Atheists Should Have No Say About Christmas

Christmas is upon us again and you can tell by “that feeling in the air,” not so much the feeling of peace and good cheer; but rather, the feeling of warring atheists who flex their militant philosophical muscles every year at this time. Such is the case in the “case” of the disappearing sign claiming to celebrate “winter solstice” placed alongside a public nativity scene in Olympia, Washington, on Friday and later found in a ditch. (CNN.com) The sign, in part, reads, "Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds," and was placed there by the Freedom from Religion Foundation.

While atheists boldly attack Christians and their most holy celebrations, they imagine, somehow, that they can thoughtlessly eliminate God from reality and then walk away as if their own world is unaffected. They have the philosophical gall to dismiss God and then continue life as if the very God they repudiate still exists.

Let’s imagine that we live in a world like the one atheists say we live in - one that really did evolve by purely natural and physical processes. Such a world logically reduces everything, including man, to a complex mix of matter at the expense of those “little” things we usually associate with human nature, like mind, soul and, for the purposes of this column, freedom of choice. Hence, since God doesn’t exist, we live in a determined world, a “fact” that atheist John Searle tell us, “…we have known all along: namely, mental states are biological phenomena. Consciousness, intentionality, subjectivity and mental causation are all a part of our biological life, history, along with growth, reproduction, the secretion of bile, and digestions.” An atheistic world, he continues, “does not allow for the freedom of the will.” (Minds, Brains and Science) Welcome to the real atheistic world.

Even the physicist Stephan Hawking understands that atheism results in a universe without choices. In an atheistic world, the freedom of choice that we all think we have is both a philosophical and psychological farce; because, “even those who think themselves free are merely determined to think so.” How atheists think they, or anybody else for that matter, can “choose” to be atheists or Christians when their godless world eliminates the freedom to do so in the first place is beyond me.

So don’t give me this “religion is myth” stuff, especially at Christmas, when atheists seem strangely and illogically content to think that “choice” actually plays some role in their rejection of Christianity. Don’t tell me that, as the sign reads, “There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell…” unless you are man or woman enough to add “no choice” to the sign as well.

So, the idea that atheists “should have no say about Christmas” isn't a legal or political statement but a philosophical one. If their worldview eliminates the possibility of real choice, and it does, why worry that Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus at all.

Perhaps the “winter solstice” sign should read, "Choice is but myth as we deliriously imagine that we have “hearts” and “minds with which to choose.”

Tony