Is this an attack on religion?http://sojo.net/blogs/2013/06/06/atheists-unveil-first-monument-unbelief-public-land/ wrote: On June 29, the group American Atheists will unveil a 1,500-pound granite bench engraved with secular-themed quotations from Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and its founder, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, among others, in front of the Bradford County Courthouse in Starke, Fla.
The New-Jersey-based group, which has a membership of about 4,000 atheists, humanists, and other non-believers, won the right to erect the monument in a settlement reached in March over a six-ton granite display of the Ten Commandments on the same property.
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Guidelines for privately funded, public monuments on the Bradford County Courthouse lawn require that the monuments commemorate “people, events, and ideas which played a significant role in the development, origins or foundations of United States of America or Florida law, or Bradford County.� Both the Ten Commandments and the atheist monument meet those requirements, Sexton [Will Sexton, an attorney for Bradford County] said.
The atheist monument — which looks like a backwards, lower-case letter “h� — is engraved with the words of several Founding Fathers, as well as a quotation from the Treaty of Tripoli, signed by President John Adams in 1797. It reads, “The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.�
American Atheists president David Silverman will attend the June 29 unveiling. The monument, he said, is his group’s attempt to assert its equality.
“This is not an attack on religion, but rather religion’s monopoly,� he said. “The words on our monument do not deride or mock, but rather they clarify and correct assertions that Christianity has some kind of special place in America over other religious positions. It does not.�
Does anyone have an objection to the appropriateness any of the specific quotes:
- “The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.� -- John Adams
- “An atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty banished, war eliminated.� – Madalyn Murray O’Hair
- “Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.� - Thomas Jefferson
- “It will never be pretended that any person employed in that service [writing the Constitution], had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of Heaven.� - John Adams
- “Where a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, ‘tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.� - Benjamin Franklin
