This is a personal blog posts from Nathan Knight:

The Reason Rally served as an encouragement to Atheists to “come out of the closet” and yield their ideas in the public square. Thousands showed up and I was one of them. I walked away with three distinct emotions:

Strange: I felt it strange while I was there, not just because I wasn’t one of “them” but because of how much I agreed with what was being said from the stage. They celebrated the separation of church and state, people who have been bullied or abused in religious circles, or even encouraging people to “come out of the closet” as Atheists.

It was also strange because the basis of the gathering was to celebrate something they didn’t believe. I can’t think of another type of gathering where people gather solely to celebrate something they don’t believe in. I don’t believe in flying spaghetti monsters, but I’m not planning on having a rally about that? Surely, their aren’t people from the flying spaghetti monster religion pushing in on society (as Christians do)…regardless, that doesn’t negate the strangeness of it all.

Ironic: I felt the whole thing ironic for some of the reasons above, but also because the gathering was labeled a Reason rally. The implication was clearly, if you believe in a God then you cannot reason…this of course is very poorly reasoned. Further, as some of our Christian brothers and sisters were there standing for the truth, I listened in to the Atheist’s rhetoric and it was incredibly poorly reasoned itself, as were some of the claims from the stage (Dawkins claimed Genesis was written in 800 ad & to what authority were they celebrating “justice?”).

Sad: I felt sad because of the utter hopelessness for these throngs. Surely, these people could care less about my sympathy for them (and they said as much). Many of those gathered seemed as though they were a veritable representation of those shunned by society. Not for their atheism, but for other aspects that our society does not celebrate or welcome. Which left me deeply saddened because these are the ones that Christ seemed to be very interested.

It was almost palatable in walking and standing in the midst of those people that they felt like the underdogs of society and they came to shake their fists at the society that shunned them…again, not for their atheism, but for the other aspects of their person.

Tomorrow I will suggest some ways we can respond.