Back in March, Freethinkers of Finland launched a campaign to raise funds for a bus campaign with the message: 'There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life'. This was modelled after the famous UK campaign.
The campaign was intended to run in three major cities in Finland: Helsinki, Turku and Tampere. However, already in March the officials at Tampere were getting ready to reject the whole campaign. "Personally I believe that this type of advertising is offensive to Lutheran world view ", said the head of Tampere City Transport Office Pekka Pirhonen. (link is machine translated)
Well, sure enough, not only Tampere but also Turku, the former capital, have decided that the slogan "There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" violates good manners and won't be allowed. (link is machine translated)
The amusing part is that the two cities did approve a watered down version of the ad, which says "Enjoy your life like it is your only one. Because it is", which somehow doesn't offend their fragile beliefs.
Ironically, the buses in all major Finnish cities are currently carrying an ad for a raspberry flavoured alcoholic beverage, with slogans making not-so-subtle puns about genitalia. (The word for raspberry sounds in Finnish almost the same as the word for female reproductive organs.) Apparently, low-brow sexual innuendo is OK, but heaven forbid if the children are exposed to differing philosophical viewpoints about the transcendent. Won't somebody please think of the children!
Finland is sometimes used as an example of "a nation of non-believers" in international media. As the opposition to this bus campaign demonstrates, it is still very far from it.
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Saturday, 13 June 2009
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