Two churches in Bend, Oregon have been vandalized recently. The spray painted tags say, “Praise the FSM.” Since many atheists jokingly worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster, it is probable that the criminals were atheists in this case. As a show of good will, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Friendly Atheist blog have decided to raise money from the atheist community to give to the two churches that were vandalized for use in cleaning up the graffiti.
While I think this is a good idea in theory and part of me is glad they have done this, another part of me has a problem with it. But before I get into that, I want to make it clear that destroying a message one does not agree with is cowardly… and Biblical. I think it is important that we destroy bad ideas with criticism and better ideas. I condemn those who think that a little spray paint is better than a solid argument with logic, reason, and evidence. I only hope that those who are responsible will come forward and volunteer their time to clean up there graffiti themselves.
Not long ago a Fresno, California an atheist billboard was vandalized. The criminals were probably Christians because of the “don’t” in “Don’t believe in God? Join the club” was spray painted out so that the billboard reads “believe in God? Join the club.” Can you guess how many Churches have volunteered to help cover the clean up costs? Zero!
Atheists have enough trouble raising funds for our own causes and it seems like a wasted effort to raise money for churches who believe that we should be tortured for all eternity. Both churches in this case support and endorse that message on their websites HERE and HERE. It isn’t like they can’t raise clean up funds themselves by telling their parishioners that God wants them to donate their last cent to cleaning up the church.
While neither church talks about their positions on political issues on their websites, I am sort of thinking that every dollar they spend on clean up would be a dollar not spent on fighting against gay equality, pushing creationism in the class room, among other things. Still, I want to make it clear that the ends don’t justify the means and so I worry that this type of thinking might encourage more vandalism. I don’t want that to happen.
On the other hand, the good part about this fund raising effort by atheists is that it shows that the greater community of reason does not support this type of vandalism and that we are calling out the “extremists” in our own camp, even though this would hardly be extreme for the Christian camp who do far worse things without a thought. In a way this sort of shames the more mainstream and liberal Christian community for not coming to the aid of those who have fallen victim to actions of Christian "extremism." Still, it is doubtful that the greater community of faith will step up to the plate with their collection plates to right the wrongs of their fellow god-believers. After all, most of them believe that atheists will be and ought to be tortured for all eternity in Hell.
So I am mixed on this effort. If you are so inclined to donate, you can do so HERE.
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