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I've just been reading a news report about some American atheists
who have been trying to get a public Christmas Nativity scene removed
because they say it makes them feel excluded and intimidated
and offended and blah blah blabbedy-blah, boo-hoo-hoo.
Can't you just feel the emotional trauma these poor people must be suffering?
No, me neither. Oddly, however, it is still enough to make you weep.
This is what happens when atheism meets political correctness.
I don't know if it has a name, but then it's so ugly it doesn't really need one.
And, as an atheist myself, I can't help but feel horribly tainted by association.
And believe me, I'm as atheist as it's possible to be.
I think religion is utter nonsense, and I claim the right to criticise,
ridicule and insult it as much as I like, but not the right to stamp out
harmless aspects of it, which is why I'm a secularist, and not a totalitarian.
I have a copy of the Bible in my house because it's part of my cultural heritage,
not because I think the Bible is true any more than I think Shakespeare's plays
are true, but I wouldn't be without them either.
I like churches, especially the sound of church bells,
and I don't want to see them bulldozed, but I do want to see the power of the Church
not only bulldozed, but ground into a fine dust and buried in the deepest part
of the deepest ocean on the furthest planet it's possible to find.
Religion needs to be kept in check when it tries to step on people
or when it tries to elbow its way into their lives uninvited.
The Nativity doesn't do this. It doesn't even come close.
It's part and parcel of the Christmas furniture.
It's part and parcel of the culture that I and most people in the western world
were born and raised in, and it only excludes people who want to be excluded.
It's not even as if it's a permanent fixture like, say, the Ten Commandments
outside a court house. It will be gone in a couple of weeks.
And yes, we all know that the story itself is ridiculous.
The entire tableau is utterly barmy and worthy of open mockery and ridicule,
but to claim that it sends a message of intimidation and exclusion
and therefore must be banned is both infantile and sinister,
and it simply isn't true.
Yes, some people may choose to be offended, but some people
are offended by anything, and, frankly, they can go to hell.
We get this crap every year, though. If it's not from atheists
it's from leftist academics or some other equality nazis
who hate their own culture so much they can't wait to abolish it.
This time last year I remember linking to a story
which, at the time, I thought was the most outrageous piece
of social manipulation I've seen for a while,
where some idiots at a Canadian university...
(Social psychologists, they call themselves...
No, I don't know what it means either, so I looked it up and I'm still none the wiser,
but I'd be willing to bet that if all the social psychologists on the planet
were to disappear in a puff of smoke nobody would be worse off)...
Anyway, these clowns concluded from their "scientific research"
that Christmas trees should be removed from public places
because they make non-Christians feel, guess what,
excluded, and this inevitably damages their emotional well-being.
Well, of course it does. How awful for them.
And doubtless this also makes them feel terribly offended,
not to mention intimidated and insulted and threatened,
and let's not forget marginalised.
It sounds like a fate worse than death, doesn't it?
Except that it's not true, because I'm a non-Christian -
I couldn't be more non-Christian if I was from Mars,
and I can tell you that I don't feel in the least bit excluded
or intimidated or threatened or marginalised by Christmas trees
or carol singers or Nativity scenes or any other Christian aspects
of a traditional Christmas. I expect to see these things
in the public square where they belong.
Indeed, I insist upon it. And if they're not there,
if they've been removed because some self-righteous atheist fanatic
or some finger-wagging diversity fascist
has chosen to be offended and get the plug pulled,
that's when I feel excluded and marginalised
and intimidated and insulted and terribly terribly offended.
And all this inevitably plays absolute havoc
with my emotional well-being.
So please, militant atheists and cultural masochists alike,
please do me and everyone else a favour,
leave Christmas alone for Christ's sake,
and stop making fools of yourselves.
Peace, and a merry Christmas to everyone,
but especially to Little Baby Jesus.