All over America, there are Ten Commandments monuments and displays on public property: public parks, court houses, schools, etc. Atheists, agnostics, and secularists regularly launch legal challenges to these displays, challenges which aren't always successful but which do inevitably produce outrage among many conservative Christians. So are these challenges to Ten Commandments displays worthwhile? Should atheists and secularists bother or should they focus on other things?

1. Ten Commandments Displays Aren't Important

Some insist that Ten Commandments displays aren't important enough to bother with. After all, they are often just small displays or stone monuments with a mere ten short statements, right? What harm do they really cause? Well, if they weren't important, why do conservative Christians work so hard to defend them?

However small they may be physically, these dipslays still represent a government endorsement of religion by promoting particular passages from a particular religious scripture. Even when not funded by the government, they are still given a privileged position that is denied to other ideas and beliefs held by other groups and religions. If atheists don't challenge or fight these displays, how can they justify challenging or fighting any other violation of church/state separation?

2. Challenging the Ten Commandments is Bad for Public Relations

Because displays of the Ten Commandments tend to be so popular with Christians, attempts to challenge them — especially with lawsuits — may appear to be bad public relations for atheists. This is why some say atheists should simply stop; apparently, the allegedly good public relations from staying quiet is more important than the benefits from stopping violations of church/state separation. Does that make sense?

There is no evidence that anyone will suddenly start liking atheists more simply because they meekly submit to Christians using the government to promote their religion. On the other hand, the message of inequality expressed by the privileging of certain forms of Christianity can only serve to promote negative feelings about atheists as well as of non-Christians.

3. Ten Commandments Displays Are Traditional

The most popular defense of Ten Commandments displays is that they are traditional: atheists are told that they shouldn't try to fight community traditions which have existed so long without (allegedly) hurting anyone. This argument is actually used in court cases despite the fact that "tradition" has no legal weight whatsoever. Tradition also isn't a good reason for why people should avoid challenging something; there are lots of traditions which deserve to be challenged and lots of overturned practices which were traditional but deserve to be gone now.

4. Ten Commandments Aren't Really Religious

Since secular displays are legal, it's become common to defend the Ten Commandments as a secular document. Most of the recently created displays are designed to include separate, secular elements or documents in order to make better use of the "secular" argument. So atheists are told that it's a mistake to challenge these displays because they are challenging secular documents that are only commemorating the history or development of western law.

This objection fails, though, because there's nothing truly secular about the Ten Commandments. The displays are really attempts to promote religious doctrines, not commemorations of western law, and that's something which needs to be challenged.

5. Ten Commandments are Needed for Morality

Often connected to the claim that Ten Commandments displays are secular is the argument that they are needed in order to promote basic moral principles. This argument is most often used with displays in schools and the implication is that atheist challenges to such displays are necessarily an attempt to undermine traditional values. Atheists don't want to be perceived as opposed to morality, especially given the extent to which atheists are accused of lacking any basis for morality, right?

The truth is that if the goal is to promote morality, Ten Commandments displays are a poor way to go about it. Half of them are about religion and God, not morality, and the rest are a simplistic vision of morality at best. There's also nothing in the Ten Commandments about things which we need to deal with, especially in schools.

6. Ten Commandments Are the Basis for American Law

Another argument against challenging Ten Commandments displays is that they are the foundation of secular American (or Western) law. Having the Ten Commandments displayed on public property is therefore supposed to be a way of acknowledging the roots of our laws and our government. Atheists aren't supposed to challenge these displays because doing so means that they are perceived as challenging western law itself. There's already a lot of animus towards atheists, so do they really want to be perceived as opposing law and order?

This objection isn't valid because the connections between western law and the Ten Commandments is too tenuous — most of the Commandments have no corresponding or related laws in America. The few which do are cases where there exists related laws in every culture, including those which predate the Ten Commandments.

7. Ten Commandments Displays are Free Speech

Atheist challenges to Ten Commandments displays are also criticized as attacks on Christians' freedom of speech. This is a potentially credible argument, but it fails because it ignores the role of government in the speech in question. No atheists have challenged Ten Commandments displays which appear on private property, like personal homes or churches. Instead, all of the challenges have been to displays or monuments that appear in public spaces like parks, schools, or court houses.

In such cases it's no longer a simple question of free speech when the Ten Commandments are given special status that's unavailable to displays from other groups. This is why many of the challenges don't demand that the monument or display be removed, but instead demand that other displays be allowed; it's only when equality is denied that it's requested that the original dispaly be removed.