So, unlike many towns, our little suburb had escaped nativity scene battles for many years because the main Christmas light display was in a downtown park with a church across the street, so that church put up a nativity set that was adjacent to the display and no one really felt the need to do any more than that.
Until last year, when a group, not even from our town, sought permission, and the village created a “free speech zone.” This year, the atheists responded. Their banner says this: “There are no gods, no angels, no devils, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.” (I didn’t write this down at the time, or remember it, but apparently, from a search for “enslaves minds,” a phrase I did remember, I found out that this is the favored text for atheist Christmastime “free speech” banners — and I’m a bit at a loss for what they want to accomplish.
The banner is sponsored by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and, according to their website, they claim that “the history of Western civilization shows us that most social and moral progress has been brought about by persons free from religion” — a claim that is more than a little questionable when they claim for themselves being “the first to speak out for prison reform, for humane treatment of the mentally ill, for abolition of capital punishment, for women’s right to vote, for death with dignity for the terminally ill, and for the right to choose contraception, sterilization and abortion have been freethinkers, just as they were the first to call for an end to slavery.” Now I have to admit that I don’t know much about the history of atheism/humanism, but so far as I do know, the abolitionist movement was a decidedly Christian movement, and the “death with dignity” and pro-abortion rights movements I would hardly label as “moral progress” (especially since Margaret Sanger and others like her did not just advocate for availability of contraception, but were decidedly pro-eugenics).
But — do they really want to change anyone’s mind with their “hardening hearts” accusation? Or are they indifferent to public opinion and just want to say their piece, with an attitude of resentment at the majority religion?
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