Billboards Keep Atheists Company During Holidays

Amanda Keller
So another Christmas season is rolling around and for some reason the Atheists or the Humanists or whatever NON-God group they want to be known as this year are buying up billboards and the sides of buses and doing their best to land a punch in the gut of all faith-loving folks. The ads feature a person dressed in a Santa suit (a secularized image based on Saint Nicholas) with the copy reading: "Why Believe in a God? Just be good for goodness' sake." The given reasoning behind the ad campaign is to make atheists, agnostics and all non-theists feel they are not alone during this religiously co-opted time of year. WHAT? Atheists, agnostics and non-theists don't want to feel alone? FEEL ALONE. So atheists, agnostics and non-theists are in danger, real danger of feeling alone. Is this not the quintessential irony?

Okay, so these folks, these atheists, agnostics and non-theists don't want the company of God but they do want the company of a billboard, an advertisement on a bus, a runner ad in the subway. Actual people are not comforting these lonely atheists, agnostics, and non-theists but signs are. Words written on an inanimate object provide a hug while mocking people of faith. This serves as "company" to those lonely non-believers. Good company! Good people? For goodness' sake!

People of faith recognize signs too but our signs cost nothing and mock no one. Signs like the birth of a child, the change of seasons, the inconvenience that led to a happy unexpected result, the passing of a dear friend. All of these for people of faith provide signs of a Creator, a master of design, constant companion and overseer of our Great Test.

First qualm the non-God folks have, they say we religious types traffic in ancient archetypes and myths. Seeing that their latest leader has been dubbed the "Messiah" sort of dissolves this argument in my opinion. (Obama is my President but will never be a Messiah). I do believe ancient archetypes were used to identify the important religious figures of the times. I think we humans are hard wired to LOOK for these profiles. Word to the P.C. crowd, profiling has always existed and always will as long as humans walk the earth. Though I do think our modern profiling standards of what qualifies as a Messiah and even an Abraham Lincoln, needs an upgrading.

The second of the NON-God-er's top ten gripes is that religion brings ills to the world. Hey, I'm a Catholic, I know human beings have taken the faith I worship and have used it for evil purposes. Humans take things like a candlestick, meant to be a vehicle for illumination, and use this same candlestick as a weapon to kill someone (can you tell I've played many rounds of CLUE?). Seriously, yes, humans in any organized group can hijack the group and create evil from what was meant for good (even Government). This is not to excuse the human weaknesses that are visited upon all of the great faiths of the world but rather to explain how the faith itself is often unjustly tattooed with the radical, misguided, even warped actions of supposed followers. But I do not see the Faith as the cause of these peoples' actions. No, these people would find a dogma, movement, mind-set, to funnel their character flaws through regardless. Some of them may well find Atheism! (Godless forbid)

But back to this need of non-God-ers to mock one group as they comfort their own. I have a suspicion this is not their true intent. I've known a few secularists in my day and time and time again they love to point to science and especially Einstein as "proof" they are right and I am wrong. Apparently, if Hitler did it, it's bad and if Einstein said it, it's true. They quote Einstein:

"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony

of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions

of human beings."

"Morality is the highest importance-but for us, not God."

For the non-God-ers, these statements make all religious faiths folly.

Yet Einstein also said:

"I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist.

We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library

filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone

must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not

understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly

suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but

doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even

the most intelligent human being toward God."

And with these words it is clear this brilliant mind struggled with the obvious hand of a Creator in all of the design he calculated within the mathematical truths he lived amongst. Einstein's biggest problem with God as a God who was our "personal God" through a faith was the fact that an intelligent Creator would surely not create a world with pain, suffering, evil but rather a world that was God's ultimate perfect creation. Einstein makes the mistake (yes, it's possible) that God's purpose was a perfect universe but according to faith, God's purpose was rather a universe where spiritual creatures can choose their faith or lack of faith as well as between good and bad, an existence where each is put through trials and are given the freedom to face them as each person sees fit. The fact that evil/bad exists went against Einstein's ability to believe a "personal" God exists. However, without both the bad and the good, no free will of choice could exist. God is not a puppeteer. He loves us enough to let us choose, to let us fail and learn or simply to fail and fall.

To take science a step further, Quantum Physics provides more than enough theory for the existence of Heaven AND Hell in quantum's infinite realities. I've dabbled in this discipline and found one book anyone can pick up and read called "The Tao of Physics" by Fritjof Capra. This book links Eastern religions directly to the theories of quantum. As a Christian I saw connections with my own faith as well but regardless of one's faith, this book clearly lays out and discusses the possibility that science and faith are rationally connected, especially through the advanced theories of quantum.

Back to the Atheist's recent tact, I find this desire for perfection, no pain, no ills here on earth the driving desire for all non-God-ers, secularists, socialists. Since they decide all existence begins and ends here, the political system of socialism is a must. We have to get it right HERE and NOW for ALL or else it is too late! This ironically small-minded view comes from the self-proclaimed most educated amongst us. They don't know how we got here or why we're here but they are darn sure this is all there is. They are so sure that we better make everything the same for all, even if the reality of this system results in only the smarties in power having it good while the masses live sub-par, whether you had it better before the social engineering or not. This is the secularist, socialist, Atheist agenda. This is why God has got to be rubbed out. God promotes free will and that leads to trouble. It has nothing to do with lonely non-God-ers. It has everything to do with psuedo-intellectual elitists who want to control the masses and play God since they can't conceive of anything smarter and more enlightened than they are.

The biggest joke is that they think we "believers" will eventually "believe" that the Government can do on earth what God will not. This is the same Government system that has screwed up the economies in Europe years before the U.S. was having "problems", the same Government system that set up Freddie and Fannie to push the mortgage industry into making aggressive loans to people vastly unable to pay them resulting in the disaster we face in our financial markets today. The same Government system that backed the unions that worked up impossible terms for the auto industry to meet, making them unable to compete with the world's NON-UNION, NON-GOVERNMENT involved car manufacturers. Worldwide, big Government spells big problems but according to our big Government media/press, nothing could be farther from the truth. Now who is trafficking in myths?

On that note, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Ramadan, Delightful Divali, and a Merry Christmas season to all who celebrate those holidays. To all others, have a fantastic FESTIVUS.

Published by Amanda Keller

Mother of three with opinions and ideas.  View profile

15 Comments

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  • Anne Bryant1/12/2009

    Amanda did not say that she thought suffering was good and your accusal is one of the more intellectually dishonest remarks I have heard on this site for some time. You might consider that our faith tells us that we must love, look after and care for our neighbors. I don't have any buses where I live, so can you tell me who, in your beliefs, is supposed to take care of the less fortunate?

  • Anne Bryant1/12/2009

    Kylyssa, Sheryl's quote that there are no athiests in foxholes is a very old and well used quote. I have never seen any religious billboard that said anyone was going to hell. Can you please tell me where they are?

  • J P Whickson12/27/2008

    Okay, just to pipe in, I have to believe that a superior mind created all this. If I believe and die, and there is no God, I haven't lost anything but had comfort in life. If I believe and die, and there is a God, I'm in like a porch climber. It's a win-win situation.

  • Kylyssa Shay12/18/2008

    I despise the Christian billboards which say "Don't believe in Christ? Hell is waiting." but I'd never vandalize them, steal them, or try to get them taken down as Christians are doing to the atheist ads because I believe you have the right to free speech so long as you aren't yelling "fire" in a theater or inciting people to riot.

  • Kylyssa Shay12/18/2008

    Sheryl Young said, "Then, as the WWII men came home saying, "there are no atheists in foxholes". Yes, that was a very disrespectful thing to say - to say that the sacrifices of atheist American soldiers are of no meaning because they don't believe in God is a slap in the face. It's the abuse that theists heap on atheists that causes reactions such as the billboards. In many areas of the country atheists have to pretend to be theists to protect their jobs and families from job discrimination, social discrimination, and in some cases physical or emotional abuse. There are religious billboards everywhere insisting that every non-Christian will go to hell. Aren't those billboards attacks on all non-Christians? So if the suggestion that others is wrong comes from Christians it is OK but other people shouldn't be allowed to disagree?

  • Snidely Whiplash11/21/2008

    I hope an ol' agnostic like me can pipe in here - happy holidays to all. And i got my Festivus pole and we're getting ready for the "airing of grievances," so let's turn this mother out. Really, I don't get the religious haters. As I have said before, I have been welcomed with open arms into the cockles of Conservatism of which most members are God fearing folks. I have never ever felt as if I were unwelcome due to my lack of religious beliefs, and in fact have experienced nothing but kindness and well wishes from believers. People who live what they believe are some of the finest people I have ever known. Not that you need any help from me, but I will defend your right to your beliefs 'til they kill me and chuck me into the dirt. Frankly, real Christians are some of the finest to have ever lived and I count myself lucky to be accepted by them, in spite of my lack of belief.

  • Endora11/20/2008

    Atheists are so very jealous of our comfort found in God.
    Poor Things! They just have to try and be spoilers. What vapid lives!
    Great Article!

  • Tony Vega11/19/2008

    Great work, Amanda. It's not all nonbelievers on this spontaneously combusted green earth ;-) that attempt to erode our traditional values..it's mainly the liberal ones..the secular progressives. I'm sure they must feel they have a shot in the arm this season..after all their chosen one BO doesn't celebrate Christmas.

  • The Minus Factor11/19/2008

    Interesting read Amanda, thanks!

  • Amanda Keller11/19/2008

    Yes Anne, it certainly does tell us all alot. It tells me those who clamor for diversity the most, tolerate it the least.

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