Two churches in South Carolina were recently vandalized with pro-atheist graffiti. The vandals painted messages like “God = Delusion,” “There is no God,” and “Athiesm” (yes, they misspelled it). Whether this was actually done by atheists or not, it’s absolutely wrong. And I like Hemant Mehta’s idea of how we should address it:
I’m setting up a fundraiser. The plan is that the pastor and I will figure out a good (secular, non-proselytizing) charity group in his area that could use the donations. Together, we will give that charity whatever we raise.
It’s a gesture to show that, while we have very serious disagreements about the nature of God, we all want to help our communities and make this world a better place. It’s possible to work together toward that cause. It’s also a slap in the face to the vandals — if they wanted to prove anything, they failed. I hope they’re caught and penalized. And I hope the stories about the vandalism talk about how atheists came together with the church to support a local charity, and not how some evil atheist(s) did this awful damage.
Great idea. I just donated $25 to the cause. I hope you’ll consider doing so as well, if you can afford it.
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ashleybell
July 12, 2012 at 4:24 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Remember the woman who cut the letter ‘B’ in her face but calimed two black muggers had done it…? The ‘B’ was backwards because she hade done it using a mirror…
This kind of incident is so rare, I’m rather suspicious, although I can’t rule out that it was actually done by atheists…The non-threatening nature of the grafitti is a bit odd… Where’s the “F@$K YOU Xtian etc etc”. The lack of potty mouth is striking.
Alverant
July 12, 2012 at 4:31 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The misspelling makes me skeptical too. I remember plenty of pro-Atheist and similar signs being vandalized and stolen (often with support from the community). I don’t recall any fundraisers for us either. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if this was a frame up job. But cheers to you and Mehta for being the better people. I hope they do catch who’s responsible and that your efforts to correct the damage gets just as much press as the vandalism.
lancifer
July 12, 2012 at 4:43 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I must admit that I sometimes type athiest instead of atheist. Besides being a poor typist, it’s the dreaded “i before e except after c” mnemonic that gets me. The damn rule is almost useless.
I like the idea of helping the churches fix the damage but I doubt that it will change many believer’s minds about the morality of athiests… er atheists.
steve oberski
July 12, 2012 at 4:44 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I was hoping this was an article from The Onion.
erichoug
July 12, 2012 at 4:58 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m willing to double my donation as a bet that this one done by one of the kids in the youth ministry.
Tyrant al-Kalām
July 12, 2012 at 5:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I wouldn’t be surprised if it actually were by kids of parents going to the church, who actually mean it. But it doesn’t matter a bit – A joint charity as a response is always a good idea, and this occasion is as good as any.
Area Man
July 12, 2012 at 5:08 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Two churches in South Carolina were recently vandalized with pro-atheist graffiti.”
Actually just one. The other incident appears unrelated, happened a couple of months earlier, and involved someone spray painting “DF 10″ (no idea what that means) and a swastika.
raven
July 12, 2012 at 5:16 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
That can happen.
1. Someone burned a fundie church to the ground in my area. It was the teenage son of one of the members who had some sort of issues with the church.
2. In Utah, a few years ago, a Mormon church was vandalized. By the kids who went to the church who somehow were sick and tired of being Mormon. I don’t think it was a good idea but I can understand being sick and tired of being raised Mormon. They have something like confession for kids where you are supposed to tell the Bishop (a lay member who frequently has a brain the size of a walnut) about your life of sin.
3. The Baptist churches in Texas were torched by young adults who…were Baptists. They never explained why. I suspect they just wanted to burn buildings for fun.
raven
July 12, 2012 at 5:21 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Pierce R. Butler
July 12, 2012 at 5:32 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Here in Gainesville, FL, in the early ’90s we had four or five churches of various denominations totaled by arson over a few weeks.
All sorts of rumors flew around, including one pastor who announced that a local coven of lesbian witches was demanding such burnings as a rite of initiation.
The cops eventually arrested a homeless drifter, who reportedly confessed and provided corroborating details about some of the fires. His motive? Repeated boyhood sexual molestations, in a church in another state.
Gregory in Seattle
July 12, 2012 at 5:51 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@lancifer #3 – If you remember that “The foreign atheist was at her leisure watching sufficiently weird species for science”, you will remember a useful list of exceptions to the “i before e except after c” rule.
In any case, I think the fundraising drive is an excellent idea. And almost $1,100 already is pretty impressive.
petzl20
July 12, 2012 at 5:55 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Boy, if these vandals were going for causing offense, why didn’t they go for the “satanist” angle, with upside-down pentagrams and the like? wouldn’t that be more offensive? or does it reveal that, yeah, christians fear/hate atheists even more than satan?
In any case, as a service to the victims of these vandals, I’ve used my elite FBI-profiling skills to hone down the suspects to: 2 or more white males, between 14 and 19, with high school education or less, who live within 3 miles of the church, and very possibly attend the churches in question.
The story which includes pictures of the vandalism is at:
http://www.midlandsconnect.com/news/story.aspx?id=775095#.T_9FXHDSP34
raphaelsofaer
July 12, 2012 at 6:20 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Is it ok to hate athiests? This is a question I’ve never considered.
lancifer
July 12, 2012 at 6:24 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Thanks Gregory in Seattle.
I’ll try to recite that to myself a few hundred times to make it stick.
raven
July 12, 2012 at 6:26 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
sc_72744af7efe9efc694b5140d373d872e
July 12, 2012 at 6:59 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
(warning, sleep deprived mini-rant. IDK how clearly I expressed myself but makes sense to me right now…)
From the point of view that it does damage to our efforts to not appear evil to the average american, if atheists are responsible its stupid and sucks for the rest of us. On the other hand as often as atheist signs, banners, ect are vandalized and as many comments as a lot of us have to put up with, I can sympathize with being tempted to do something like this. (honestly who hasn’t been tempted to rearrange a church marquee board?) Unfortunately when it looks like it was someone on our side it makes national news. Too bad it doesn’t work the other way too.
Modusoperandi
July 12, 2012 at 7:49 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Area Man “…and involved someone spray painting ‘DF 10′ (no idea what that means) and a swastika.”
Oh. My. God. Nazi geologists from Saskatchewan!
mucklededun
July 12, 2012 at 8:12 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
1. These couldn’t have been real atheists; there is a lower-case ‘l’ among the upper case letters in ‘DElUSION’.
2. I contributed $50 & I have been reading all blogs & comment threads during the past year, so I feel entitled to make the following pronouncement:
MOVEMENT SCHMOVEMENT
Armored Scrum Object
July 12, 2012 at 8:34 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@Gregory in Seattle #11: I’m fond of I Before E, if Taken with Caffeine.
Marcus Ranum
July 12, 2012 at 8:40 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Whoever did it, whether atheist or not, was wrong. Period. Unlike the many members of religions who are unwilling to speak out against the actions of their more radical sect-members, I’ve got to say that I hope whoever did it is caught and held fully responsible for their actions.
rickdesper
July 12, 2012 at 9:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Two true stories:
1) when I was a kid living in a Jewish neighborhood, a local temple was vandalized with various anti-Semitic graffiti. After several weeks of hand-wringing in the press about anti-Semitism, it turned out that it had been done by a Jewish kid.
2) when I was in college, the school’s Malcolm X House (you can guess who lived there) was vandalized with a bunch of over-the top white supremacist graffiti (swastikas, etc.) Again, this led to a round of hand-wringing about racism on campus, etc., etc. And it turned out to have been the job of a couple residents.
This is not to say that all anti-semitic or racist or anti-religious graffiti is faked. Quite to the contrary. But really, there is no shortage of people willing to “create evidence” about how their enemies are really the bad guys. Because, after all, “the ends justify the means” and “by any means necesssary.”
Dr X
July 12, 2012 at 10:09 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I just don’t believe it was done by atheists. it’s South Carolina, where Christian, white people like to think they’re persecuted by educated people, black people, immigrants, Mexicans, Washington, Democrats, liberals, Hollywood, Muslims, and, of course, atheists. Southern culture has a huge false victimization streak running through it and when real victimization doesn’t happen they have to make shit up. I would not even assume that this was done by teenagers. Can you imagine how effectively this rallies the nitwits in the pews?
Dr X
July 12, 2012 at 10:16 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Let me put it this way: when whole towns go berserk, making death threats against children for daring to challenge violations of church-state separation, my impression is that atheists are nothing but upset by it. They would like nothing better than to be free to challenge illegal practices without needing to go into hiding. Contrast this with the “atheist vandalism” in this case. Nobody in that church is fearful for their safety, and I bet many are kind of thrilled to have something to point to in support of their false claims of persecution.
Modusoperandi
July 12, 2012 at 10:36 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Dr X “”Nobody in that church is fearful for their safety, and I bet many are kind of thrilled to have something to point to in support of their false claims of persecution.”
Oh, come on! Some Militant Athiest could write a book at them!
Area Man
July 12, 2012 at 10:49 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Speaking as someone who grew up in South Carolina, I think you’re relying just a wee bit too much on stereotypes. Obviously, crazy right-wing nutbags live in SC. So too do liberals, Mexicans, black people (lots of them), immigrants, atheists, etc. The difference between SC and other states in terms of political leanings is accounted for by a relatively small number of people at the margins. SC reliably votes Republican by, let’s say, a 60-40 split. And a reliably liberal state like MA might vote Democratic by the same split. What this means is that to turn the most conservative state into the most liberal one, or vice versa, all you need to do is to invert the beliefs of a mere 1 in 5 people. Obviously, the reliably majority has a big impact on the state’s policies and culture, but it wasn’t a majority who pulled this stunt, it was individuals.
This is not to say that the crime wasn’t committed by Christians who wanted to make atheists look bad, or by random hoodlums who just wanted to get their rocks off and thought that anti-God messages would be offensive enough to guarantee press coverage (the most likely explanation, IMO). But it’s not as if there are no atheists in SC, or that your average Christian there is completely different than a random Christian plucked from anywhere else.
Anne C. Hanna
July 12, 2012 at 11:46 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I agree that there’s a not-insignificant possibility that this was done disgruntledly or fraudulently by churchgoers, or for unrelated reasons by a non-atheist. But I’m a little bit uncomfortable with the notion of making a huge deal out of that possibility in order to exonerate ourselves. (I’m not accusing anybody specifically of doing that, it just seems like there’s a general slide in that direction that we maybe want to halt.) There are sufficient numbers of atheists who are gigantic jagoffs (just like there are in every other human group), or who are rebellious teenagers with poor self-control and limited understanding of the consequences of their actions, or whatever, that this really could have been done by somebody who sincerely believed what they were writing, misspellings included.
We don’t have to try to downplay the existence of such people or assume that the church is either lying about or at fault in provoking what happened to them in order to distance ourselves from the actions of whoever did it. That strikes me as not far better than what is done to women who are raped, like, “Oh, neither I nor any of of the guys I know are rapists, so she must have made it up or provoked it.” I don’t think we want to inadvertently end up doing that in our own defense.
It seems to me that Hemant’s got it right. We should just say, “This is really bad, and doesn’t represent the shared values of our community, regardless of who did it. While we don’t agree with the beliefs of this church, we don’t think anybody should be treated this way no matter what they believe, and we stand with the church against the assailants.” And that’s enough. Any additional attempts at excusing ourselves make it seem like we identify more with those few atheists who *might* do this kind of thing than with our fellow humans who were attacked in this instance, and that makes us look worse, not better.
cyberCMDR
July 13, 2012 at 1:34 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The churches are both less than a mile from a big middle school, high school complex (Dutch Forks schools).
This probably also explains the DF10 at one of the churches. I’d say either 10th grade, or perhaps a 2010 graduate who is still emotionally in middle school.
dingojack
July 13, 2012 at 2:45 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Modus (#17) – 105 pages of lists theses (with notes on the content, relevancy, currency & etc.) on the subject of the geology of Saskatchewan (plus six pages of introduction)*.
Now that’s a page turner!
Perhaps when they catch the little punks** the authorities could force them to read the whole thing aloud in some public space whilst the good townsfolk throw rotten fruits and vegetables.
Dingo
—–
* Yep, that’s what annotated bibliography means
** I agree, most likely middle school students who parents are a member of the church
billyeager
July 13, 2012 at 4:43 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I remember Bobby Henderson having to deal with something similar regarding some FSM-related graffiti last year. He asked his readers to chip in to Hermant Mehta’s cleanup fund, it was maxed within a matter of hours.
http://www.venganza.org/2011/06/vandalism-is-not-ok/
frankboyd
July 13, 2012 at 5:21 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
That’s a damn fine idea and a very principled one Goodness knows who thought this was clever.
matty1
July 13, 2012 at 6:13 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well said @26, we don’t need to know who is responsible to condemn the vandalism. Incidentally the Pastor of that church seems to feel the same way.
From the Friendly Atheist article.
Anne C. Hanna
July 13, 2012 at 6:23 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yeah, matty, I remember noticing that snippet too. It makes me very glad to see that the pastor is being decent about it, and not just raging about evil atheists. In fact, now that you mention it, it seems to me that the fact that he’s acting like a decent sort who doesn’t deserve this makes it all the more important for us to respond to this with an equal sense of honor and fairness.
rogerfirth
July 13, 2012 at 7:04 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Most christians I’ve known definitely feel more threatened by atheists than by satan. Satan, at least, is already part of their fantasy world. Satan just another god — an evil counterpart to their “good” god. The classic good/evil battle, and they know their god will protect them.
Atheists, on the other hand, are a big unknown to them. We don’t buy into that fantasy at all. We’re not out to vanquish their god — we don’t believe their god exists at all. We don’t validate their fantasy and they find that more disturbing than a classic good/evil battle.
democommie
July 13, 2012 at 7:06 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Whoever did it is an asshole and should be prosecuted if apprehendede.
Hemant Mehta’s heart is in the right place.
This:
“It’s a gesture to show that, while we have very serious disagreements about the nature of God, we all want to help our communities and make this world a better place.’
however, is demonstrably untrue.
Raging Bee
July 13, 2012 at 9:15 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The cops eventually arrested a homeless drifter, who reportedly confessed and provided corroborating details about some of the fires. His motive? Repeated boyhood sexual molestations, in a church in another state.
Funny (not) how authoritarian religions have a way of creating their own enemies. So tell me…once that information became public, did it prompt any soul-searching within the Christian community or any significant subset thereof?
SC reliably votes Republican by, let’s say, a 60-40 split….
WHAT KIND of Republicans do they tend to vote for?
…including one pastor who announced that a local coven of lesbian witches was demanding such burnings as a rite of initiation.
…and all the hot chicks in teh coven had a wild passionate orgy in the light of the fire, right? With the same sexy drumming soundtrack you can hear at any Pagan festival? Once again, the best ideas for porn come from those oh-so-conservative Christians.
Pierce R. Butler
July 13, 2012 at 11:58 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Raging Bee @ # 35: So tell me…once that information became public, did it prompt any soul-searching within the Christian community or any significant subset thereof?
Not that I could tell from reading the newspaper. There were some boilerplate “we will pray for him” messages, but most of the follow-up was about insurance payments and fund-raising to build the replacement churches.
No (public) retraction from the preacher fretting about the lesbo-witch initiations, either. I didn’t have the nerve to personally ask any of the local covens’ members for their perspectives.
dogmeat
July 13, 2012 at 12:00 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Raven @8 & 15:
I can tell you from my personal observations of the Mormon community here in southern AZ, being a Mormon kid doesn’t seem like much fun to me. Many of them have “seminary” every morning before school, a lot of their activities with other kids are church brokered, plus they often spend entire weekends “volunteering” for the church (in addition to actually going to church). From what I’ve seen we’re talking 6-7 days a week in church or in church related functions, 10-15 hours a week. Add to that, questions are highly frowned upon when it comes to the “Faith™,” critical thinking is frowned upon, and independent thought isn’t just discouraged, it is stomped into the ground like a diseased cockroach.
I had a student a few years ago who was very bright, unfortunately for them, and kept asking questions even after “special counseling.” When they didn’t get answers to the questions from their parents, youth ministers, peers, etc., they started reading books (gasp), and decided that the church was wrong (double super secret gasp). They rather quickly made the transition to vocal atheist. While I silently, internally, cheered them, I also observed them go through a living hell as they were required to spend even more time at a church that they grew to utterly loath. Then, when their grades suffered because they were spending 4-5 hours a day at church, they grounded the student, from what I really couldn’t tell you because they still went to church or church related functions somewhere in the neighborhood of 35-40 hours a week.
If I’d been through that mess? I’d likely burn the damn church down as well.
—————
I agree that this is likely the source. A couple of the local high schools have established the tradition of spray painting their year in the blacktop on the streets in front of the school. No one has really done anything about it because it fades so fast in the AZ sun that it’s nearly a blank template by the time the next year rolls around. Add to that, every couple of years they resurface the roadbed and completely clean the slate (so to speak). But, a few years ago some morons at the school, while doing their annual school prank, shifted from the soaping windows with “20xx!, seniors rock,” etc., to doing so with swastikas and other racist crap prior to shifting to full fledged vandalism. Stupid kids writing stupid garbage.
Regardless of whether the culprits here are actual atheists or not, its still stupid kids (regardless of age), doing stupid crap. I hope they catch the jerks.
dannysichel
July 13, 2012 at 1:39 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“An athiest is a person who wierdly refuses to recieve the gift of beleif in a diety.” – David Goldfarb
Kagehi
July 13, 2012 at 10:38 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Hmm. There is something not being considered here. This might have been a “liberal” church, and the attack and accusation, by some other church’s members, that they where not fundie enough.
matty1
July 14, 2012 at 8:04 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It appears to be so, a brief check suggests that it is affiliated with the United Methodist Church, which has sections on its website about environmentalism and is was a founding member of something called the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. They are a bit more confused on gay rights giving pretty much equal prominence to opposing marriage equality and encouraging members not to discriminate against gay friends and relatives.