Sorry, I couldn’t resist responding to a couple of yesterday’s stories.
One is about a sign in Times Square, put up by American Atheists, that shows a picture of Santa above a picture of a statue of a crucified Jesus. The inscription says “Keep the MERRY!” and “Dump the MYTH!” (photo credit: American Atheists)
Holiday message: Atheists dub Jesus a ‘myth’ on Times Square billboard
“This year it’s different,” said Catholic League spokesman Bill Donohue. “This is vile. When you depict Jesus on the cross with a crown of thorns, this is exploitative. We as Christians never harass, intimidate or insult atheists. But they can’t seem to say, ‘We simply disagree with you.’ They have to insult us.”
I have to repeat part of that:
We as Christians never harass, intimidate or insult atheists.
Yes, Bill, and some of us atheists just feel terrible about these totally unwarranted attacks on your gentle, generous, minding-its-own-business-to-a-fault faith.
Speaking of which, there’s a non-insult-to-atheists in the Lake County (California) Record-Bee, an opinion piece from the Commentary section.
One Randy Ridgel sez:
I recently listened to a reputed Atheist leader discussing Christmas. He reminded me of a small, nasty boy who enjoys pulling the wings off butterflies.
He goes on about being ragged, cold and hungry while growing up during the Great Depression, and accuses nasty-boy atheists of wanting to ruin the “pure joy” of Christmas for kids.
This bit is pretty good, in an annoying-but-still-sort-of-hilarious way:
The irony in all this is the strong faith of Atheists. The belief in something without evidence, or contrary to obvious evidence, is a faith.
It takes enormous faith to gaze at the incredible spectacle of the wheeling starry galaxies and the most infinitesimal particles in an atom, all obeying the same laws and still firmly believe there is no creator higher than you.
I continue to maintain that when you say things like “atheism is a religion” or, as this guy does, “it takes enormous faith,” you really are saying “the stuff you believe is just as stupid as the stuff I believe.”
That means Atheists have faith in nothing. They want other symbols of faith removed from public property and replaced with nothing. If the government enforces the removal of Christian symbols and replaces them with nothing, then they are favoring the Atheist faith over all others. That would be establishing a religion, the same religion established and required by the Soviet Union: Atheism. That would violate the Constitution.
On the bright side, at least we’re teaching them to recognize us as a people, capitalizing “Atheists.” (I also have to give small credit for the fact that the word is spelled right. This is a newspaper, and it has story editors, but still.)
Another gem from the same online issue, under the headline “666 or the coming apocalypse,” starts out with the comically ominous:
I am not a Biblical scholar or an expert. Nonetheless, I have some thoughts considering the Middle East violence and end of times.