I don't get easily offended or even pissed off about anything very often. I try to take most ideas and comments with an open mind, even if the opinion is different from my own. This is especially true when debating or discussing something as sensitive as religion; I have many close friends and even some family who have vastly opposing views on religion compared to mine, but we disagree and leave it at that. I'm hardly a missionary, so getting to a really in-depth conversation over religion would quickly put me in over my head.
With that in mind, I came across this brief story today during my lunch break at work. Like I said, I try not to get too flustered when I read something about a non-religious person getting into a tizzy over a religious person - Christian or otherwise - making a public display of his or her views. The last time I can recall ever getting really offended over something anti-Christian was a theater performance I saw in college where a character had intentionally created a performance designed to offend Christians everywhere.
My view on anything in the media designed to be anti-religion or anti-Christian has always been the same: The predominant amount of anti-religion rants have been against Christianity, mainly because it's the "mainstream" religion in this country and around the world. I can't remember the last time I ever read anything from the likes of American Atheists targeting Muslims or Jews. Getting back to the aforementioned performance I had seen, I didn't exactly give the character in the play props for being "edgy" for simply mocking Christian theology.
Anyway, the story I came across today was probably the first time I had been so deeply offended and pissed off at an atheist getting riled up about a public display of Christian faith. I never knew the story of Buzz Aldrin bringing communion with him when he had landed on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission. When I read that particular side to the moon landing, my first thought was, "Wow, that's pretty awesome."
Then I read about the fit that Madalyn Murray O'Hair threw.
As the link mentioned, the astronauts aboard Apollo 8 had wanted to read a passage from Genesis 8 during their mission into space. They had wanted to broadcast their reading across the airwaves, but O'Hair threatened to sue the U.S. government if they went ahead with their plans on the grounds that they were government employees on duty, and should not be associated with a religious expression thanks to the separation of church and state. Because of that headache, NASA didn't allow Aldrin to publicly air his communion on Apollo 11.
O'Hair passed away back in 1996 so it's quite literally a dead issue, but my reaction upon reading this story was, "To hell with you, lady."
Pun intended on that one.
Why do atheists look for excuses to get pissed off about any religious individual making an expression of their faith? What bothers them so much about our faiths that we have to keep them bottled up at all times? And why oh why do they have this elitist attitude for feeling "enlightened" that they've "figured out" that there is no God?
Atheists can disagree with me all they like, and I really don't care. What pisses me off is that they're so concerned with people of all religious backgrounds and faiths being open about their faiths, they in fact become the very thing they supposedly are trying to stop: they force feed their own beliefs on others and essentially spread the idea that their civil liberties are more important than those of the people they disagree with. If that's not irony, I don't know what is.
I can at least respect people like Joss Whedon (writer/director of The Avengers and creator of shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer) because even though he is an atheist, he at least will write characters in his films who have religious beliefs, like Captain America in The Avengers for one. He doesn't place his own ego or beliefs ahead of other people who may disagree. I'm okay with that.
There is one great irony that gets a little payback towards any of these angry atheists like Madalyn Murray O'Hair who are still out there today, and that is "In God We Trust" has been the official national motto since 1956, and the phrase appears on all American coins and $20 bills. Add to that the line "One nation, under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, and "God Bless America" being sung at baseball games across the country. Things like that give me a little satisfaction knowing bitter atheists still have to acknowledge the vast majority of Americans and people worldwide believe in a God of some kind. I'd call that vindication.
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