Celebrate Reason': New Atheist Billboard Calls Christmas a Myth

WNYW-TV:

A group called the American Atheists has paid for a huge billboard on Route 495 outside the Lincoln Tunnel in North Bergen, N.J., that is raising some eyebrows.

The billboard shows a silhouette of the Three Wise Men approaching the Nativity, with the words: "You KNOW it's a Myth / This Season, Celebrate REASON!"

The group says the billboard is not designed to convert Christians to atheism. Rather, Dave Silverman, a spokesman for the American Atheists, says the sign is designed to encourage existing atheists who are going through the motions of celebrating Christmas to stop.

The American Atheists website lays out their mission this way:

Statistics show that nearly 50 million Americans are atheists. Some use names like freethinker, agnostic or humanist to describe or modify their position, but atheism (the absence of a belief in a deity) is broad, and encompasses all those terms.  If you don't have an active belief in a god, you're an atheist.  It's a very good thing!

Millions of atheists are closeted, choosing to go along to get along, and feigning religion to their friends, family, and coworkers.  American Atheists understands the pressure to fit in, but we maintain that for people to love you, they must know the real you.

We also assure you that, like every other person in this country, you know FAR more atheists than you think.

American Atheists has been fighting for atheist civil liberties since 1963.  Our goal is equality for atheists.  We want laws to be applied evenly (which mandates a total separation of church and state), and the elimination of the societal and political stigmas of being, loving, or representing an atheist.