There is Christmas cheer in Washington. According to this story in yesterday’s New York Times:

An unusual holiday message began appearing this week in the nation’s capital on the sides of buses and trains.

“No god? … No problem!” reads the advertisement featuring the smiling faces of people wearing Santa Claus hats. “Be good for goodness’ sake.”

Similar campaigns by evangelical atheists have taken place in other cities in the United States and Europe. But it seems believers haven’t figured out how to react yet. Should they be hurt or outraged or perhaps indifferent? According to one prominent Christian spokesman, they should be hurt. Ian Urbina reports in the Times:

“It is the ultimate Grinch to suggest there is no God during a holiday where millions of people around the world celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ,” said Mathew D. Staver, founder and chairman of the Liberty Counsel, a conservative religious law firm, and dean of Liberty University School of Law in Lynchburg, Va. “It is insensitive and mean.”

I don’t follow Staver’s thinking. Any believer who encounters strident atheism for the first time in the form of an ad on a bus has probably lived a life so sheltered and secure from secularism he can hardly be laid low by this one encounter. No, I can’t see believers breaking down at the sight of these ads. Most likely they swim in a sea of un-belief. They are accustomed to strident atheism. Many have been strident atheists. They can handle one more blow.

The only proper reaction is this: genuine concern for the people who put these ads together. They’ve made a dangerous gamble and need to be reasoned with for a few minutes.

There is no proof an omniscient, infinite and judging God does not exist. Let me amend that. There is no proof that an omniscient, infinite and judging God who would not like the claim that he does not exist trumpeted all over the Washington public transit system does not exist. If he does exist, he is going to see these ads. If he does see these ads, he will consider them “insensitive and mean.”

Atheists have traditionally laid low and not rented billboard space. There is good reason for this. The alternative is too risky.

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