Atheists Push Christmas Nativity Scenes Out of Santa Monica, CA
For nearly 6 decades, Christmastime nativity scenes have been on display Santa Monica’s Palisades Park, but now atheist messages (or nothing at all) have replaced the traditional Christmas scenes.
Local churches have normally used 14 of the 21 Palisades Park display spaces to illustrate the story of the birth of Jesus Christ via life-size nativity scenes. But this year, atheists managed to get all but three of the spaces through a new city lottery system.
The Santa Monica Daily Press reported that churches had little or no competition for the spaces during the past 57 years. However, this year, 13 people (mostly atheists) bid for spaces, prompting City Hall to use a random lottery system to allot the spots.
“Our belief is that these new applicants have been working together to displace and push out the nativity scenes from the park, rather than erecting a full display of their own,” said Hunter Jameson, a spokesman for a coalition of the city’s churches.
Damon Vix, who doesn’t live in Santa Monica, helps other atheists populate Palisades Park spaces, including American Atheists Inc. and the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
“For 60 years, it’s almost exclusively been the point of view of Christians putting up nativity scenes for a whole city block,” Vix said.
Jameson pushed the city to give “local preference” in awarding the spaces.
City Attorney Marsha Moutrie wrote, however, that the Christmastime displays cross the boundary into First Amendment rights, which know no geographical boundaries: “Everyone has equal rights to use the streets and parks for expressive activities, irrespective of residency."
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To eojtus:
The next time you let us all know how you lost you're faith, could you please, please not turn it into a life long story?
Hmmm...have I hit a nerve or something, Roy? Next time I post anything, please just skip over everything I write if that'll make it easier for you to maintain your faith.
Matthew 13:1-9 (NIV) 'That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.”'
The Catholic Heretic
I believe those boys that got raped by Sandusky are going to be Atheist"s.
Sidney
The atheist believes "God does not exist." They want the religious to provide proof of belief, yet, they have no scientific proof to justify their own leap-of-faith beliefs. They'll say "you can't prove a negative" (that God does not exist), but this claim ASSUMES that God must not exist. What if He does? If He DOES exist, then, naturally, they can't prove he doesn't exist. One must first assume that His non-existence is true, for then their claim that one cannot prove a negative would be true, but this assumption is based on a claim, not the truth. Any way you look at it, the atheist has no scientific proof to justify his/her beliefs. What a hypocrisy.
Merry Christmas
"You can't prove a negative" does not beg the question. It's a question of logic. You can falsify a positive statement, but not verify a negative one. The statement "God does not exist" is either true or it is false, but either option is logically impossible to demonstrate, given that the noun in the sentence is undefined, undefinable, and no two theists quite agree. "There is no flying teapot around the orbit of Saturn" is also impossible to prove, because no matter how long we look and come up empty, there's still a possibility that something was missed. But it's a moot point anyway, because you're actually wrong twice: you're wrong about basic argumentation, and you're wrong about the claims atheism makes, as I pointed out below.
...which is why I not atheistic, but I'm agnostic.
I start with no assumptions -- I seek to weigh the available data, and, as best as I fallibly can, make conclusions based on data.
I'm aware of no data nor have scientific proof that rules out the existence of every conceivable version of a deity -- for example, I have no evidence that refutes the existence of a powerful-yet-limited, intelligent-but-not-all-knowing, superhuman-yet-fallible being who created but has no further interest in, nor involvement with, nor seeks worship from, mankind.
However, I do find data which leads me to conclude that certain versions of deity do not exist. The qualities attributed to the Christian and Islamic versions of "God" by texts such as the New Testament or Quran -- attributes such as the all-power/all-control I've mentioned in my other posts on this thread -- would result in a "God" whose supernatural interactions with mankind would be observable explicitly and unmistakably to everyone. Such a "God's" supernatural interactions and interventions would be as clear as gravity to even the resistant (just as some people may hate gravity because it means they fall when they jump off a roof but cannot be ignorant that gravity is operating). But no such operations or interactions are objectively observed.
Therefore, since no such obvious interactions evidencing the existence of any "God" with such attributes/persona are observed; and yet the texts allegedly revealing such a "God" most definitely attribute qualities and behaviors to "Him" which should be universally and plainly observable; I cannot avoid the conclusion that such a version of "God" as "revealed" in those texts does not exist.
Atheism does not entail the assertion that no gods exist. Its only requirement is a rejection of theistic claims in response to a specific question: "Do You Believe A God Exists?"
If your answer is Yes, you're a theist.
If your answer is not yes, anything else, including "I don't know," makes you not a theist, and there is a word for that: Atheist. Agnosticism is a separate question addressing what you know or believe is knowable, Atheism strictly addresses a lack of belief. One can easily be an agnostic atheist, or an agnostic theist.
No presentation of evidence is logically required of atheism other than the (rather trivial actually) demonstration that religious claims do not meet their burden of proof. It makes no epistemological or ontological claims which it is required to prove. People who say "The atheist believes 'God does not exist'" probably has next to zero experience talking to atheists or reading about atheism.
I suggest George H Smith's "Atheism: The Case Against God" if only for the first chapter, defining the term. Chapman Cohen's book "Theism or Atheism: The Great Alternative" is available in the public domain through Project Gutenberg.
Is this action by atheists the best you pagans can do? You run some nativity scenes out of Santa Monica, CA? Out of the godless California? Wow, at this rate, you will be advancing to another city (in California, of course), in degades. What a worthless article.
Then again, it might also be asked, "Is this the best the Christian 'God' could do? At the first challenge in fifty-seven years to the Santa Monica Christians monopolizing the billboards, this 'Almighty God' couldn't help them? Where was the omnipotence and control Christians attribute to their deity?" And, it might also be asked, "This 'God' who couldn't help them win one mere earthly lottery -- wow, is 'he' the same 'God' Christians claim created heaven and earth and has the power to resurrect the dead and provide 'eternal life'"?