Secular Vote

Dear Freethinker:

The 2012 election will be pivotal in America's history - and freethinkers can be the deciding voice!

The "Nones" (nonreligious) conservatively make up a fifth of the U.S. adult population. At least a quarter of young adults are "Nones." This makes seculars as powerful as the core "religious right."

Inform the debate so that secular voices are heard and our vote counts! Register yourselves and others, and participate by voting in upcoming run-offs and on November 6.

Our nation faces major challenges: the economy, increasing poverty, environmental crises. Educational challenges and competing in a global market are made more problematic in America, which is handicapped by misplaced loyalty to religion over progress and reason.

The political debate is further complicated by the intense pressure on political candidates to wear religion on their sleeves, by "gotcha" issues which encourage politicians to kowtow to religious lobbies, and by polls which show that an atheist would still be voters' least desirable presidential candidate. Only 54% of Americans recently told Gallup they would vote for an atheist (which is up from previous polls) and 58% would vote for a Muslim, while 90% or more of Americans would vote for a black, a woman, Catholic, Hispanic or Jewish presidential candidate.

This is a country where half of the population rejects evolution, making Americans credulous, uninformed and vulnerable to political manipulation. Many religiously-motivated referenda will be appearing on ballots, which is used as a way to lure "religious right" voters to the polls.

(Get one of these bumperstickers)

The religious right remains dogged in its religion-based attacks on the separation between state and church, specifically citing scripture and doctrine to target women's rights, reproductive liberty, health care reform, gay rights, and marriage equality.

Never in our history has there been a greater need for engaged, informed secular citizens to stand up for freethought, family and freedom.

(Get one of these bumper stickers)

(Get one of these lapel pins)

The religious right — fundamentalist and Catholic churches — are tirelessly exploiting church congregations to reach and influence voters. We expect many election-year political abuses. Some theocratic organizations are even openly encouraging ministers to break the IRS code and endorse from the pulpit.

Student voters

A special word to freethinking students — this is an exciting time to be on campus, where you can make a difference. Make voter registration the goal of your freethought clubs through November 6. Set up tables. Arm yourself with the facts. Know your rights. Check with your city or county voter registrar's office to ensure you and your friends know how to register and apply in time for the appropriate ID (government photo ID is being required now in many states that used to accept campus photo ID).

Standing up for our godless and secular Constitution,

Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor

Co-Presidents, Freedom From Religion Foundation

As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, FFRF is strictly prohibited from engaging in political campaigns. We do not endorse or oppose any candidates for public office at any level of government. This page is merely intended to encourage our members and other American secularists to get out the vote this election season.

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The Freedom From Religion Foundation has sent demand letters to two Pennsylvania school districts, warning that if FFRF did not receive word by Friday, Sept. 7 that the districts were removing illegal Ten Commandment markers on school property, it and local plaintiffs will sue in federal court.

Connellsville violation. New Kensington violation. (photo): Stephen Hirtle.

FFRF has hired counsel and has parent plaintiffs in both school districts. Marcus B. Schneider of Pittsburgh wrote both districts on Aug. 29 on behalf of FFRF, noting that these Ten Commandment monuments “will not withstand judicial scrutiny.” Read letter to New Kensington School District. Read letter to Connellsville Area School District.

In response, the Connellsville Area School District quickly contacted Schneider, agreeing to remove the six-foot-tall, tombstone-like Eagles Ten Commandments located near the Junior High School East entrance by the auditorium. By Friday, Sept. 7, the district had placed plywood over the front of the monument (although vandals apparently removed the plywood over the weekend). The district assured Schneider it would arrange to remove the biblical marker as soon as possible.

However, FFRF has received no such assurances from New Kensington-Arnold School District, which FFRF first contacted last March. The six-foot granite monument prominently displayed at Valley High School is visible by the school entrance, sitting between two footpath bridges leading from the parking lot to the main entrance of the school.

“The permanent display of the Ten Commandments in front of a New Kensington-Arnold school violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Courts have continually held that public schools may not display religious messages or iconography,” wrote FFRF Staff Attorney Patrick Elliott. He further cited the Supreme Court decision that ruled posting the Ten Commandments in schools violates the Establishment Clause:

The pre-eminent purpose for posting the Ten Commandments on schoolroom walls is plainly religious in nature…The Commandments do not confine themselves to arguably secular matters…rather, the first part of the Commandments concerns the religious duties of believers: worshipping the Lord God alone, avoiding idolatry, not using the Lord’s name in vain, and observing the Sabbath Day. Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39, 41 (1980)

Because the New Kensington marker is a Roman Catholic version of the Ten Commandments (due to numbering and the missing commandment against ‘graven images’), it not only promotes religion over nonreligion, but Catholicism over other forms of Christianity, Elliott pointed out.

Justice Breyer has noted that Ten Commandment displays have no place “on the grounds of a public school, where, given the impressionability of the young, government must exercise particular care in separating church and state.”

“The New Kensington school district deserves an ‘F’ for its irresponsible dereliction of its duty to protect the freedom of conscience of its captive audience of students,” commented FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. "It should not be necessary for parents and FFRF to sue over such an egregious violation, to waste our money and taxpayer funds when the outcome is foregone — the Ten Commandments monument must go from Valley High School.”

“The First Commandment alone shows why the government may not post or endorse the Ten Commandments. A school district has no business telling students and their parents which god to have, how many gods to have or whether to have any gods at all! In the United States, individuals may believe or disbelieve as they like, but the government and our public schools may not take sides on matters left to personal conscience.”

FFRF has more than 18,500 nonreligious members nationwide, including almost 700 in Pennsylvania. Acting as a state/church watchdog, it has brought over 60 laws since being founded in 1978. Currently, it is suing on behalf of its members, including 41 named state members, and its chapter, Nittany Freethought, challenging the declaration by the Pennsylvania House that 2012 is “The Year of the Bible.” In July, seven months after it first protested a city nativity scene owned and placed by Ellwood City Borough Council (Pa.), the council voted finally not to put up the devotional display in the future.

Watch a Muslim imam giving thumbs-up when I talk about nonbelievers being tortured in hell. From my talk at Colorado Christian University, December 10, 2010:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J35Y-QRlwcw

The “thumbs-up” happens at 7:08

At 6:22, I start talking about coherence:

“Second, there is not even a coherent definition of a God. We heard a couple of definitions of a god today, but they are not coherent. In fact, they are mutually contradictory . . . all of these ‘omnis’ . . . omnipresent, omnibenevolent, all-merciful . . . infinitely merciful . . by the way [turning to the Muslim cleric], if Allah is infinitely merciful, then I can’t go to hell. Infinite mercy would have no judgment at all in it. Even if I reject him, even if I spit in his face, if he is infinitely merciful, he would not send me to your hell. By the way, you get to sit on couches under the fig leaves, and you get to laugh at those of us infidels whose skin is being burned off of our arms, but Allah grows the skin back again so that he can burn it off again, and again, and again. [The Muslim cleric smiles, nods, and gives a thumbs-up, twice! Audience laughs.] If such a being did exist, he does not deserve my admiration. He deserves my full denunciation. And I think I would prefer spending an eternity in your hell than pretending to worship such a monster that would create a place like hell. And that goes for the Christian god as well . . .”

One of the reasons the Religious Right has power so disproportionate to its numbers is because its targets — especially politicians — often cede it this destructive power. Case in point yesterday: One insignificant Christian Broadcasting Network blogger nearly brought the Democratic National Convention to its knees by a snarky analysis claiming “God” was deleted from the DNC platform. Fox TV immediately picked up the accusation and of course beat it like a dead horse. Voila — by day’s end, President Barack Obama reportedly personally intervened to ensure “God’s” return to the Democratic Party platform.

Of course the president did. Why should the president, or any politician or political party, expend precious political capital by letting themselves be labeled as “godless” if they can help it? Rather than risk political fallout, the Democrats likewise capitulated to Cardinal Timothy Dolan, after he asked to give a benediction at the DNC, even though Dolan’s on a crusade against Obama’s contraceptive mandate. Dolan (promiscuously?) performed the same rite last week before the RNC. It seems neither party can plan a convention without the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops crashing their party!

Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown University law student infamously silenced by a congressional committee when she tried to testify about the need for the acdministration’s contraceptive mandate, is silent no more. She delivered a great zinger about those celibate bishops during her speech last night before the DNC, warning of “an America in which access to birth control is controlled by people who will never use it.”

The “godless” line in question was changed yesterday from inclusionary to exclusionary, specifically back to the 2008 language saying “we need a government that stands up for the hopes, values and interests of working people and gives everyone willing to work hard the chance to make the most of their God-given potential (italics added).” The DNC platform already clearly contained an affirming section on faith. The representation of religiosity is in full bloom at the DNC, from opening invocations to closing benedictions, cameos by cute young ministers, and the near-ubiquitous “God Bless America” conclusions to speeches. (I might cynically speculate that the phrase must be part of the template in the teleprompters, were it not for the fact that politicians are so happy to wear religion on their sleeves that they probably don’t require such coaching.)

Yet . . . this is the same party that is now openly embracing marriage equality (whose opposition is universally religious in nature). A mini-revolution has taken place. Speaker after speaker at the DNC worked into their talks a reference to Americans being “able to marry whomever they love.” Supporting gay marriage was considered a political kiss of death for a presidential candidate . . . until suddenly it wasn’t. Maybe someday not too far away, we’ll increasingly hear public officials praise Americans for being able to believe or disbelieve as they like.

We got a small taste of such basic social acceptance in Rep. Jared Polis’ speech on Tuesday, when he added:

“. . . ladies and gentlemen, now is our chance to tell the dividers no, tell the special interests and cynical Washington insiders no, tell the lobbyists and PACs no, and tell our fellow countrymen and women, gay and straight, Christians, Jews, Mormons, Muslims and nonbelievers, rich and poor, black and white, Latino and Asian, east and west, north and south; it is time to tell them yes, together we are stronger, together we are better, together we are America.”

We seculars are 19% of the population. We have a voice. We have a vote. We have a vital message: Freedom depends on keeping religious dogma out of government. Freethought is not just respectable, but laudable. We who value the use of reason in forming our opinions about religion will not be marginalized as kooks or zanies or as an insignificant minority to be batted away like pesky flies. We’re of the “tribe” of Voltaire, Wollstonecraft, Jefferson, Paine, Mills, Stanton, Darwin, DuBois, Einstein, Sanger, Sagan.

Yes, it’s wrong and frustrating that in a nation predicated on a godless Constitution, a political party must inject “god” into its platform to avoid a “gotcha” moment. But I’m hopeful someday soon that gratuitous political piety will once again be seen as tasteless pandering, and that public dissing of freethinkers and atheists will be seen as just plain bad manners. And then the intent of our founders will be honored — that there shall be no religious test for public office, or good citizenship.

Meanwhile, FFRF has placed the antidote to all this theopolitical glossolalia — this Matthew-Mark-Luke-Johnorrhea — two billboards up now in Charlotte wisely advising: “God fixation won't fix this nation.” 

P.S. In response to the jingoistic get-out-the-vote campaigns of theocratic organizations, FFRF has created its own “get out the secular vote” webpage we hope you’ll share (particularly with college students): http://ffrf.org/get-involved/secular-vote/.

Watch Annie Laurie Gaylor's timely talk on the history of women and freethought. Click here to view the embedded video. 

Today's New York Times bears a heartbreaking photograph on its front page showing a row of abject women garment workers in Bangladesh. The accompanying story reports that they daily churn out garments for the U.S. and European markets that individually often sell for more than each garment worker earns in a month. Minimum wage for garment workers is set at roughly $37 a month. That inexpensive "Made in Bangladesh" label comes with too high a price tag for womankind.

The story immediately brought to mind a haunting quote, my favorite quote by 19th century freethinker Helen H. Gardener. In the chapter, "Vicarious Atonement" from her elegant and still-timely book, Men, Women and Gods (1885, reprinted in my anthology Women Without Superstition), Gardener wrote:

"I do not know of any divine commands. I do know of most important human ones. I do not know the needs of a god or of another world. I do not know anything about 'a land that is fairer than day.' I do know that women makes shirts for seventy cents a dozen in this one. I do know that the needs of humanity and this world are infinite, unending, constant, and immediate. They will take all our time, our strength, our love, and our thoughts; and our work here will be only then begun."

Women's Equality Day, marking the 92nd anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, takes place Sunday, Aug. 26. Gardener was a significant force in the final push of the suffrage movement, using her social and governmental connections to organize, and was chief liaison of the major suffrage association with President Wilson's administration. Gardener was part of a continuum of women freethinkers and nonconformists who sparked and nurtured the women's right movement. It took freethinking women who refused to "be in silence and subjection" to challenge religious sway over secular laws. Gardener became a friend of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who, in 1848, galvanized the woman's movement by being the first to call for woman suffrage. Stanton wrote the very wording of the suffrage amendment that is now in our Constitution.

As we toast (or at least raise our coffee mugs) to these freethinking feminist foremothers on Sunday, let's remember Gardener's counsel on our work here. While exploitative global economics, of course, factor into the equation, the low status of women in underdeveloped nations stems fundamentally from women's low status under patriarchal religions. The problem with most religions isn't just that they are founded on fables or women's servitude. Religion's unnatural preoccupation with an unprovable, unlikely deity and afterlife corrupts human priorities and robs attention from "the needs of humanity and this world." 

One of FFRF’s volunteers/officers, Phyllis Rose, came to my desk for a visit yesterday. “First Hitchens, then Cockburn, now Vidal. It feels like the end of an era,” she remarked. The death of three sharp pens in eight months is a tragic loss.

Gore Vidal once opined, “the United States was founded by the brightest people in the country — and we haven't seen them since.” When the Continental Congress met in Philadelphia in 1775 to declare our independence from Great Britain, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams met for the first time. Jefferson drafted the Declaration, and Adams (with Ben Franklin) edited it, and then defended it in the Congress. So began the Jefferson and Adams friendship, and a correspondence that illuminates our history. Their political philosophies diverged and they had a falling out in the 1802 election, in which they were opponents. They did not correspond for ten years. In 1812, three years after Jefferson left the presidency, the two men rekindled their correspondence. They wrote to each other for 14 years, until both men died on July 4, 1826 — truly marking the end of an era. 

The correspondence of those 14 years is rich yet diverse, intellectual yet friendly. We are all poorer for the 10-year silence (1802-1812) that previously marred their friendship. Like Jefferson and Adams, Messrs. Hitchens, Vidal, and Cockburn were prolific writers (as well as regular contributors to The Nation). Collectively, they produced over 100 books and countless essays and articles. Unlike Jefferson and Adams, the thinkers we lost this year, although peers, did not get along well near the end. 

Vidal famously proclaimed Hitchens his “heir,” a title Hitchens just as famously repudiated after Vidal’s “crackpot” writings on 9/11 conspiracy theories. Cockburn wrote an article condemning “9/11 Conspiracists” too. Hitchens and Cockburn started out friends but the friendship went sour and Cockburn wrote an obituary critical of Hitchens. Hitchens probably expected as much: “if you look at [Alexander’s] journalism, he would rightly be proud of saying that he’s often written counter-obituaries of people who’ve been over-praised and chosen precisely the moment when there’s a lot of sentimental garbage being published to say, ‘Come on, this guy wasn’t so great.’ ”

Despite their disagreements, the men were similar in many ways. Hitchens and Cockburn were both transatlantic transplants described as iconoclasts and raconteurs. As Geoffrey Wheatcroft explained in a recent op-ed, these men were two of the latest in a prestigious line of English writers living in America. Wheatcroft calls them “The British Gift to American Letters.” Hitchens and Cockburn have been grouped together in numerous articles proclaiming the end of an era. The Oxonians shared a passion for giving a voice to the unrepresented and challenging power and status quo with Vidal.

Hitchens always admired Vidal’s “rare gift of being amusing about serious things as well as serious about amusing ones” and likened him to an American Oscar Wilde. Vidal once referred to Hitchens as his “Dauphin.” Hitchens encouraged Cockburn to fight against those who called him an anti-Semite and Cockburn grudgingly acknowledged that Hitchens had his moments: “In extempore speeches and arguments he was quick on his feet. I remember affectionately many jovial sessions from years ago, in his early days at The Nation.”

Whether or not you agree with their views on climate change (Cockburn), the Iraq War (Hitchens), abortion rights (Cockburn and Hitchens), or United States deserving terror attacks (Vidal), we can admire their skill and audacity. Not an unthinking, unquestioning, unreasoned loyalty to a belief — that is called religion — but boldly taking the unpopular side of an intellectual disagreement for honest, well-thought-out reasons. By all means let us disagree, so long as reason and evidence guide us. And reason guided all these men into unbelief.

Vidal said, “I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. I see no good in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam — good people, yes, but any religion based on a single, well, frenzied and virulent god, is not as useful to the human race as, say, Confucianism, which is not a religion but an ethical and educational system.” He also thought, “Christianity is such a silly religion.” And died an unbeliever, “there is no cosmic point to the life that each of us perceives on this distant bit of dust at galaxy's edge, all the more reason for us to maintain in proper balance what we have here. Because there is nothing else. No thing. This is it. And quite enough, all in all.”

I cannot find a direct quote where Cockburn claims to be an atheist, but he did despise the bible: “Though my basic view is that any childish mind not inoculated by compulsory religion is open to any infection, by all means let us sweep the Bible and the Koran off every bookshelf whither might stray the hand of impressionable youth. Such a cleansing act would return us to the very roots of the European enlightenment.”

And Hitchens, author of God is not Great, well, take your pick of quotes. This one seems apt: “Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, open-mindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.”

Freethinkers will never agree on everything, but we are cohesive on one incredibly powerful point: to paraphrase Hitchens, religion is poison. While we have lost three great wordsmiths, we can rejoice because it is inevitable that the light of reason will bring more luminaries to our cause.

A very special thanks to Phyllis for suggesting the topic of this blog and to Wendy Goldberg for suggesting the Jefferson-Adams connection. Andrew’s original tribute to Hitchens, “Goodbye Hitch, and Thank You” can be found here: http://ffrf.org/news/blog/goodbye-hitch-and-thank-you/. Andrew Seidel is FFRF's newest staff attorney. He will “Debunk the ‘Christian Nation’ Myth” at FFRF's 35th Annual National Convention in Portland, Ore. Learn more about the convention here. 

The next time you receive one of those "Did You Know?" emails that claims that the Ten Commandments are prominent at the United States Supreme Court and are therefore the basis of American law, you can reply with this:

Is American Law Based On The Ten Commandments?

http://ffrf.org/faq/freethought/did-you-know/

A recent Gallup poll shows that while more than nine in 10 Americans would vote for a “well qualified” black, female, Catholic, Hispanic or Jewish presidential candidate, only 54% would vote for a similarly qualified atheist presidential candidate. (By comparison, a “qualified” Muslim candidate would garner 58% approval and a Mormon 80%.)

So . . . a clear religious test for public office in the United States exists, despite the explicit constitutional prohibition of such a political bar.

True, things are looking up for theoretical atheist presidential candidates. This is the second year in a row that a majority of Americans indicate a presidential candidate’s atheism would not stop them from voting for him or her (it was 50% in August 2011). When Gallup first started asking this question in 1958, only 18% would back a nontheist. So while atheists are still at the bottom of the social totem poll statistically, we’re seeing a little progress.

Yet most political candidates are terrified of being atheist-baited. Linking a candidate to atheism is still seen as the kiss of death politically. Only one member of Congress, Pete Stark, is “out” as a nonbeliever. Although Stark was a good sport and consented to being “outed,” he had been reelected over and over for decades before his nonbelief was made public.

Unfortunately, the message most political candidates will take away from this poll is that atheists are still undesirables, even if slightly less undesirable than we used to be. Most public officials fear doing anything that might alienate the Religious Right, a poised rattlesnake one must take pains not to disturb. What political candidate today would dare repeat the famous words of John F. Kennedy as a Catholic candidate pledging fealty to a secular Constitution? (If feeling blue over the state of the state of secularism, I warmly recommend taking solace by viewing FFRF’s spring commercial with JFK saying, “I believe in an America where the separation between church and state is absolute.”) How dismaying that 52 years later, standing up for secular government can be seen as career-killing, even seditious.

But aren’t candidates and the media ignoring a growing voting bloc? With PEW figures showing that 19% of adult Americans — as many as one in five is not religious, the question of the day should be: When will presidential and other candidates start wooing us, the seculars?

The 15% to 19% who identify as nonreligious are roughly equivalent to the 15% of voters considered hardcore religious-right.

Freethinkers depressed about our standing in the United States today can take some consolation that so many of the most important Founding Fathers were at best deists in the sense of the classical Enlightenment, including Presidents Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and both John Adamses. Several high-profile U.S. politicians have been nonbelieving, including U.S. Sen. Thomas Gore of Oklahoma (albeit closeted in his day).

And of course, we can take consolation in the fact that not all of the world is as behind the times as America. Look at Australia, where it isn’t a problem that Julia Gillard, the prime minister, is an “out” atheist. Atheism wasn’t even a problem for Michelle Batchelet, who was president of Chile from 2006 to 2010.

And take a look at some of the other freethinking heavyweights internationally who have served as prime ministers or presidents:

• John Ballance (1839-1893), who listed his religious affiliation as “freethinker” and was 14th prime minister of New Zealand.

• Simon Bolivar (1783-1830), “El Libertador,” founder of Bolivia and first president of the Republic of Colombia (now Ecuador, Colombia, Panama and Venezuela), a noted anticlerical.

• Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929), French prime minister, journalist, statesman, atheist.

• Jose de la Cruz Porfirio Diaz, a noted anticleric and Mexico’s president from 1877-1880, and again from 1884-1910.

• Indira Gandhi (1917-1984), a secular serving as India’s prime minister (along with her grandfather, see below), who was gunned down by Sikh religious extremists.

• Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964), Indian’s first prime minister, an agnostic, rationalist and admirer of Bertrand Russell.

• William Pitt (1708-1778), a wartime British prime minister who believed “the only true divinity is humanity.” 

• Robert Walpole (1676-1745), given the honorific of England’s “first prime minister,” who was “indifferent” to all creeds. 

• Robert Stout (1844-1930), Prime Minister of New Zealand and a “stout” freethinker who passed the Married Woman’s Property Act under his tenure.

(For more details on these and other freethinking politicians and public officials, visit FFRF’s list of famous freethinkers, Freethought of the Day, to look up by name or topic. If you find some missing, let us know!)

Give a cheer for the “I’m Secular and I Vote” crowd!
 

Fiction writers love to imagine a cabal of minority religionists orchestrating events from a faraway boardroom. Typically, the minority religionists are Jews, not atheists — the fictional Protocols of the Elders of Zion is still dredged up by anti-Semites from time to time. Dan Casey’s newest article, “Atheists likely thrive off Southwest Virginia” takes a swipe at the Freedom From Religion Foundation using this popular ploy of fiction writers. Faraway boardroom? Check. Minority religion? Check. Orchestrating cabal? Check.

While it may make for entertaining fiction, one has to wonder what Dan Casey and his Roanoke Times editor were thinking when they published this piece. Even though atheists don’t believe in an imaginary god, we do have imaginations. Here is what I imagine was going through Mr. Casey’s head as he wrote [Warning: delving into the imaginary mental wanderings of people can be dangerous and often immature. Read on at your own risk.]:

“I really don’t like that nasty FFRF. It goes around helping local people stop violations of the Constitution. How will I ever know that my god is real if my leaders don’t mix him into the government? And what kind of people go around upholding the Constitution and advocating for the rights of minorities? Who do they think they are telling us, the Christian majority, that the law applies to us too? The gall of this cabal, sitting around thinking up nefarious ways of convincing courts to enforce the law. (Oooh, I’m a poet!) And then, believe it or not, courts actually agreeing that the law should be enforced!”

“I wish those meanies would just stop. They probably do it for the money, because atheists don’t have principles do they? I guess I could ask them about their motivations, but that would involve real reporting. I know! I’ll assume that their non-profit organization, recognized by the IRS, is out to make a quick buck and write an article on their money-making schemes.” 

“I suppose I could stick to strict journalistic principles like corroboration, investigation, tenacity, credibility, and reputation, but that sounds like a lot of work. And what if I find out that they are right? They probably are, atheists are smart and FFRF cites Supreme Court cases and the Constitution a lot… I know! Instead of looking into facts, I’ll just make some stuff up — ‘imagine’ — and people will believe and repeat it because I call myself a reporter and a good Christian!”

“Let’s see, how much did FFRF make on the Giles County case? They say that they never make money on their lawsuits, that at best they break even and often have un-recouped expenses, but that doesn’t sound very evilly-cabalistic to me. I know, I’ll just pull a number out of my . . . hat. $1,486,369! That must be how much FFRF made on the Giles County lawsuit. Oh damn! There’s more . . . Holy shitake mushrooms, FFRF made another $84,791. Gee-whiz, I sure am a great journalist for pulling those numbers out of there.” 

“What else can I write about those farty-pants? Yes, they don’t agree with my religious views so they are obviously the servants of Satan. I bet one of them is even named Lucifer. I suppose I could check their names on their website. Nah, that seems like too much of an effort. I’ll just stick to my lazy insults and innuendos and label it all imagination. I’m so brave and smart!”

“There, all done. And it only took two minutes! I can’t believe I get paid to write stuff like this.”

I then imagine the self-congratulatory Mr. Casey walking the article down to his editor’s office, a holy glow surrounding his head, and knocking on the door. Perhaps he says “Hey, Jesus” — don’t you always imagine that the real boss of every Christian is Jesus? — “I think I finally figured out a way to stick it to those jerkfaces over at FFRF.”

Jesus, who I imagine sitting behind a desk, arms splayed, with hands facing palm up and resting on the table, and looking at some papers near his left hand might interrupt, “Damn it Dan! I’ve been trying to stop those poopy heads for years! I’m an editor and you, the lowly journalist think you figured out a way? The law and the Constitution are on their side. What do we have? Me, Jesus? What can I, an imaginary god — I mean editor, do?”

The imaginary Dan whispers the solution: “We make stuff up about them?” To which the imaginary Jesus replies, “It’s brilliant! People have been making stuff up about me for millennia!”