Seem to be harmless seasonal greetings but are they?  If we were not so accustomed to them we would recognize them for the insult that they are. Fully a third of Americans find religion unimportant in their lives.  But the greeters presume that we all are christian (in a christian nation, of course). 

I got the ‘happy easter’ yesterday at my christian grocery store.  I had thought the store was secular but the staff gave the christian salutation.

Oh, and at christmas they provide christian music and you can’t get into the store without having the christian beggars tinkle their little bells at you and give you the merry christmas whether you are jew, moslem, atheist, mormon or devoted to another of the worlds thousand god inventions.   (And surprise! Lots of religions think the virgin birth is utter nonsense.)

At my religious grocery store I responded to the easter wishes with, ‘Oh, no, I am an atheist.  I don’t do the god stuff; it is just superstition.’  The clerk smiled weakly.  The grocery bagger, a more gregarious fellow, said, ‘But what about the colored egg hunt?’  I smiled and said, ‘Oh, the bunny? Sure we do that for the children and then explain that rabbits are mammals and don’t lay eggs, that is the chicken’s job.’

Then we have the gratuitous, ’god bless you’ from total strangers if you sneeze.   I have done better on that one.   I always ask,  ‘Oh,  which god is that?’  They mumble or say, ‘What ever god you have.’  There is my chance to smile politely and say, ‘Oh, I am an atheist.  I don’t have any gods; they are all imaginary.’

But the grocery store got me thinking of the many ways the religions are intrusive and rude.  Consider the church bells.  In part I find them a charming old world custom.  But I have talked with people who live under those bells and they find them jarring and noxious.  And they can’t turn the volume down with their remote control devices.  The bells are really calls to prayer or celebration of some god’s blessing or the sprinkling of babies as they are entered into the church membership without their consent.  To assess the rudeness of church bells we only need to consider how much we would enjoy the islamic call to prayer from a minaret five times a day.  They are Americans just like christians so should have the same right to annoy and proselytize over the public air waves.  

The American Constitution and basic courtesy give us each the right to our choice of religion or of no religion but not the right to intrude and presume.  

Perhaps this seems very priggish of me.  Yet we are really dealing with venom.  The various religions deny each other and poison human relationships.  They absorb huge amounts of public funds and are responsible of much warring and slaughter.  Their sexual stringency has deprived humanity of loving acts for centuries.  The anti-birth control stance of many religions has helped glut our world with an unsustainable population and spread AIDS and other STDs.   And in my opinion their worst abuse is the brainwashing of vulnerable children with superstition and a distorted understanding of the workings of our world.   

So for me keep your god blesses and your virgin birth and resurrection greetings to your self.

THEY ARE NOT HARMLESS;

THEY ARE TOXIC.