Atheism’s Glorious Crusade

The American Atheists from Cranfield New Jersey decided to take a tour of  Bradford  County, Florida and were appalled at what they saw – the Ten Commandments on public property! It turned out to be just the thing they were looking for and they filed suit:

• “We have maintained from the beginning that the Ten Commandments doesn’t belong on government property,” stated American Atheists President David Silverman in a press release. “There is no secular purpose for the monument whatsoever and it makes atheists feel like second-class citizens. But if keeping it there means we have the right to install our own monument, then installing our own is exactly what we’ll do.”

“No secular purpose?” That now means “no atheistic purpose.” However, for any society to remain robust and healthy, it needs a common core – a rationale for its existence and survival. We have now lost that. Neither the Ten Commandments or even the Constitution are able to provide the common core – the thing that makes us all feel like we have a common goal, that we are brethren striving for the same values.

We still swear on these, but they remain little more than an empty tradition for most Americans. If we do not know who we are, we cannot know where we are going, apart from the next sexual encounter. This is tragic! It is also frustrating. We no longer speak the same unifying language – we have become strangers to one another - and we have no idea of the ramifications of this. None of us have any direct experience of a civil war, and therefore take our comforts for granted.

Can the atheists give us anything that looks or feels like a common glue? Evidently not:

• The group plans to place a 1,500 pound granite bench near the Ten Commandments monument, which will feature quotes from American Atheists founder Madeline Murray O’Hair, founding fathers Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, as well as an excerpt from the Treaty of Tripoli. An area of the monument will also feature the ten Biblical punishments for violating the Ten Commandments, such as the death penalty for murder and adultery. http://christiannews.net/2013/06/02/americas-first-atheist-monument-to-be-displayed-outside-florida-courthouse/

The atheists cannot offer anything constructive apart from ridicule. They will recite the biblical punishments for the violation of the Ten Commandments, but have nothing to offer in its place. Although they might cite the Founding Fathers, none of these were known to be atheists, and they certainly weren’t promoting an atheist agenda. In fact, atheists almost uniformly admit that they have no beliefs about anything, even about atheism.

I wish someone would require an answer from them to these questions:

• What do you have to offer instead of the principles and beliefs that have made this country great? From what we can see, whenever atheism has come to power, they have always financed it with millions of corpses. Why should we believe that it will be any different this time?

Meanwhile, they complain that the public display of the Ten Commandments “makes atheists feel like second-class citizens.” Have they considered that their flagship communism has made many others feel worse than second class citizens! If “feeling like a second class citizen” is a sincere concern of theirs, they should also be concerned that they might be making others “feel like second class citizens.”

Did a Ten Commandment display in Florida make these New Jersey atheists feel like second class citizens? Of course not! Are they concerned that Christians in the military might feel like second class citizens now that they have been threatened with a court marshal if they proselytize? Meanwhile, there is no such threat against the promotion of atheism, a religion that has the murder of 100,000,000 people in its resume.

This is not an isolated faux pox by a group of renegade atheists. It represents their determined thrust. If you have any doubts about this, just scan the various atheist websites and Facebook groups! Almost all are devoted to scorn, without any fruitful vision for a healthy society, apart from the promotion of permissiveness.

They claim that “There is no secular purpose for the [Ten Commandment] monument.” However, if this criticism is to be taken seriously, the atheist must show a purpose for their agenda. However, it is only a negative one.

Not all atheists show a disregard for truth. Atheist Walter Balcerak writes, “As a secular humanist, I believe religions are mainly harmful delusions.” Surprisingly, he acknowledges that some good comes out of religion. Balcerak quotes the atheist professor of psychology, Jonathan Haidt:

• According to Haidt, religion does more than unite people. He says studies indicate that religiously observant Americans “are more generous with their time and money, especially in helping the needy, and they are more active in community life.”

• Research on 19^th century communes demonstrates the cohesiveness of religious groups, he asserts, because they were much more likely to survive than secular ones. Of the 400 communes studied, 20 years after their founding only 6 percent of secular groups had survived, compared to 39 percent of religious groups.

This again raises the question, “What does atheism have to offer us in place of the Ten Commandments?”