Atheists Unbound

As you know, I cover news in Santa Monica. Recently, there was a bit of controversy stirred by a community of outspoken (read: annoying) atheists who won access to public display places that this time of year, usually host Nativity scenes.

You can read the nitty-gritty details here.

An atheist anti-Nativity display designed specifically to blow your mind,
featuring Poseidon, Jesus, Santa Claus and Michael Douglas in Wall Street.

Santa Monica does raffles to see who gets use of the public spaces. Usually, it's just a bunch of local churches who enter the raffle so the only question is which church's Nativity scene will be on display.

This year, several groups of atheists decided to enter the raffle and ended up winning quite a few of the public spaces.

They say they are tired of having Christianity's sanctimonious message shoved down their throats every year, so they decided to turn the tables and shove their sanctimonious message down everyone else's throats for a change, to teach those darn Christians a lesson!

But also, they wanted to draw attention to the fact that there are many atheists out there who may have otherwise not felt free to share their faith with others around them, because, everyone knows how hard it is to grow up in the small, homogeneous, God-fearing town of Los Angeles when you yourself aren't a believer.

Alright, so here's my problem.

No one is going to walk past these signs and say "Oh, wow! 37 million? Maybe everything I've ever believed is false!" and then renounce however many years of faith and tradition. These signs aren't designed to change anyone's mind.

I'd understand feeling empowered to express your beliefs if you grew up in a community that was openly hostile to them, but in Santa Monica (or Los Angeles) atheists haven't ever been persecuted or constrained or otherwise oppressed. This city was founded on the principle of self-worship. We are a city on a hill, a shinning example of the cult of the ego. Even most believers are kind of nihilistic in this town, wearing God as a fashion accessory or tribal badge.

These signs are just a good reminder that atheists aren't above the petty squabbling that they often condemn religious sects of engaging in. The sect of atheism is certainly not a small one in this country and they want to cram their beliefs down your throats just like every other sect out there does.

The problem is that the belief that there is no God takes as much faith as the belief in God. Now, before you all get your atheist feathers ruffled, belief in an intelligent, powerful deity or the existence of a soul does not mean the belief in a literal understanding of the Bible. Most atheists I've met attack Christian fundamentalism as the archetypal folly of faith, which, is pretty uncontroversial except to fundamentalists.

If you want to shout loud and proud that there is no God, prove it. The bitch is, you can't and absence of proof is not proof of absence. You may be able to prove that certain things in the Bible are false, but that proves nothing (one way or another) about the existence of God.

I guess my point is, "What's the point of having this argument?"

Welcome to the club of annoying proselytizers. You've got what you want. Happy now?

Alright, I'm done being a sanctimonious agnostic. Go back to believing whatever the fuck it is you want to believe.

Love,
The Slasinator