To the Editor:
Re “Atheist Groups Promote a Holiday Message: Join Us” (news article, Nov. 10): I was especially struck, when I read this article, by the campaign of American atheists to “reach people who might go to church but are just going through the motions.” It is interesting that this group is using a billboard showing a Nativity scene and the words “You Know it’s a Myth. This Season Celebrate Reason.”
Would it surprise these proselytizing atheists to discover that plenty of “reasonable” people who are well aware of the mythological and allegorical nature of Scriptural stories regularly attend worship services for reasons altogether unrelated to the literal truth of those stories?
Myth exists on a much deeper level than literal truth; and belonging to a worshiping community and celebrating within that community the yearly cycle of holidays as well as more personal events—birth, coming of age, marriage and death—enriches individual and family life in ways that cannot be measured by the use of pure reason.
Marion Eagen
Clarks Green, Pa., Nov. 10, 2010
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 