Recently, the American Atheists put up this billboard along the route to the Lincoln Tunnel in New York City:
David Silverman, the president of American Atheists, confuses me with his explanation for picking this particular battle now:
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
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“Every year, atheists get blamed for having a war on Christmas, even if we don’t do anything,” he said. “This year, we decided to give the religious right a taste of what war on Christmas looks like.”
Maybe not the best way to convince people of your reasonableness, but ok…
Meanwhile, the Catholic League has come back with a billboard of its own:
Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, a lay civil rights organization that receives no church financing, said that an anonymous donor in Manhattan came up with the money — about $18,500 — to buy the 26-by-24-foot billboard at Dyer Avenue and 31st Street for about a month. It went up Monday afternoon.
Mr. Donohue said the billboard was not intended as “a statement against atheists or agnostics, most of whom are good people,” but as a repudiation to “aggressive, militant atheism” that he believes is growing increasingly prevalent in America.
Frankly, I feel like the American Atheists lost this battle before it even started. Picking the holly-jolliest time of the year, in a city as magical as New York at Christmastime, to tell people to “celebrate reason” is probably not going to win you many converts.