Campagn bus in Helsinki
The advertising has already caused huge controversy. The bus companies in Turku and Tampere refused to allow the original poster citing ‘bad taste.’ However, they were prepared to allow an alternative slogan: ‘Enjoy your life as if it’s the only one you’ve got. Because it is.’
Niemelä, who is originally from Pori, intends to use the campaign to drum up publicity for the organisation’s new website
If the campaign does come up north, Niemelä is convinced it will be especially inflammatory.
Campaigning in Italy
The forty-two year-old is concerned that people who are not ‘Lutheran’ in Finland are effectively ‘discriminated against’.
‘People who are non-religious are marginal in this society,’ he claimed. ‘For example, there are prayers at school and at daycare. But there are many immigrants now who are not Christian or just Finns who are not Christian and they are being marginalised.’
Niemelä, a founding member of Finland’s Darwin Society, emphasised that what his organisation, and the Finnish Humanist League who are also involved in the campaign, want is a secular society ‘based around European, Western values of tolerance and freedom of thought. But these are not traditional Finnish values. We have values from the East – of authority for example – and these are the Lutheran Church. I want this to change. European values have not fully blossomed in Finland yet.’
The Lutheran Church, however, strongly disagrees and is unimpressed by the campaign. ‘I think it’s a little bit childish to say God does not exist on the side of buses,’ responds the Rev’d Hannu Majamäki, who works on church internet activity. ‘Most of the public reacted aggressively or just wondered "Why are they doing this?" Eighty percent of Finns are members of the church. It has a strong presence in the culture.’
And he felt that Niemelä’s comments about church values were ‘Ridiculous! When Finland was under the Russia Empire, it was the church that upheld Western values, such as democracy, in Finland. The church ran representative organisations which allowed people to speak and air their views.’
The Finnish Free Thinkers Union was established in 1937 as the Finnish Civil Registration Centre and has about 1500 members. It took on its current name in 1945.
The original ‘Atheist Bus Campaign’ began in Britain earlier this year, launched by biologist and rationalism campaigner Prof. Richard Dawkins. It was in response to advertisements for the evangelical ‘Alpha Course’ on London buses.
