Quote Originally Posted by MMI View Post
You don't regard being "harassed and tormented by good Christians" as an imposition? I have wronged you!
Yes, you have, many times. But I forgive you.

I SAID that they weren't imposing upon ME. I didn't say it wouldn't be an imposition if they WERE harassing and tormenting me, personally.

It would be interesting to learn, however, which non-religious festivals were appropriated by religions, as you imply.
I didn't say that they were, necessarily, non-religious festivals, only that they were once festivals of OTHER religions, which were forced out of existence by the "good" Christians, usually by very violent means.

My mistake. By impose I take it you mean display, or is it something more sinister?
It can be both, actually. They display their religious tokens, which is not against the law. When they use taxpayer money to do so, however, it IS against the law, and is an imposition upon me. My taxes have to be raised to cover the wasted expense, while the churches pay nothing.

and it is these secular entities that are forcing their Valentine's Day products on all and sundry. It is not the Church forcing its faith onto the general public (quite the opposite of the reason why St Valentine was martyred, I would add!).[/QUOTE]
In what way are they FORCING these products upon us? Do they send out cute little imps to con us into spending our money? Do they send out legions of accountants to make sure we are spending our share? Where is the force, here?

I suspect no atheist business involved in selling Christmas cards would decline to stock such cards
Nope. That's not what I said. Given that the number of religious people in the US are roughly 90% of the population, it's fairly safe to extrapolate that only 10% of business owners are non-religious, and not all of those would be atheists. And they would be only a fraction of the number of atheists in the country.

I am not merely implying that atheists use religious symbols for their own purposed, I am stating it as a fact, which I have illustrated above and in earlier postings. It is true but not relevant that Christianity appropriated pagan symbols for its own purposes: they were still religious symbols and often their original meanings were carried on under a new guise.
Why is it not relevant? It's all right for Christians to steal these symbols for their own use, but it's not okay for atheists? You have to remember that religions has been around, in some form or another, for about as long as there have been humans, so just about every symbol ever devised will have had SOME religious significance SOMEWHERE!

However, I now find you stating that atheists do not object to public display of religious symbols, but simply to the misappropriation of public funds to convert non-Christians to the "true faith". If that were true, it is unconstitutional in USA, so take action: enforce your rights. See if you can make a proper case in the courts rather than whingeing about your false impressions of Christian oppression.
Ahh, there's the rub! Damned if we do, and damned if we don't! You might want to read about Jessica Ahlquist, a high school student, who did just that. If you search, you can find where the "good" Christians in her town have threatened her with rape, beatings, even death, all because she had the nerve to point out that they were breaking the law! Or how about the culture of fundamentalist Christianity in the US military that allows high ranking officers to verbally assault their subordinates who may not agree with their faith. Check out the Freedom From Religion Foundation and read about some of the horrors that have been inflicted upon atheists who "make a proper case in the courts". Then show me how we are oppressing the religious.

As for objecting to "multicultural" displays, how can a Christian festival be anything but a Christian festival unless it is being appropriated, distorted and altered into something completely unChristian?
So ONLY Christian holidays are celebrated at those times? What about Hanukkah, or Passover, or Kwanzaa, which are all celebrated around the times of Christian holidays (primarily because the Christians made sure of it!)? Why is it the CHRISTIANS who complain about store displays proclaiming "Happy Holidays" rather than Merry Christmas? They don't want to admit that other religious groups, or non-religious groups, also celebrate around the same times of the year. Everything must be about them!

100,000 years ago, give or take a few thousand years or tens, some terrified men and women sat watching the rising and setting sun and noticed that every day the sun set earlier, and further south. (Sorry, I have a Northern Hemisphere bias. Sue me.) Then, when it reached a certain point on the horizon it, would stop and turn around, rising and setting further north, setting later and later. And one particularly bright individual remembered the same thing happening the year before, and the year before that. And he figured out that, by predicting when the sun would turn around, and claiming that a god had told him of it, he could get others to give him food, rather than having to hunt for himself. And so religions were born. And festivals were developed to celebrate the "mercy" of the gods who brought back the sun, and the first priests grew fat and happy from the gullibility of their flocks.

And we're still allowing the priests to get fat and happy as they gull us with their fairy stories and holy days. I just think it's time we stopped feeding the priests and looked at the world the way it really is. And realize that, if there ARE gods out there, they certainly aren't the gods that the priests have foisted upon us, and they certainly don't intervene in the world we live in. But all the evidence we've managed to gather over these last 100,000 years leads me to believe that there probably are no gods out there at all. So no need for religious holidays.