Jennifer Marohasy

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Christmas is for Atheists too: Chrys Stevenson

By

“Despite its name, Christians don’t own Christmas. The celebration of the winter solstice is a European cultural inheritance that’s been purloined by the Christian branch of our global family. I say it’s high time we non-theists contested the Will. Winter festivals were a feature of European pagan calendars long before Christ. Christianity cannot claim exclusive ownership of most of our seasonal rituals.

Many of the traditions we associate with Christmas festivities pre-date Christ by hundreds or even thousands of years, reaching back to ancient Babylon. Gift-giving, feasting, adorning the house with greenery and lights, and singers chorusing door to door all date back to these ancient pagan rites…

And, what is the atheist’s purpose in celebrating Christmas?

Read more here: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=11375

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. spangled drongo says

    Nevertheless we atheists should support our judeo-christian rather than pagan culture. It’s fundamentally the best we’ve got.

    It’s more likely our sunday school lessons than our pagan rites that are showing through.

    Any red stuff around the altar is more likely to be spilt wine than blood.

  4. Jennifer says

    spangled,
    the problem with many of those who currently subscribe to the ‘pagan culture’ is they don’t recognise it as equivalent to any other belief system. they consider it far superior, and not just another faith, because they perceive it as directed by science and scientists.

  5. spangled drongo says

    Yes Jen, sadly the “green science religion” flees to the other side of the ship from what it sees as “creationist conservative deniers” in the crew.

    Put ’em all on a nuclear powered ship, I say.

  8. spangled drongo says

    Val,

    I’m just waiting for these green science religionists to blame our current very wet weather on AGW, never mind they were so certain a while back that it was never gonna rain again and we had to spend our hard earned on desal.

    Good rainfall was never part of the GCM “projection” but suddenly, any and all disasters will do.

  10. Luke says

    What an amazing amount of the usual drivel. When did AGW ever say that climate variation would cease? WHEN? Lordy me … science is wasted on you lot.

    And yes speaking of beliefs just think of all the rubbish in the mainstream religion – bogus miracles, racial intolerance, child abuse, excuses for killing millions. Endless wars. And it’s always interesting how much you all bleat on about dubious greenie ideas – yet we can have an obscenity like Iraq – and not a mention. See where your trillions have been spent. But as always – better dead than red I guess.

  11. spangled drongo says

    “When did AGW ever say that climate variation would cease? WHEN?”

    That’s right luke, it only spruiked “hot and dry” but kept “cold and wet” until they were needed.

    And those CAGW sceptics started the Iraq war and those dumb christians are responsible for everything else. Them an’ the JOOS!

    No wonder you’re a watermelon. [but we do need ya to point us in the right direction]

  12. val majkus says

    spangled drongo in regard to the deep freeze in the UK I recall one commentator (either James Delingpole or Booker) writing an article on the Mets explanation of it being caused by global warming and some wag asking ‘when is this cooling warming going to stop’ if the big wet is attributed to global warming notwithstanding the dire drier predictions I suppose we could similarly ‘when is this wet dry going to stop.’
    Where’s Tim Flannery when you need him?

  13. spangled drongo says

    Val,

    Maybe even Tim’s a little confused.

    Here’s more religion:

    “1. Now that modern science has usurped religion as the new principle validation of public knowledge, such corruptions should be expected.

    In pre-modern times there were two prevailing validations of contentious public knowledge, one was the dogma of the state or religious authority and the other was direct communications from God. The authority of the prophet is upon such direct communication, while the religious dogma often defers to the authority of prophetic testimonials. But since the end of World War II, and especially through the compulsory secular education programs of affluent nations, the principle authority for public knowledge has been modern science. Except in the context of a Church, if you want to persuade folks to act according to the knowledge you profess, the best way is to make your claims upon the authority of science. Only recently has science commanded such enormous power. And power corrupts. And so when we look back on the corruption of the Church and the abuse of its dogmas to serve the interests of the unscrupulous, where we see scary scenarios causing panic in religious knowledge systems, now that modern science has usurped religion, should we be surprised that similar phenomena emerge within science also?”

  15. cohenite says

    Yes Saddam’s Iraq was an obscenity; the conventional wisdom is that it was a secular society; it wasn’t, it just appeared secular because it had a psychopath in charge who transcended even the barbarism of the ususal Islamist governments and who didn’t sprout religion as a justification when he went about his crazed way. But never mind, when that milksop Obama bolts Iran’s Ahmadinejad, that personification of reason and rationality, will straighten Iraq out once again.

  16. val majkus says

    thanks el gordo;
    blessings and good luck to all those being evactuated by the floods in Qld which is on the news at the moment; don’t know what’s happening in NSW

  19. Luke says

    Cohenite summarily ignores the travesty of Iraq brought to you by the old Bush administration replete with greenie bashers and climate sceptic devotees. Yes indeedy it’s sure a much better place for our intervention. Sickening but go over and have a froth at Bolts – they love it.

  20. el gordo says

    Hindcast would be good and the comments over at Watts generally support greater scientific rigor. If we can’t examine his workings, then its only guesswork.

    From memory, Piers used his skills early in weather betting. You win some and you lose some, many of his predictions failed miserably.

    But his expertise must have been reasonably good because the UK bookies refuse to take his bets these days.

    The odds on a Dalton Minimum will soon be shortening, sunspot predictions are continually being revised downward. So place your bets now.

  21. Schiller Thurkettle says

    Some, such as Luke, claim that atheism holds the moral high ground because of the number of deaths over the years attributable to Christians. The facts do not support the conclusion. Marxists (atheists) have killed vastly more.

    Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot Mao together killed roughly 66 million. Some argue that Hitler (ca. 22 million) deserves to be a member of this blood-stained pantheon, but he was closer to paganism.

  22. Luke says

    Schiller – the predictable response to Richard Dawkins. Nevertheless all religions have massive amounts of blood on their hands – often in the name of that religion – despite which historical villain is the worst worst ever. So “we” celebrate Xmas as the birthday of an historical figure who may or may not be born on Dec 25 plus or minus 50 years. Who would go on to perform sundry miracles and rise from the dead, so some book written (with hand-selected surviving chapters) by mere mortals assures us. Now given this is a scientific evidence based blog – may we find that somewhat hard to believe? Yet this “cult” forms the basis of the moral conduct of much of western civilisation … hmmm … fascinating.

  23. Schiller Thurkettle says

    Luke,

    Tell me, what’s the most recent example of war/genocide that happened because ‘Jesus told us to do it’?

  24. Luke says

    Try Iraq ! brought to you by the bible bashing right

    or perhaps Northern Ireland?

    or perhaps the cultural war ongoing by the Vatican promoting AIDS and lack of birth control in the 3rd world …

    or the mistreatment of juveniles by priests tried to be swept under the carpet by the church

    all great stuff