I cycled past one of those atheist buses the other day. I expect you know the ones I mean - they've got an advert on the side which says "There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life".

I'm rather bemused by this wording. Maybe it's just me, but it has an air of smugness about it. Little annoys me more than smug Christians, but smug atheists can count themselves amongst that elite. The great failing of so many atheists is their sense that they have come to their belief system as a result of superior intellect - the irony being that even the most cursory application of that intellect will reveal that mental acuity has little bearing on religious conviction. For every George W. Bush there is a Nelson Mandela. I don't know what inspires religious conviction in people, but I know for sure that it isn't a lack of intellectual rigour.

I think what bothers me most about the atheist bus slogan is the implication that Christians spend their time worrying. That while atheists are happy-go-lucky souls who skip through life knowing that it is brief and must be relished while it lasts, Christians are constantly looking over their shoulder and fretting that what they do now will impact on their future spiritual fate. Needless to say, this is far from the truth. If anything, it's my experience that those without faith find life more burdensome than their pious brethren. Unlike many resolute agnostics, I suspect, I have the advantage here of living with a Christian, whose social life gives me a window onto that (to me) mystifying world. Last summer I went to a wedding at which I would hazard a guess 98% of the guests were committed Christians. Weddings are generally fun occasions, of course, but I've never been amongst people who showed such genuine and heartfelt warmth for each other. There was an overwhelming spirit of joy in the room, unqualified, unbidden and utterly devoid of cynicism (apart from inside my head, where it naturally stayed). And that is typical of the approach that I witness from Christians. You could hardly meet a group of people less inclined to worry. That is not to say they are facile or shallow, they simply brim over with the richness and value of life, wringing every last drop of worth out of it. I think they're all a bit nuts, but it's hard not to envy their ebullience.

I should add that I have no problem with the atheist campaign in principle, not at all. As I've stated elsewhere here, I practise within my own household a policy of mutual religious tolerance. I just think they could have chosen their slogan more judiciously.