Around this time of year, you'll always hear of some evil, liberal atheist who is trying to get the baby Jesus Christmas display off the lawn at the county courthouse or city hall. Then Christians come out in droves saying you're infringing on their religious freedom. Look it up on a basic google news search, you'll find those stories are quite common. So, from an atheist's (or any other non-Christian) perspective, here are some myths I'd like to dispel about this whole phenomenon:
1. Atheists and church/state separation advocates aren't singling out your Christmas or Ten Commandments display to be taken off government property. If the government puts up an overtly singular religious display on their property this is seen as an unconstitutional government endorsement of religion. This applies to any religion, not just Christianity. Christianity is the one that gets singled out not because of its "Christianness" but because it just so happens to be the majority religion in the US and is the one most likely to be represented. I always try to explain to my religious friends to imagine the shoe on the other foot. If this were a Muslim religious display on government property, then Christians would be up in arms, right? Well, guess what? If the government allowed a religious display promoting Islam singularly on public property, then atheists would be right along side the Christians protesting. I promise you this. Ask any atheist, you'll get the same response. It's the idea of all or none. If the government chooses to display symbols of one religion on its property then it must accommodate all religions' displays. So, let's play that out. One day, Christians put up their display at city hall. Then Buddhists the next day. Then Jewish people the day after. And so on. So for each religion that wants to be represented they would be allowed that right and government has to accommodate that. But considering there's an abundance of different religions in the US it would seem highly impractical to accommodate tens if not hundreds of displays all at once, so the practical solution is to represent none at all (neutrality). This is what atheists and church/state advocates are doing when they file complaints about Christian displays on government property, they aren't attacking Christianity directly they are attacking the notion that government not be in the religion promoting business.
2. Just because something is a tradition doesn't mean it's always been right. This argument gets thrown about when someone wants the government to take down the Ten Commandments in a school that's been there for years or mangers at city hall or any other religious promotion on government property or overtly Christian prayers by government officials on taxpayer time for decades or more. I like to counter this argument with the notion of slavery in our country. I know its an extreme example but the basic idea applies. In the United States, slavery was considered a social norm that almost everyone in the early years of our country supported. Yet, today someone owning a slave in modern society is considered abhorrent even by the most staunch conservatives. If it was a tradition for so long, then why did we get rid of it? Because we realized as a nation that slavery was wrong. It didn't just happen to be right for hundreds of years and then suddenly become wrong. It was always wrong and the oppressed people had little to no power to change the status quo. That's why as a country, in my personal opinion, some traditions are very overrated. Also, the amount of misinformation about how long something has been a tradition isn't even known by the general populace. The main example in this case is the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. Most people age 60 and younger have been taught the pledge with the phrase "under God" since childhood. But what about the generation before them? They grew up in a country where the phrase "under God" in the pledge didn't exist. "Under god" wasn't inserted into the pledge until 1954. So, what the younger generations know as tradition now was not really a tradition at all to begin with.
Those are the main two myths about church/state separation that I think get perpetuated and reinforced so much that there's no room for debate on these issues. This entire post is to just educate what us Non-Christians on the other side think on this particular issue.
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