Having lost a legal battle seeking removal of a monument outside a Florida courthouse containing the Ten Commandments an atheist group has decided to erect its own monument to secularism alongside the existing one. In the Washington Post Rabbi Brad Hirschfield writes that
[s]ome will argue that this is a hypocritical move on the part of an organization which for years has argued that public grounds should be as neutral as possible. Some will make that argument but they would be wrong. Instead the decision to build the new monument represents a new and more mature approach to how we use public space. Rather than spend more effort on seeing how empty we can make the American public square we need to see how expansive and inclusive it can become.
Count me a bit dubious that the atheists’ “maturation” just fortuitously coincided with the rejection of their lawsuit. Yet I agree with Hirschfield that the erection of their monument might be something positive because it carries a larger — albeit unintended — symbolism.
Once in place the godless gang’s slab of stone will silently declare a basic fact of life: it’s every man and his deity. Not only are there no atheists in foxholes but there are no pure atheists period. Writing this week in the Spectator Britain’s Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks observes:
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