With the war on Christmas over for another year (anyone know who's winning?), it's a good time to review some of the many misconceptions about atheists that exist in the public domain. One of the most popular misconceptions being pushed by the likes of Bill O'Reilly and the Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby is that atheists (or secular progressives as O'Reilly likes to refer to them) are trying to eradicate Judeo-Christian references from American public life. A massive secularist-atheist conspiracy against all religion is afoot and it's a terrible threat to our society. Christmas cards that don't mention Christmas, retailers saying "Happy Holidays", and nativity scenes banned from public grounds are all signs of the vast left-wing plot. So naturally, we should expose the men behind this nefarious conspiracy? Ah, but this is where the assertion that such a conspiracy exists breaks down. While religious conservatives may throw out the names of various individuals (George Soros) and organizations (ACLU), it amounts to nothing more than mud-slinging.
It's true that Christmas has morphed into a more secular holiday over the last 40 years, but that hasn't been the work of atheists. In fact, the largest contributor to the secularization of Christmas is one of the tenets of American society today - Capitalism. Capitalism, and more specifically retailers, has transformed Christmas into a gift-giving bonanza for children and family, and has completely de-emphasized the traditional meaning of Christmas. Christmas in America has nothing to do with Jesus - it's all about shopping and Santa Claus. Some retail chains base their whole year on the Christmas season, so why should they restrict themselves to just Christians and Christmas? Why not entice people of all faiths to come in during November and December to shop for their loved ones? Thus was born the religiously neutral "Happy Holidays" - a term of inclusion, rather than exclusion as Bill O'Reilly would like you to believe. Capitalism is blind with respect to religion so the secularization of the Holiday season makes perfect sense. Everyone can now take part whether you celebrate Christmas, Hannukah, Ramadan, Kwanzaa or Festivus, you too can shop to your heart's content. The American Christmas Holiday - brought to you by Wal-Mart, Sears, Best Buy, Macy's, Target, and your local mall.
Another popular misconception about atheism is that if religion is removed from society, there will be no system for determining right and wrong. This is a favorite of many religious conservatives in their argument for the necessity of religion, but it is a baseless claim. Many religions teach and promote ethical behavior, but these religions did not invent the standards by which we define right and wrong. At the core of the issue is how we as humans are exposed to the definition and standard of right and wrong, and the answer is through family and community. Families and Communities are our basic units of human interaction. This interaction creates a society and the society defines the standards of behavior that it believes to be correct. Some societies may be religious and some may not be. The standards of right and wrong are applied by the family and community units regardless of religion. When you were a child, who taught you more about right and wrong, your parents or your clergyman? I suspect that the answer is the former.
In his December 13, 2006 column in the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby states that "... without God, the difference between good and evil becomes purely subjective." Reversing that statement says that with God, the difference between good and evil is objective. Yet Jacoby doesn't really tell us much about the objective difference between good and evil other than to cite the ethical standards as defined by Judeo-Christian monotheism as the saving grace for the world (I guess other world religions don't have the "correct" definition of good and evil). "Thou shalt not kill" - that seems fairly objective and probably simple enough to have been adhered to before monotheism became popular, but this is one of the tenets of ethical behavior ascribed to the Judeo-Christian God. However, Jacoby wrote in his column some time after the 2004 Tsunami in Asia that killed 230,000 people that he believed that God sent the tsunami for some purpose, but he didn't know what it was. Was that objective, ethical behavior on God's part? Is it acceptable for God to kill, but not man?
It's easy to poke holes in the arguments of religious conservatives who continue to press for more religion in our lives because they seldom have any basis in fact or logic. However, Jacoby has a moment of clarity when he states "the atheist alternative is a world in which right and wrong are ultimately matters of opinion, and in which we are finally accountable to no one but ourselves." While I don't believe that the difference between right and wrong is a matter of opinion, but is instead defined by families and communities, the second part of his statement is dead on accurate. We are most certainly accountable to no one but ourselves, yet that is a reality that religious leaders don't want you to grasp for fear of it ending their power over millions of people. Do you think it's possible that ethical behavior would improve if humanity learned that we are responsible for ourselves and not accountable to some mythical being defined by ancestors who have long past? Perhaps, perhaps.
