Philip Hensher: The religious find a friend in the law

There's surely something very strange about asking the Advertising Standards Authority whether there is a God or not. Under the direction of Lord (Chris) Smith, the former publishing director of Hello! magazine, the managing director of Boots Opticians, the Poet Laureate and other members of the ASA council are being asked to rule on a question which has occupied philosophers for centuries. The only member of the board who, I think, has any claim of expertise in the area is one Gareth Jones, the professor of Christian Theology at Canterbury Christ Church University. He must feel that his day has finally arrived.

To recapitulate: some months ago, a humanist comedian, Ariane Sherine, proposed an advertising campaign promoting atheism. Some influential supporters, including Richard Dawkins and the British Humanist Association, took her up on it. A proposed advert was submitted to the ASA: it insisted, reportedly, on a qualifying adverb. And the following sentiment went up on the sides of London buses: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

It's absurd of the ASA to have insisted on the word "probably". Imagine the uproar if it became a legal requirement to insert qualifications in religious statements – "God Probably Loves You." We accept statements of faith for what they are. Only the most pointless sophistry would say that scepticism about religion needs to be treated differently. Intellectual atheists may say that they are merely awaiting the proof which would overturn their assumptions, but few of us are actively holding our breath here. "There Is No God" would have done perfectly well.

Enter one of this column's favourite comic characters, Mr Stephen Green of the extremist group Christian Voice. Even the revised version of the slogan is not acceptable to him, and he has complained to the ASA. "I believe," Mr Green said, "the ad breaks the Advertising Code anyway, unless the advertisers hold evidence that God probably does not exist." Brilliant!

The ASA is thus being placed in the unlikely position of ruling on the existence of God, or where the probabilities lie. I look forward to a bold advertiser submitting a slogan reading "Brightateeth Toothpaste Does Absolutely Nothing For Your Teeth And Gums" and seeing if the ASA requires the addition of the word "probably".

All very amusing, but Mr Green's tactics here are not a one-off. Faith, for these Christians, does not hide its light under a bushel, but takes itself off to employment tribunals, broadcasting standards agencies and various handlers of complaints. Recently, we have seen a ludicrous fellow who could not see why his Leviticus-derived ravings against homosexuals should bar him from working for Relate, the relationship guidance agency. He was prepared to give relationship advice but not sexual advice.His appeal was dismissed, as was, largely, the complaint of the repulsive registrar who refused to marry gay people at Islington Council, and was sacked for it.

We can expect a great deal more of this sort of thing. It would be tempting to laugh at the category errors evident in the minds of people of this sort, but it is, frankly, worrying. The law stepped over an important line when it enshrined a prohibition against incitement to religious hatred. Now people of religious beliefs think it perfectly all right to hawk their consciences round the country until they find a sympathetically minded director of a complaints agency or head of an employment tribunal. Let's make merry with Mr Green and his cohorts while we can, because soon, he will be trying to stop the expressions of our justified contempt.

Knowledge is power? The proof is with Anne

Miss Anne Hathaway, the curiously named but delectable actress, had an unexpected thrill the other day. The website of the Golden Globes awards appeared, for a short time, to indicate that she had won the Best Actress category. The website immediately afterwards insisted that a rogue asterisk did not indicate what everyone assumed, but was just a "random" error.

I wonder why it is that news of the winners of the Oscars, the Golden Globes or any number of other showbiz ceremonies never leaks out in advance. The government seemingly has the utmost difficulty in keeping the details of the Budget and the Queen's Speech to itself.

Future archaeologists of our civilisations might be conclude that the true global power lay with the sacerdotal, immured and immensely secretive small tribe in charge of these ceremonies.

If knowledge is power, the man who knows, as I write, whether Miss Hathaway has, or has not, won a Golden Globe is as the High Priest of the Aztecs.

Let boomers' babies fend for themselves

One line in John Denham's announcement of a small army of government-funded interns in hitherto private companies stood out. We all know that people entering the world of work face an extraordinarily difficult situation, and view it with great concern. For Mr Denham, pictured, the situation calls for a response. "These are the children of the baby boomers. They will be a very big group. What do we do with them? We can't just leave people to fend for themselves."

I'm afraid to have to tell Mr Denham that that is exactly what government has to do. It can't be put in the position of finding people non-jobs, and subsidising private companies to take on large numbers of victims of the crash. The economics make absolutely no sense, and it will make it much harder for the nation to extract itself from this ugly mess in due course.

The awful truth is that, in the end, people do have to fend for themselves. We look after the unemployed, but we don't invent jobs for them. Has it ever occurred to Mr Denham that adversities create difficulties, but also stretch capacities? After every downturn, we always seem to find ourselves looking at a lot of hard-faced men who did very well out of the depression; and that is not necessarily a bad thing for the nation's health.

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