Epicurus on the bus

So Richard Dawkins, Darwinian scientist and crusader for atheism, has launched a campaign to spread the atheist message via bus billboards (see above). The ads read: 'There is probably no God. So stop worrying and get on with your lives.'

This is a reversal to Epicurean tactics. The Epicureans believed a primary cause of unhappiness was worrying what happened to the soul after death, so they would contemplate the vast emptiness and atomic randomness of the cosmos as a means of therapy. They even tried to spread their message via large roadside adverts.

All well and good in the 3rd century BC. But surely there's better ways to spend time and money in 21st century London, the most secular and materialist society that ever existed, where hardly anyone believes in God, and even fewer sit around worrying about the afterlife? Sounds like evangelical atheism to me.