Atheist Groups Continue to Protest Too Much

"At this season of THE WINTER SOLSTICE may reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds."

That's the text of a sign created by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, erected near a nativity display in the Legislative Building in Olympia, Washington. The sign was ripped down by an unknown person or persons and later found in a ditch by someone who turned the sign over to radio station KMPS-FM. Freedom From Religion founder Annie Laurie Gaylor pointed out the irony of a vandal breaking one of the famous Ten Commandments, "Thou shalt not steal", in swiping her sign. Atheists always have a pithy line at the ready.

I've said it before and I'm sure I'll say it again. I'm pretty close to atheist...I guess I'll just say I don't know what's out there but I doubt it's an all-knowing being that created us all and waits to sit in judgement on high. And I certainly agree with the sentiments expressed in the FFRF's sign, not the least of which is the idea that religion can harden hearts---see, for example, the recent passing of Prop 8 in California---and enslave minds.

But the efforts of the FFRF and other atheist groups that have been erecting billboards coinciding with Christmas (amongst them Washington, DC's American Humanist Association) continue to rub me the wrong way. My biggest problem is, they can't seem to own up to their own ad campaigns.

The AHA's Fred Edwords claimed that their organization had budget money left over in December and that's when they decided to use it, and it had nothing to do with Christmas. However, their ad depicts a shrugging black guy in dreads wearing an out sized Santa Claus suit, under the slogan "Why believe in a God? Just be good for goodness' sake." Nothing to do with Christmas, huh, Fred?

Dan Barker, a co-founded of the Olympia group, had this to say: "When people ask us, 'Why are you hateful? Why are you putting up something critical of people's holidays? -- we respond that we kind of feel that the Christian message is the hate message. On that Nativity scene, there is this threat of internal violence if we don't submit to that master. Hate speech goes both ways."

Dan has some pretty curious ideas about the nativity. Having been raised Catholic, I'm pretty sure that's not what the nativity is about. It's about a light being born in a dark time. It's about hope. From Dan's position, that hope is based on a lie. That's his opinion, which is his right to have and express. But it doesn't change the meaning of the Christian nativity into some ominous threat of submission and violence.

But Dan evades the question. Exactly why does he feel the need to put up something critical of people's holidays? Why not create an ad campaign that literally has nothing to do with Christmas? Every time these atheist groups attack one of the most important Christian holidays, it just makes them look petty and cruel. If their object is to attract all of the unpleasant and superior atheists, they might do okay. They just shouldn't expect me to sign up with them anytime soon.