Bah Humbug! Or have yourself an atheist holiday season

Ummm yea. Still, Nailing Santa is an aceptable form of protest. Is not as if we where going from door to door traying to tell people that our way of thinking is correct.

^ Nailing Santa to a cross does not convey any kind of meaningful message nor accomplish any goal. It does not promote tolerance and instead comes off as unnecessarily hostile. A vast majority of Christians would never try to force the Bible down your throat and the views of a few extremists won't change as a result of this. All this does is make the moderates uncomfortable and provide the extremists with ammo.

Why sink to that level?

edited 19th Dec '11 9:24:30 PM by Pentadragon

As I've said earlier in the thread, (in different terms), you have to know your audience, and more to the point, you need to know who you're talking to. Believe it or not, in public displays, being outlandish actually works. Why? Because you're not trying to convince the truly "ignorant" people. (I put it in quotes because I don't think it's a matter of being ignorant, and more a matter of being misguided) You're trying to convince the person sitting on the fence. And like it or not, strong-toned arguments work, a lot of the time. Now, when you're talking to someone on a one-to-one basis, things change of course. But a public display is not a one-to-one discussion.

Again, this isn't something that I particularly LIKE, as I tend to like being non-combative myself, but it's the way of the world.

The entire point of this bru-ha-ha was shoving religious beliefs down people's throats. Now, it just happens that these particular beliefs are probably pretty tame, in the big scale of things (Frankly, Easter pisses me off 100x more), but still. That's the whole point of what they were doing. (With Nativity scenes, and all that). All this is basically an in-kind reaction.

edited 19th Dec '11 9:31:54 PM by Karmakin

Why does Easter piss you off?

Don't like the violent...physical and emotional...imagery.

Nailing Santa to a cross kind of strikes me as the same thing.

Yup. Which was probably the point they were trying to make.

Edit: Well, I don't know that. But it's more of the point that I'm trying to say that the boundaries of acceptable behavior are generally set by the more powerful/influential/larger party and as such it's quite foolish and quite frankly insulting/counter-productive to blame less powerful/less influential/smaller parties for following the same boundaries.

edited 19th Dec '11 10:06:40 PM by Karmakin

It's actually an extremely powerful symbolic statement of how society has for all practical purposes elevated rampant consumerism into a religion in itself — frankly one that needed very badly to be said.

Unfortunately, it's also very easy to misconstrue, especially in the atmosphere of the kind of crap other factions were already pulling. Which is why I wish artists would leave a frigging post-it or something instead of waiting until after the shitstorm to explain themselves.

As for Easter, people tend to focus too much on the violence and death. The point was never the violence and death. The point was the compassion that it took to go through it, and that said violence and death didn't slow Him down for long.

edited 19th Dec '11 10:08:03 PM by Pykrete

"As for Easter, people tend to focus too much on the violence and death."

I am never going to look at that bunny and his eggs the same way again.

I'm an apatheist. But I still celebrate Christmas. Why? My whole family does, and I don't think you have to believe in the existence of a deity to celebrate Christmas. You can still celebrate Christ without being Christian.

That having been said, Jesus wasn't even born on Christmas anyway, so I don't see why atheists can't celebrate it. As for nailing Santa to a cross, yeah, it's a little weird, but First Amendment and all that.

Pretty much how I feel about it, although I'm not sure if it really needed to be said. A Charlie Brown Christmas covers the same topic, after all, and that's a classic for this time of year. I'm pretty sure commercialization of Christmas is something everyone's at least somewhat aware of. Stores pushing Christmas stuff as early as October (or earlier!) is hard to miss.

More importantly, though, raising awareness of it is not necessarily going to stop the consumerism surrounding Christmas. It would take a motivated and focused response by the public to companies encouraging the consumerism in order to curtail it. Otherwise they're just going to keep at it.

I'm not making an exaggeration here, either; all I have to do is point to White Day, a tradition started wholecloth by Japanese confectionery companies, linked to another holiday that was already heavily commercialized (Valentine's Day) ... but that's beyond the scope here to discuss further.

There were better ways to make a point though. It's self-demeaning and again, makes other local atheists look bad. It's attacking a massive group for the actions of relatively few people. It's just making those tolerant religious people uncomfortable.

According to the article though, that is not the message Santa was suppose to convey. It was suppose to illustrate that “Religions are all alike – founded upon fables and mythologies, ”. The person was just trying to offend for the sake of offending, it seems.

edited 20th Dec '11 6:19:42 AM by Pentadragon

What article? This article describes the arist intention like this:

''"According Julie Withrow, a Loudoun County administrator, the display belonged to Middleburg resident, Jeff Heflin Jr.

She told the Loudon Times that Heflin described the display in his application as an “art work of Santa on a cross to depict society’s materialistic obsessions and addictions and how it is killing the peace, love, joy and kindness that is supposed to be prevalent during the holiday season.” Heflin was not part of any organization and sponsored the display himself, the newspaper reported."''

This display is not the mean work of a nasty atheist group trying to offend poor little Christians, it is a work of a single artist. And I think the fact that it was destroyed by someone is way more intolerant, mean spirited and insulting than anything else discussed in this thread

edited 20th Dec '11 6:46:12 AM by Osmium

Ah, forget it.

edited 20th Dec '11 7:04:12 AM by DisasterGrind

Seeing that stores are advertising and decorating for the holidays going all the way back to the middle of October and sometimes even late September, I'd say that the commercialism is very rampant.

^^^ My mistake then. I must have misread something in the opening post. Still, I think there was a better way of getting that message across. It should not have been torn down, I agree, but the display also wasn't necessary.

Also, don't misconstrue my position. I am in no way misrepresenting the people involved as "nasty atheist group and poor little Christians". That is, frankly, idiotic. I would be arguing in a similar way if this article was about a group of Christians putting up deliberately inflammatory displays to offend atheists.

Then organize and send complaints to the companies perpetuating the cycle. These displays are hardly going to make any impact on how soon holiday commercials appear.

The only reason stores advertise this early is because they believe it will lead to a greater profit. If it becomes apparent that people are getting annoyed with 365 Day Christmas Sales, then they will cut back.

edited 20th Dec '11 7:10:25 AM by Pentadragon

But... that's what stores do: they try to sell you stuff. It's kind of silly to not expect them to try and commercialize it. It'd be a problem if the public at large was treating it as nothing more than a buying spree, but that doesn't seem to be the case from where I'm looking.

If they were trying to make a point with that Santa on a cross thing, they'd have been better off putting it near the local Wal-Mart or something.

edited 20th Dec '11 7:20:55 AM by DisasterGrind

Like..trying to put up Nativity scenes on public property? That's deliberately offensive. OK, I completely understand that people might be unaware/ignorant of this. But once they're informed that people find the gross violation of church and state offensive, the proper reply is oh, my bad, I'll stop doing that, not Y U HATE CHRISTIANS. (Which is the common response, and resulted in the challenging of said privilege via making our own overt displays)

Truth be told, in your post before that, you kinda pointed out that you find mere atheism offensive in and of itself. Quite frankly, it doesn't matter WHAT you think about the tone at that point. If you're not able to accept that some people believe that religions are based upon myths and fables without that offending you...the mere word atheism is offensive to you at that point..then everything else is gravy.

edited 20th Dec '11 7:31:35 AM by Karmakin

I would be arguing in a similar way if this article was about a group of Christians putting up deliberately inflammatory displays to offend atheists.

But there wasn't even any intention to offend anyone specific. Actually considering that the display was a message against the "society’s materialistic obsessions and addictions" the display was very much in tune with a true Christian attitude towards Christmas.

I don't support Nativity scenes on public property though. I don't think I ever posted that I did.

Please stop trying to make me into a strawman.

...the fuck? When did I say that I find atheism offensive? That's never been a position of mine.

It was placed in with a series of aggressive scenes though, so it is easy to see why it could be misinterpreted as such. I have no problem with the meaning.

edited 20th Dec '11 8:01:16 AM by Pentadragon

Don't worry, I'm not saying this is anything unique...or even uncommon. In fact, I entirely understand it. But, it goes back to my point that people who are offended by the content in and of itself are in no position to judge tone.

I should add, that I wouldn't put up something like the Santa on a cross thing myself. I'm much more concerned with pushback against attempts at atheist/non-belief community building, which tend to be much more tame from a tone perspective (honestly you can't get much tamer), but still offend people because you know, as I said, mere atheism is "offensive".

I mean that's fine. But it's not like in general we see that Christians (or other religious groups) care if they're being offensive either. Here's a good article, giving a really clear example.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2011/12/20/the-battle-over-a-public-high-schools-prayer-banner-continues/

edited 20th Dec '11 8:05:10 AM by Karmakin

The idea is not to convince anyone. They idea is to end religious displays in public property. Thus angerining is a legitimate and effective way to protest.

This isnt that hard to understand.

edited 20th Dec '11 8:03:32 AM by Baff

^^ The post was made with civility in mind more than anything else. Religion or lack thereof should not be used as a weapon. It irritates me that people use it as an excuse to be nasty to each other. Getting up in someone's face and stating, "You are going to hell and you are a terrible person" is just as bad as "Your entire life is based around silly fairy tales and has pretty much been a waste of resources".

How is this protest suppose to change anything though? Protests are made with some sort of goal in mind, usually to raise public awareness and support for a cause.

I'm genuinely sorry if I am missing something obvious.

edited 20th Dec '11 8:07:22 AM by Pentadragon

Who is saying that religious people's lives are "a waste"? I don't think that's a very common thing at all.

And that's what I'm saying. These displays are a DIRECT RESPONSE..I'll repeat that, because it bears repeating...These displays are a DIRECT RESPONSE to public displays of religious belief. Now, if you think that all of these things are wrong, then fine. But it's the responsibility of those that started the fire, I.E. religious groups, to take the first steps towards "civility".

The idea is that to show people that if displays of non-belief piss them off that much, then obviously non-believers feel the same way about displays of belief. And as such, the best way to deal with this is to not have any displays.

edited 20th Dec '11 8:10:25 AM by Karmakin

It was placed in with a series of aggressive scenes though, so it is easy to see why it could be misinterpreted as such. I have no problem with the meaning.

What agressive scenes? Openly declaring your religiuos point of view is not agressive.

Atheist saying "There is no god" are as agressive as Christians saying "there is a god"

Atheist calling god a myth are as agressive as Christians calling got the Truth.

edited 20th Dec '11 8:20:29 AM by Osmium