Great Moments in Atheism

James Taranto has a couple of items in Best of the Web Today concerning atheists and their travails. How about this from the website of the American Atheists:

"Coming out of the closet" is a term most associated with gays and lesbians announcing to the world that they are homosexual. Few regret it, having found their way toward a more open and satisfying life.

But there is another closet which is hiding a different minority: atheists. Many of us, like many gays of previous decades, hide in the shadows due to fear of hostility and aversion to confrontations.

But we can't stay in the closet any longer. The Christian Right, in their never-ending quest to make everyone Christian, has unleashed an unparalleled slew of efforts aimed at Christianizing the country. On top of legislation, constitutional amendments, and publicity, the religious right have engaged an a war of words and slander against their greatest enemy: the logic and common sense of atheism.

I've always thought that it took more faith to be an atheist than to be a Christian. With all the "logic and common sense" that atheism supposedly affords, it's pretty tough to observe the wonders of the universe and just dismiss any possibility of a Supreme Being of some sort.

And frankly, the atheists don't do themselves any favors as far as public relations goes when they pull stunts like this:

A Texas-based atheist group has filed a federal lawsuit against the Utah Highway Patrol and the Utah Department of Transportation, demanding that crosses erected in honor of fallen UHP troopers be removed from highways on the principle of separation of church and state.

In the suit filed in U.S. District court Thursday, American Atheists Inc., a nonprofit Texas corporation with main offices based out of New Jersey, says several of the 12-foot steel crosses memorializing troopers killed in the line of duty are located on public land in violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment. . . .

"Generally speaking, the crosses are to memorialize these officers who have given the ultimate sacrifice to the state," UHP spokesman Jeff Nigbur said. Nigbur said a large number of the crosses are located on private property near public highways.

As for the religious symbolism, Nigbur said, the cross symbol was chosen as a general symbol to memorialize the fallen.

"We chose the cross because the cross is the international sign of peace, and it has no religious significance in it," Nigbur said.

"I think that's less than honest," said Salt Lake civil rights attorney Brian Barnard, who represents the atheists.

Of course, Christmas time really brings them out of the closet. I recently read a piece (sorry, I can't find the link) about a guy who was complaining to a school district about the presence of a Christmas tree in his kid's classroom, claiming that he didn't want his children exposed to "Christian" symbols. That doesn't sound like a very "logical" complaint to me.

When did the Christmas tree become a Christian symbol? It's origins are pagan, as are many other rituals or symbols of the Christmas season. It's not like they reenacted a creche scene in the classroom and made his kid dress up as a goat in the Bethlehem stable.

Hey, if you want to be an atheist, have at it. Someday when we're both dead and gone, we'll see who has the last laugh. If you're right and all there is after death is an empty void, oh well. You could argue that my faith was in vain, but bottom line, I didn't really suffer any damage by believing.

However, if I'm right and there is a God, you will have lost everything in your search for "logic and common sense". I hope it's worth it.