Atheists stuck on stupid over Mother Teresa stamp
Thursday January 28, 2010 8:47 PM  Let's talk about an issue that is calm and completely unemotional, religion. In the never ending debate about the separation of church and state there are the radicals that want to die on every hill no matter how far it deviates from the obvious stated intentions in that non-living and non-breathing document called The Constitution.
The Freedom from Religion Foundation is urging their Atheist members to boycott the latest stamp that has been issued by the United States Postal Service honoring Mother Teresa. Putting aside that boycotting Mother Teresa is like boycotting aid to Haiti the Atheist group thinks that the stamp is a violation of the USPS policy but after reading about the Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee that review stamps I found no reference to religion.
Freedom from Religion Foundation spokeswoman Annie Laurie Gaylor said Mother Teresa infused Catholicism into her secular honors, including an "anti-abortion rant" during her Nobel Prize acceptance speech and that even her humanitarian work was controversial. "...There's this knee jerk response that everything she did was humanitarian, and I think many people would differ that what she was doing was to promote religion, and what she wanted to do was baptize people before they die, and that doesn't have a secular purpose for a stamp."
It is very interesting that they consider Mother Teresa's humanitarian work "controversial" but they have no objection to a stamp that commemorated Malcolm X. Maybe you can make sense of that logic, I can't.
 There was also no objection to the stamp commemorating Martin Luther King Jr. who was a devout Baptist Minister or the stamp commemorating two Muslim holidays in December, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha.
This objection is strictly based in politics. Mother Teresa was a staunch pro-life humanitarian and this infuriates secular liberals. In their narrow minded little world of progressing apes there is no room for alternative points of view or even tolerance for those who want to celebrate the contributions of religious people. In their mind, it is all evil propaganda by a church that wishes to control the world.
Gaylor said the foundation's only concern is the "other things that deserve to be commemorated but are not because the people behind it didn't have the power of the Catholic Church." That is interesting because here is a link to the 75 stamps in the 2008 Commemorative Collection in which 74 were not religious.
Allow me to paint with a broad brush for a second. I think Atheists are in general, very self centered people. It is the religion of me, not we. It is a belief system that believes that there is nothing more important in this world than the service of oneself.
As divisive as religion can be it is also the basis for America's moral authority in the world. The concepts of freedom as a human right bestowed upon us by our creator, good and evil, right and wrong are based in religious principles, not secular. If not for eternal condemnation then why is greed, cheating, lying, stealing and murder wrong?
Atheists are entitled to believe whatever they want but they should not have the right to tell the rest of us that we can't acknowledge our beliefs and symbols too. Moments of silence, acknowledgments of holidays or religious symbols are not an assault on Atheism but Atheists are constantly on the assault over these issues.
The Constitution states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." I challenge anyone to explain to me how a stamp acknowledging one of the most championed humanitarians of the 20th Century who happens to be Roman Catholic violates the Constitution.
Stay Sharp!
RELATED STORY: Atheist Group Blasts Postal Service for Mother Teresa Stamp 
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