Once again they wade in with the “You can’t prove god DOESN’T exist!”. Do they realise how pathetic they sound? it’s like the theological version of “i know you are but what am i?”
Anbody know ‘Birdshits’ address? I’ll hire one of the buses and park it outside his door!
You have to admire a man who has that sort of capacity for self inflicted humilation though.
Wait a minute did i say admire i meant point at and laugh.
A radio programme featuring Barry and Stephen can be heard here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p001z9h4/Sussex_Breakfast_21_01_2009/
Barry and Stephen are featured at 24mins 45s, with some encouraging listener feedback at 40mins 20s!
Just listened to the radio show (thanks Robert). Nice work, Barry! I think the listener reactions were a good measure of your success.
he is blaming the evil gays for his defeat now
‘If the ASA had thought the humanists could provide evidence for their claim, they would have asked them for it. As they know there is no evidence for the proposition that ‘there is probably no God’, they have let their secularist friends off the hook. ‘I debated this issue secularists five times in recent days, and despite repeated challenges, they could not once come up with anything to back up their claim that there is ‘probably no God’.
‘The ASA have finessed Code 7.1, which says a ad should not mislead or be likely to mislead, ruling it would not be likely to mislead, so avoiding the thornier question of whether it actually does mislead. Which it does.
‘On ‘taste and decency’, the ASA have simply taken a subjective decision to dismiss the complaints of offensiveness. On planet ASA, complaints from people of faith are not given the same weight as those from secularists. But what do you expect when the ASA Council is appointed and run by a campaigning homosexual, Chris, Lord, Smith of Finsbury?’
http://www.christianvoice.org.uk/Press/press122.html
Good for them. The professional whiners need to get a clue; you are not the only people who get to express an opinion.