Provavelmente é improvável que algum tipo de deus não exista
Auguste Comte reconheceu que a única maneira do ateísmo sobreviver em nossa sociedade é usando as mesmas armas (evangelismo, propaganda, institucionalização, arrecadação de recursos etc.) que os religiosos usam. Foi por isso que fundou sua Igreja Positivista. Era um "visionário"!
A teoria de Dawkins-Engels de que as idéias que sobrevivem não são as melhores idéias ou as mais racionais mas sim as mais bem adaptadas a seu meio (memes) vai no mesmo sentido.
Assim, a conclusão lógica é que é necessário iniciar uma campanha urgente de viral mind marketing a fim de revitalizar o ateísmo, que não anda bem das pernas desde o renascimento religioso da década de 60 (hippies, New Age, movimento carismático, neopentecostalismo etc.) de um lado e o anarquismo epistemológico de Feyrabend e amiguinhos de outro.
Agora, se você é fã de Ficção Científica, achará que provavelmente é improvável que algum tipo de deus (com d minúsculo) não exista. Afinal, o conceito (grego) de deus é simplesmente um ser inteligente (um sistema auto-organizado processador de informação) com capacidades supra-humanas. Ele poderia ser desde o Mar de Solaris (ou o Golem XIV) de Stanislaw Lem até um demiurgo que cria universos-bebês em um super LHC. Ou, mais próximo de nós, o deus Mercado, com sua perfeita oniciência de preços e alocações de recursos, sua onipotência no controle da vida humana e, mais recentemente, sua ira punitiva sobre crentes e ateus...
Uma curiosidade: Muita gente anda criticando o "provavelmente" do slogan mas, segundo sua autora, ele é uma cópia de um anúncio da cerveja Calsberg, "Provavelmente a melhor cerveja do mundo", o que provavelmente é verdadeiro...
PS: Pensando bem, até que a Clotilde de Vaux, musa de Comte e ícone da Humanidade Racional, era bonitinha...
The bus ads launched today might not be as bad for God as their backers are hoping. A bit of competition is just what's needed.
Market domination is hugely overrated. When you have a long-established, well-known, even well-loved, but somewhat generic product it is difficult to maintain serious consumer engagement. Lack of competition breeds lack of interest breeds apathy breeds market stagnation breeds sales decline. People just don't care enough about your product to spend money on it.
When competition arrives, it forces a re-evaluation of attitudes and creates an opportunity for the product to connect again with a market suddenly forced to the point of choice. Consumers are faced with the need to make a conscious decision about whether and what to buy. In such circumstances, growth in the overall market is not uncommon.
Thanks be, then, to the atheists, who have this week launched their much-anticipated bus campaign. Religion in Britain has long been essentially a one-product market, "consumers" able to dodge the God question by scribbling "C of E" on various administrative forms and then forgetting all about it. The emergence of confident Islam over recent decades has helped challenge that, but Islam feels too foreign and too frightening to too many Britons to be evaluated coolly. Atheist buses advertise an altogether different brand. And they present a terrific opportunity for the market leader.
Let's leave aside the adverts' basic proposition, "There's probably no God". Where did that "probably" come from? It doesn't suggest the sales staff is overly confident about its product. If my pilot told me "This flight to Paris probably won't crash," I'd think about taking the train.
And let's leave aside the advice, "Now stop worrying and enjoy your life". You would have to go a long way to find a slogan less suited to our New Year, recession-looming, mass-unemployment gloom.
The truly wonderful thing about the campaign is that it does that most un-English thing. It mentions God in public. Research has shown that most Christians are willing to talk about their faith if the subject comes up. Reluctant to introduce it themselves (presumably for fear of being labelled a "fundamentalist"), they are quite happy to "do God" if a friend mentions him, provoked, say, by a passing bendy bus.
Of course, merely coming up in conversation is no guarantee that God will win the argument. New competition does not guarantee the market leader's reinvigoration. If new products are evidently superior, old ones can simply die. When did you buy your last VHS player?
If belief in God is indeed as transparently nonsensical as (some) atheists make out, if the faithful are such idiots, their churches and synagogues so dehumanising, and religion such a grotesque and malign virus, that is precisely what will happen.
If bendy buses can help effect that demise, Richard Dawkins will have spent his money wisely and Theos foolishly. But somehow I doubt they will.
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