If you’ve ever attempted a reasonable conversation with an American atheist about his or her distaste for religious influence in American politics, you know well that the primary beef atheists tend to have with religion is due to religionists’ assumed compulsion to impose their religious beliefs upon those who would choose to be unreligious.
If you happen to be an atheist, I’d wager you’d still agree with that observation.
But most atheists, especially those of a leftish bent, would also have you believe they are an ostracized bunch. That their belief in nothing is not taken seriously, and that’s all because they’ve been marginalized in a culture that takes a belief in a God and his once-earthly Son having died for our sins as a permanent feature of life. This offends their sensibilities beyond all comprehension.
And if you’ve been involved in such conversation as I have, you have also been taken aback and flustered at the absolute fervor in which atheists will launch into their diatribes in an effort to convince you that there is no God. They will tell you that the tomes that spawned this society (which incidentally were fundamental in allowing their freedom to think and express these very thoughts) are a collection of many thousands-of-years-old lies, edited by self-interested publishers. They will suggest that we are far better equipped to come to a reasonable conclusion about the mysteries of life today, despite the majority of our direct ancestors having dedicated many more hours in their shorter lives to pondering and discussing these mysteries with diligent and daily thought -- whereas millions upon millions in our culture seem far more interested in observing the Kardashian sisters’ daily activities as a chosen topic of their intellectual engagement.
What you also cannot have mistaken is that atheists will, almost invariably, speak to you with such intellectual condescension about your belief structure, ostensibly as a method to endear you to their own belief in the great nothingness that created somethingness which is, in the end, all
meaningless. And they will arrogantly challenge your position, and impose their beliefs upon you as fact, as if they actually held some intellectual high ground in an argument that will ultimately, given the evidence attainable in this life, prove inconclusive in the absence of faith.
That the atheist is devoted to something other than pure belief and blind faith is the great deception upon which the atheist’s entire intellectual foundation is built. It is a house of cards that they give the veneer of stone. But make no mistake -- they have faith. To believe that nothing created something is every bit as much a leap of faith, perhaps an even greater leap given the evidence in the physical world, than believing that something had to create something else. (See: the First Law of Thermodynamics -- Energy can be neither created nor destroyed. If we accept that as fact, how could the original establishment of an energy source have taken place without outside influence?)
The irony, however, is that we American Christians are fine with atheists believing the way they do. We may express our position, and perhaps offer reasoning for our belief. We may even have the audacity to brandish a cross to achieve that expression, put up a Christmas tree, or even offer a representation of the nativity of Christ in our yards at Christmastime to convey our belief. However, most atheists seem far more insistent upon destroying the foundation of Christian belief and supplanting it with their own.
That is the purpose of the anti-Christmas messages we continue to be subjected to by the atheist flock every holiday season. Every year, atheist groups invest time and money to convey their belief that there is no God, that no Christ-child ever existed in a manger like in that nativity scene (a beautiful representation of hope and life that is apparently an eyesore to them), and that the premise of Christmas is altogether false.
This year, we got to see atheists’ appeal via billboards in Nashville, for example, in an effort to convert the “in-the-closet atheists who are pressured to observe religious traditions during the holidays.”
photo credit: WWC TV
As if there’s some epidemic of college students returning home to mom and dad’s house for the holidays, bowing their heads at Christmas dinner, pressured to actually believe in a prayer thanking the nonexistent deity that their professors insist is just a figment of their troglodyte folks’ imagination…
That’s a silly thought, sure. Here is the reality -- many atheists are the social and spiritual missionaries of their faith, and nothing more. And their faith in nothing is not superior to religionists in any intellectual realm, however much they desire or purport that to be the case. The atheists’ application of their faith, however, is often a zealous and strict dogma, to which you either adhere or you must be converted toward.
Christmas, and the religious context in which our culture chooses to celebrate it, has indeed been under attack. Atheists hate it when we Christians frame the circumstances in that way. But while you know no Christians saying that everyone passing by must bow and pay reverence to the nativity scene in your front yard, you likely know at least one or two atheists who claim that such displays should be taken down in respect to any who may not think like you.
So tell me… which of the two groups would you say is currently comprised of fanatics?
Nonetheless, Merry Christmas, and the happiest of New Years to all!
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