According to the Advertising Standards Authority’s 2009 report (PDF) the proposal that there definitely is a God received more complaints than any other advert in 2009. The bus advertisement ‘There’s definitely a God’ by The Christian Party received 1,204 complaints, far more than the amount of complaints received for the bus advertising campaign it meant to challenge. The British Humanist Association’s ‘There’s probably no God’ advert was only the 6th most complained about advert with 392 complaints.
Clearly the thought of an omnipotent omnipresent being watching our every move and judging us is far more offensive than the thought of there not being one, these are sentiments I can relate to.
What I love most about this report other than the figures is the ASA’s ruling on the complaints for the BHA’s advert, they said;
“The ASA ruled that the ad did not make claims about particular religions and had an upbeat rather than hostile or offensive tone. We concluded that the ad was an expression of the advertiser’s opinion and that the claim was not capable of being objectively substantiated.”
Brilliant. Dawkins couldn’t have put it better.
