Having lost a legal battle seeking removal of a monument outside a Florida courthouse containing the Ten Commandments an atheist group has decided to erect its own monument to secularism alongside the existing one. In the Washington Post Rabbi Brad Hirschfield writes that

[s]ome will argue that this is a hypocritical move on the part of an organization which for years has argued that public grounds should be as neutral as possible. Some will make that argument but they would be wrong. Instead the decision to build the new monument represents a new and more mature approach to how we use public space. Rather than spend more effort on seeing how empty we can make the American public square we need to see how expansive and inclusive it can become.

Count me a bit dubious that the atheists’ “maturation” just fortuitously coincided with the rejection of their lawsuit. Yet I agree with Hirschfield that the erection of their monument might be something positive because it carries a larger — albeit unintended — symbolism.

Once in place the godless gang’s slab of stone will silently declare a basic fact of life: it’s every man and his deity. Not only are there no atheists in foxholes but there are no pure atheists period. Writing this week in the Spectator Britain’s Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks observes:

The history of Europesince the 18th century has been the story of successive attempts to find alternatives to G-d as an object of worship among them the nation state race and the Communist Manifesto. After this cost humanity two world wars a Cold War and a hundred million lives we have turned to more pacific forms of idolatry among them the market the liberal democratic state and the consumer society all of which are ways of saying that there is no morality beyond personal choice so long as you do no harm to others.

Even so the costs are beginning to mount up…. One group after another — bankers CEOs media personalities parliamentarians the press — has been hit by scandal. Marriage has all but collapsed as an institution…. Rates of depressive illness and stress-related syndromes have rocketed especially among the young. A recent survey showed that the average 18- to 35-year-old has 237 Facebook friends. When asked how many they could rely on in a crisis the average answer was two. A quarter said one. An eighth said none.

The choice is stark: G-d or idolatry in one form or another. And having the Ten Commandments share space with the atheists’ monument to meaninglessness brings that publicly into view. Had they succeeded in their push to empty the public square at thatFloridacourthouse of any trace of religion some would’ve been misled to believe that they stand for the absence of any belief at all.

But that’s not true. They stand for belief in many things some of which Rabbi Sacks noted just not for the one thing that’s worth believing in — the one true G-d. And now by their own hand they’re letting everyone know that.

FAITH IN AMERICA AGallup survey that was recently in the news illustrates the importance of going beyond the headline to see what other questions may have been asked. The survey found that 77% of Americans say religion is losing influence in American life which is in line with the results of most polls that have asked about this since the late 1950s. There were however several points during the 1980s (and the Reagan presidency) when more Americans than not felt religious influence in society was increasing and the highest percentage ever recorded in support of that view was in December 2001. Wonder why?

But the very same poll also contained another finding which was buried in the midsection of a United Press International story on the poll that 75% of respondents believe it would be a positive thing if more Americans were religious.Gallupadds this seemingly surprising result:

Americans who attend church regularly and who say religion is important in their own lives are far more likely than others to say it would be positive for American society if more Americans were religious. Even so over half of those who seldom or never attend and close to one in three Americans who say religion is not important to them personally still say it would be positive for society if more Americans were religious.

These two responses superficially at odds seem to indicate a measure of honesty on the part of those polled. That honesty might consist of an implicit admission on their part that while they ought to be religious and accordingly believe that the more religion the better in American life they simply don’t have the willpower to live in accordance with that belief.

However a more likely explanation might be that many of these respondents don’t actually subscribe to religious beliefs even intellectually. But they do agree with the historian Will Durant that “there is no significant example in history before our time of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion ” and they very much want theirs to survive.