Tis the Season to Reveal What Atheists Really Want

Tis the Season to Reveal What Atheists Really Want



Another Christmas season brings in yet another round of billboard proselytizing by atheist groups.  A national billboard campaign, which pictures a little girl writing a letter to Santa and the message “Dear Santa, all I want for Christmas is to skip church!  I’m too old for fairy tales” has been launched by the New Jersey-based American Atheists.  They posted this billboard in five locations around the United States.    http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2014/12/atheist_group_from_nj_launches_anti-christmas_billboards_across_the_country.html  

The group claims to be targeting “in-the-closet atheists who are pressured to observe religious traditions during the holidays.”  However, the true motivations behind these snarky billboards are much deeper than simply attempting to comfort closet atheists.  This year’s crop of billboards is part of a long-running campaign by atheist groups to ridicule and create a negative image of churchgoers.  In 2010, American Atheists posted a similar billboard that read: “You know it’s a myth.  This season celebrate reason!”  The main goal of groups like American Atheists is to perpetuate the false archetype that people of faith are ignorant and backward.

However, according to a U.S. Congressional Life Survey, higher education is more widespread among worshipers than non-worshipers.  The study noted that approximately 27 percent of Americans have a college degree or higher.  However, among worshipers, that number climbed to 47 percent.  Furthermore, the U.S. Department of Education notes that 94 percent of worshipers have completed high school.  The national average for non-churchgoers is around 80 percent.  These statistics challenge the atheist stereotype that churchgoers are simple-minded and lack the ability to reason.http://www.charismanews.com/culture/46467-why-are-atheists-investing-so-much-money-on-billboards-fighting-a-god-they-don-t-think-exists

Nevertheless, evidence is of little importance to these groups.  Their zealous need to debunk religion surpasses their efforts to promote reason, ensure separation of church and state, and provide solace for “closet atheists.”  The deceptive portrayal of churchgoers in their billboard campaigns confirms this.  It reveals that what they truly want to do is completely marginalize religion in order to eradicate it from the public sphere.

Even the German philosopher Jurgen Habermas, who is an atheist, knows that for “liberals to exclude religious voices from the public square is highly illiberal.”  Habermas argues that tolerance is a two-way street: secular people must tolerate the role of religious people in the public square, just as religious people need to tolerate secular folks.  Atheist groups that employ billboards that ridicule and belittle are simply trying to silence religious voices.  Ultimately, their Christmas season campaigns are contradictory because they promote controversy over tolerance and undermine the advancement of reason.    
http://pages.uoregon.edu/koopman/courses_readings/phil123-net/publicness/habermas_structural_trans_pub_sphere.pdf

Faith and reason do not have to be at odds.  However, campaigns like this year’s battle of the billboards puts them directly at war with one another.  Unfortunately, religious people are just as guilty as atheists in fueling this conflict.  For atheist groups to claim the intellectual high ground because they do not believe in God, or the historically substantiated reality of Jesus, is absurd.  Their billboards expose a zealousness that is just as strong as that of the most ardent Christian fundamentalist.  Perhaps a little intellectual honesty and an effort to reconcile, rather than destroy, might truly advance reason and provide comfort for America’s poor, “persecuted” atheists.              
http://www.ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/JP2FIDES.HTM


Rodney Pearson is a teacher, researcher, and analyst whose work focuses on the intersection of politics and culture.  He is the founding editor of HippoPolitics.com and principal consultant at Hippo Strategies LLC.  Please feel free to contact him at Rodney@HippoStrategies.com.