Commentary

atheists and crucifixes

ello, my name is Fippler, and I am an atheist.

That might sound like something you'd hear at an AA (Atheists Anonymous) meeting, but I suspect many other atheists feel the same way. It's disturbing to see politically motivated libs claiming to represent atheists trying to remove all traces of Christianity from the public square. (Crucifixes don't bother me. I haven't had a drink of human blood in months!)

There are few sights as touching, or as beautiful, as the rows and rows of white crosses on our military graveyards. There is no more potent symbol of the finality and permanence of death, or of the sadness that those who remain behind feel toward their loss. Yes, for Christians it's also a sign of hope, but the idea that the dead will someday come back to life and rise out of their graves is no longer mainstream even among Christians.

Even the Bible says: “His breath goeth forth, he returneth to the earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.” (Psalm 146:4) Now I can't claim to be an expert on the Bible, but this strikes me as being much like the Buddhist idea that the personality, thoughts, and memories are lost forever when a person dies. In science, there are some theoretical reasons to think that consciousness itself might be a fundamental part the universe, like matter or energy, and therefore indestructible, but so far, as everyone knows, there is no evidence one way or the other as to whether one's memories or personality could survive.

Humans evolved to respect our dead, mainly because we are a social species. The alternative of leaving them lying there on the road, or carting them into the dumpster, as we do with animals, is anathema to our concept of what we are. But it's not only the emotional bond. Religion is a way of circumscribing our feelings about dying, and keeping them elevated: a way of asserting our difference from animals (who are actually not as heartless as many people think).

Religion probably started as mankind's tendency to see patterns in nature. That part of it has taken a beating by science, but religion also tries to uplift people; most of all, it gives solace to the relatives of the dead. It's amazing that my radical atheist brethren would try to deny this, because it's quite a valuable service that religion is providing.

If the government told us we had to salute the cross, or pray to it, I'd be right there on the ramparts with them. If our national flag had a cross on it, I'd be unhappy about it. But as long as they're not telling me what to do, I see it as nothing more than a symbol of remembrance of our past fallen comrades. This is something that we must never lose.

Those little crosses at the side of the road are no different. Yes, they sometimes look tacky with all the plastic flowers on them, but I'd rather see little crosses, even tacky ones, than live in a world where people don't care when another human being dies.

That said, a compelling argument against these roadside crosses is that they're the same feel-good mushy-feely stuff like campus candlelight vigils which are, more often than not, a way of pretending to others that one cares for dead Palestinian terrorists or about-to-be-executed guilty-beyond-a-shadow-of- a-doubt-but-of-currently-fashionable-ethnicity-mass-murderers. Grief as theater has gotten the Left into a lot of trouble: think Code Pink, the Wives of 9/11, and all the ten zillion ways people have tried to cram the recent crazy mass murderer in Santa Barbara into their ideology.

Radical atheists say these crosses are symbols of a simple superstition, and that believing something that's untrue is automatically harmful. But what's really happening is the gradual unlinking of the cross from being a symbol of Christianity. In the obituary sections of the newspaper, a cross was a convenient way of noting whether a person is deceased, and there its purely secular connotation is clear.

Radical atheists may see themselves fighting a war on kitsch. But to the rest of us, it looks more like hitting Christianity when it's down. That's what used to be called un-Christian. Apart from this vocal minority, most of us still believe ‘un-Christian’ is another word for ‘nasty.’

So maybe these radical atheists are, subconsciously, rebelling against the nastiness of their own leftism. Inside a radatheist is a rational human being struggling to adopt a realistic political viewpoint, but not yet ready to give up the cradle of leftist thought.

The symbol of the crucifix is evolving from its association with Christianity to a symbol of death. If anyone should be upset about this, it should be Christians. Atheists should encourage it. As long as people don't go sprinkling holy water on it, it can't hurt us.