Silly atheists and their superstitions.

Florida atheists spend hours attempting to wash the "blessing" of a road:

A group of atheists in Florida spent part of their weekend washing away a blessing placed upon a local highway by a religious group.

Armed with brooms, mops and "unholy water," the atheists gathered Saturday to symbolically clean up holy oil that Polk Under Prayer put down on Highway 98 near the Pasco-Polk county line last year, Bay News 9 reported.

"We come in peace," Humanists of Florida director Mark Palmer announced before he and members of other atheist organizations launched their cleanup. "Now that's normally what aliens say when they visit a new planet, but we're not aliens, we're atheists!"

According to the report, Palmer said Polk Under Prayer's blessing "sends a very bad signal to everyone in Polk County, and [anyone] who travels through Polk County who doesn't happen to be Christian."

The unblessing project, he explained, was "not about atheist rights" but about "welcoming everybody into Polk County."

What a stupid way to spend part of the weekend.

Particularly, when you are not supposed to believe that blessing a road has any effect.

The silly episode puts me in mind of G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown story "The Blast of the Book." A book is introduced into the story with the fable that anyone who opens it disappears under mysterious circumstances. People begin to mysteriously disappear. Much suspense occurs until Father Brown unravels the mystery. The story ends with Father Brown and a professor of the empirical sort discussing the book. The final chapters of the story go as follows:

There was another long silence and then Professor Openshaw laughed; with the laugh of a great man who is great enough to look small.

Then he said abruptly: ‘I suppose I do deserve it; for not noticing the nearest helpers I have. But you must admit the accumulation of incidents was rather formidable. Did you never feel just a momentary awe of the awful volume?’

‘Oh, that,’ said Father Brown. ‘I opened it as soon as I saw it lying there. It’s all blank pages. You see, I am not superstitious.’

Chesterton, G. K. (2008-10-13). The Complete Father Brown (Father Brown Mystery) (Kindle Locations 12283-12287). Old LandMark Publishing. Kindle Edition.