{"id":623,"date":"2010-12-04T03:54:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-04T03:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2010\/12\/this-season-celebrate-reason.html"},"modified":"2010-12-04T03:54:00","modified_gmt":"2010-12-04T03:54:00","slug":"this-season-celebrate-reason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2010\/12\/this-season-celebrate-reason.html","title":{"rendered":"This Season Celebrate Reason"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Signs are going up around the country urging people to come out of the atheist \/ non-theist closet.\u00a0 Atheists have finally learned that strength in numbers is the only way for us to gain credibility and shed the imbecilic prejudice against horrid \u201cgodlessness.\u201d\u00a0 One of the signs, at the New York Tunnel, reads, \u201cYou Know it\u2019s a Myth. This Season Celebrate Reason.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 One television station contacted some Catholic official who said that he wasn\u2019t impressed.\u00a0 Like the billboard was targeted at him.<\/p>\n

Apparently some Catholics did care.\u00a0 One of our nation\u2019s most prominent lunatics, William O\u2019Donohue of the Catholic League, bought a sign of his own:<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to make a statement, because 80 percent of the American population is Christian, [and] 96 percent of the American population celebrates Christmas,\u201d said Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League. \u201cWe don\u2019t need people trying to counter with their anti-messages in December.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Campaigns like this one and one by the American Humanist Association<\/a> are targeting closeted non-theists.\u00a0 The organizations have stated that.\u00a0 Explicitly.\u00a0 Repeatedly.\u00a0 Yet most theists think we\u2019re trying to convert people.<\/p>\n

Religious people think that everyone sees the world through religious eyes.\u00a0 We\u2019re not trying to convert anyone.\u00a0 That\u2019s what they do.\u00a0 We\u2019re just talking to people out there who think as we do and are afraid to be ostracized for it.\u00a0 This holiday season belongs to all of us.\u00a0 It\u2019s ancient human culture \u2013 whether you call it Chanukah, Christmas, Solstice or Saturnalia.\u00a0 It\u2019s the same message that I give cultural Jews at the High Holidays or Passover:\u00a0 You don\u2019t have to believe in God or anything supernatural to celebrate because it\u2019s your culture and your holiday, too.<\/p>\n

Happy Chanukah, Merry Christmas and Good Solstice to All!<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Signs are going up around the country urging people to come out of the atheist \/ non-theist closet.\u00a0 Atheists have finally learned that strength in numbers is the only way for us to gain credibility and shed the imbecilic prejudice against horrid \u201cgodlessness.\u201d\u00a0 One of the signs, at the New York Tunnel, reads, \u201cYou Know […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[6,8,17,30],"class_list":["post-623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogentries","tag-atheism","tag-catholicism","tag-humanism","tag-non-theism"],"yoast_head":"\nThis Season Celebrate Reason<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Signs are going up around the country urging people to come out of the atheist \/ non-theist closet.\u00a0 Atheists have finally learned that strength in\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2010\/12\/this-season-celebrate-reason.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"This Season Celebrate Reason\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Signs are going up around the country urging people to come out of the atheist \/ non-theist closet.\u00a0 Atheists have finally learned that strength in\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2010\/12\/this-season-celebrate-reason.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Atheist Rabbi\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-12-04T03:54:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jeffrey L. 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