Atheist Changes His Mind About Lawsuit

Recently, an atheist threatened to take us to court because he didn’t like our "National Atheist Day" bumper sticker. What bothered him was the fact that we quoted the Bible, which says, "The fool has said in his heart, There is no God" (Psalm 14:1).

He maintained that because we said he was a fool, he could never sit for public office because we had undermined his character. He was deadly serious, so we temporarily removed the sticker from our site and contacted our lawyers for their thoughts. They told us to leave it in their hands to contact the atheist directly.

Meanwhile we told him that we were considering his demands and were thinking of simply giving the sticker away. He responded with, "If you publicly let it be known on your web site about the giveaway, and place the bumper stickers on your web site next March, for giving away; the day after you publicly put them out in public, is the day I file the lawsuit."

Then, around mid-morning the same day we received a very strange email from him. It said, "I have been asked by at least 40 atheists in the Austin area to personally apologize for threatening a lawsuit about the bumper sticker."

I couldn’t figure out why 40 atheists would suddenly be concerned about our $1 bumper sticker, and then be on our side in the issue. Six months ago I did have dinner with 40 atheists and paid for their meal. Maybe this was a case of "Cast your bread upon the waters: for you shall find it after many days."

That afternoon the lawyers sent their letter to him. It said that his lawsuit was ridiculous and said that the moment he filed they would take him to Federal court. It said that there were 1200 Christian lawyers involved in the organization (the Alliance Defense Fund), and that they take threats of this nature very seriously.

The atheist immediately called them and politely withdrew the threat, and followed it up with a faxed confirmation. He then emailed us and said, "It's o.k. if you put it back on your site. And I will not file a lawsuit of any type for any reason at any time."

That night there was an interesting comment on my blog. It said:

"Hello, I'd just like to point out that Patrick is in the clear minority with atheists on this issue. We on [an atheist] TV show in Austin have always disagreed strongly with most of Ray's positions. However, we are strong proponents of free speech and think that Patrick's threat of a lawsuit is beyond ridiculous. In fact, yesterday on the show, we spent about 30 minutes speaking with Patrick on the phone, trying to make him understand that he was, in fact, behaving foolishly. At the end of this call, Patrick voluntarily supplied his email address and told people to write in and let him know whether they support him. Today, we have been flooded with emails, about 50 so far, and not one of them has disagreed with our position that Patrick is in the wrong. Unfortunately, occasional nuts like Patrick give atheists a bad name, and I feel it is my duty to drop a note pointing out the complete lack of support he has among intelligent people."

I couldn’t help but think that his "occasional nuts like Patrick" may be seen by him as grounds for a new law suit.

UPDATE: Patrick has since filed a complaint with the FCC about bad language used on the atheist TV program.


I found this on an atheist website. Wow, they don't cut him much slack. No doubt Patrick thought he was doing the right thing (as far as atheism was concerned), and now they have turned on him. Please pray that he reads the copy of How to Know God Exists, that I sent him.