It's that time again!Follow

I'm not too up to date on the whole Buddhism thing, but it sounds like you're on the right path to transcendence.

They took his red Swingline stapler.

Barbie or Bratz?

I think the bigger issue for Christians isn't about the "slightest alteration", but what appears to them to be a concerted effort to remove any religious aspects from the holiday itself under the guise of preventing religious infringement. No one is forced to celebrate Christmas, but it is ultimately a religious holiday, no different from any other. There are many religious holidays that have been adopted as official holidays by nations around the world, but it seems like Christmas is the only one in which anyone attempts to argue that it's somehow offensive to them to hear anyone even mention the holiday by name, or reference its religious significance (or, heaven forbid, actually practice their religion).

I agree that the offense on both sides can be a bit exaggerated, but I've kinda got to give the prick award to the atheists on this one.



At the risk of being a vocabulary snob, the word you're both looking for is "impose".

Edited, Dec 4th 2012 1:45pm by gbaji

Well of course I had to choose a side.

Correct. But it sure seems like most Atheists *are* like that. Certainly as a percentage, they are. The percentage of Christians who take offense at stuff like Santa and Rudolf and whatnot being added to the holiday by others is pretty darn low. It's not like Christians as a group are demanding that anything unrelated to their religious holiday be removed. But the reverse is most certainly true. You can have Santa and Reindeer as part of a Christmas display on public ground, but not a nativity scene? Why? Is one any more or less mythical than the other? Is one any more or less likely to not be believed as factual truth by some percentage of the population?

If Atheists were really about not wanting things they don't believe to be true thrust upon them, they should oppose all of those sorts of things. But they *only* target the Christian ones. So it's kinda hard to believe that this is anything other than an attack on someone else's faith. They're perfectly fine with the state perpetuating the idea that a man in a red suit lives at the North Pole and delivers toys to children in a flying sleigh pulled by magic reindeer, but not a nativity scene? Think about it for a minute. And if this was just some fringe group of people who no one listens to, we could all just ignore it (like the occasional nutty Christian who believes that Santa is heresy or something). But they're not. They have influenced hundreds of cities and schools and forced them to remove just the religious symbols from the holiday.




If the cities wish to celebrate Christmas and the businesses in the area chip in to put displays up in order to increase foot traffic and business as part of that process, it seems somewhat absurd to ban just the types of displays which made the holiday such a big deal in the first place, doesn't it? I suppose it's possible that if Christians had never decided to celebrate the birth of Jesus in December (or at all) with gift giving and charity maybe the western world would have created the same kind of commercialized holiday in celebration of the Winter Solstice or whatever, but that's not the way it happened. IMO, there should be a happy medium between forcing religion on people who don't want it, and banning religion in all public spaces.

I just don't see how a nativity scene in the midst of a dozen other displays is going to harm anyone. I guess I just don't understand why Atheists seem so afraid of this. Do they honestly think that merely seeing a nativity scene and learning its significance would force people into religious belief? Is their own belief in rationalism so weak that they think it can be overcome by such minor things? I have no problem with healthy debate on the merits or harm of religion and faith, but it seems like the current movement is instead focused on simply preventing anyone from ever being exposed to religion at all out of a fear that if they are, they might make what Atheists consider to be the wrong choice.

Freedom means being able to make those choices for yourself. And that includes the right to be exposed to a whole set of ideas and philosophies and religions so that you can make your own choices about them. The 1st amendment was never intended to provide an exception to the right of free speech targeted just at religious speech, but that's how it has come to be interpreted and enforced. The citizens of a city are free to express any idea or thought they want on public land but *not* if it's religious? Sorry, I don't agree with that at all.

One is certainly more religious. What a stupid question.

"It's the REASON for the SEASON!"

Then again, it's not as though atheists "as a group" are demanding anything either but you're content to lump them all together.

On public land? Yeah, it's potentially an issue. Is someone saying stores can't put a Christmas display in their window? I was just at the mall and passed a large kiosk of religious figurines and nativities. Oddly enough, not a single person was protesting it or running in circles screaming.

There's a stronger argument to be made for not having Christmas be a federal holiday on separation of Church & State grounds than there is for allowing government assisted displays religious iconography because "Christmas is a federal holiday".

On that note, my install of Far Cry 3 just finished so ***** all y'all...

Edited, Dec 4th 2012 9:17pm by Jophiel

Exactly my point about how there should be a happy medium here. Kids don't have a lot of choice about being in school (or what school they attend) so I get the idea of limiting directly religious stuff in that environment. But nobody is forced to go down to the park and look at Christmas displays. Even if just from an historical perspective, banning displays showing the religious origins of the holiday within our culture seems counter productive and downright stupid. No one's requiring you to worship.

It just smacks of a nasty kind of revisionism. We'll just pretend that there was never anything religious about Christmas at all and maybe no one will notice! I guess I just don't get what the objective is. It's just mean spirited. It's the kid who doesn't like the color red taking all the red crayons out of the box and throwing them away so none of the other kids can draw anything in the color he doesn't like. It's mean. It's spiteful. No one gains anything by it. Hence why I keep saying that the Atheists absolutely are the pricks with regard to this issue.


Most people enjoy being exposed to different cultural ideas and images. Excluding some because they are religious in nature doesn't make any sense and is frankly harmful to any society which attempts it. Like it or not, religious ideas and history have had a huge impact on every civilization on Earth. To deny that is to deny ourselves.

Edited, Dec 4th 2012 7:55pm by gbaji

This explains the warm welcome for mosques throughout the country.

[quote=Spoonless]Merry Kwanzaa, ****************

May as well celebrate Festivus

Why is it so hard to accept that many people like celebrating the secular aspects of federal holidays? I haven't looked it up, but I'd be willing to say that a very large portion of Christmas holiday celebrations have very little to do with any organized religion.

Missing the point. Judges interpret the principle of separation of church and state in a way which ensures that no amount of Christians complaining that "Jesus is the reason for the season" will result in legal action forcing people to comply with their view. On the other hand, that same interpretation does allow for even a small number of Atheists complaining about some religious thing on public land to result in legal action forcing people to comply with their view.

Which is why we can't compare them equally. It's not a balanced situation with each side having the same ability to influence outcomes.



Um... No, they don't generally do so. There are likely very very few actual public laws banning religious displays on government property. That's why the lawsuits are necessary. For most of the history of this nation we had absolutely no problem with such things. But somewhere along the line the 1st amendment got re-interpreted to assume that nothing which is funded by any amount of government dollars may have religious stuff involved. We can debate that interpretation if you want, but you have to at least agree that we didn't always interpret it that way.

Pretending that the law has always been applied that way is absurd. It quite obviously has not. So it's circular to defend that change by simply saying that's what the law says. The words in the 1st amendment haven't changed Joph. The interpretation of them have. It's a total cop out to just say "well, that's the law!" and leave it at that.



That's not an answer.



And what will you do when he decides that they can't? So for you there's no principle or opinion of your own? Just whatever a judge decides is ok? That seems more than a little apathetic. What happens when judges start ruling in ways you absolutely think are wrong? Do you just sit silently and go along with it?



I didn't say that. I said that religion was the only difference (within the context of displays on public land), thus supporting the argument that treating them differently had nothing to do with protecting the public from public displays of things that can't be show to exist, but that it's solely about preventing those things only when they are part of someone's religious belief. That you can't see why this is relevant really does surprise me.

The relevant portion of the first amendment prevents religious institutions from having special treatment by the government within the boundary of law. It means that religion has to be treated the same as everything else. So if you allowed displays related to the religious aspects of Christmas, but did not allow any that were non-religious in nature (like Santa, Rudolf, Frosty, etc), then you would be in violation of the 1st amendment. The flip side is true as well though. If you allow other displays, you can't bar the presence of religious displays.

The assumption behind this is that not everyone believes in a given religion, so promoting something they don't believe in is unfair to them, and spending public money to do so is unfair to them as well. That is why we don't allow it. It's not about protecting them from exposure, but ensuring that they have a choice to avoid exposure and are not being required to pay for said exposure. But if you are promoting other things that people don't believe are true (like Santa, or Rudolf, or Frosty), you must follow the same rules. Allowing one, while disallowing the other is inconsistent. Doing so because of the religious nature (or lack thereof) is unconstitutional.


Unfortunately, somewhere along the line, our courts started ruling that the establishment clause simply banned any religious thing from being present on/in anything funded by public money. It's a somewhat ridiculous interpretation, but once it got started the precedent kept being followed and expanded, step by step, until today we justify something which is in complete violation of the 1st amendment while claiming to be upholding it. Judges look at past rulings and rarely ever really stop and look at the source law. I understand why they do this, but in this case it creates a completely backwards result. We've gotten so far from the original meaning of the law that the rulings don't make any sense except that they are in accordance with past rulings.

We're already well down that slippery slope. It's just a shame that so many people (like you) blindly accept the rulings of judges rather than bother to think about what the law actually says and how it ought to be applied. There is absolutely no reason why a nativity scene should be barred from a public park where other non-religious displays are allowed. None at all.