Without venturing too far into the realm of the philosophical, we have suggested in the past that when a person sincerely holds beliefs dealing with issues of “ultimate concern” that for her occupy a “place parallel to that filled by…God in the traditionally religious persons,” those beliefs represent her religion. (…) We have already indicated that atheism may be considered, in this specialized sense, a religion (…) Kaufman claims that his atheist beliefs play a central role in his life, and the defendants do not dispute that his beliefs are deeply and sincerely held.

The Supreme Court has recognized atheism as equivalent to “religion” for purposes of the First Amendment on numerous occasions, most recently in (…). The Establishment Clause itself says only that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” but that the Court understands the reference to religion to include what it often calls “nonreligion.” In McCreary County, it described the touchstone of Establishment Clause analysis as “the principle that the First Amendment mandates government neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion.” [snip]

In keeping with this idea, the court has adopted a broad definition of “religion” that includes nontheistic and atheistic beliefs, as well as theistic ones. Thus in (…) it said that a state cannot “pass laws or impose requirements which aid all religions as against non-believers, and neither can [it] aid those religions based on a belief in the existence of God as against those religions founded on different beliefs. (…) Indeed, Torcaso specifically included “Secular Humanism” as an example of a religion. (…)

[Note: Sections marked as (…) indicate citations of court cases that have been omitted for brevity.]

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has just ruled that Atheism is a religion. We have been waiting for this for years.

Brian Fahling, attorney for American Family Association, absorbed in the intracacies of the individual case, was in no position to recognize the larger import.

Indeed, he missed it.

“Up is down, and atheism, the antithesis of religion, is religion….”, he said. No Brian! Not like that!

The one thing that possibly could have been better than having a federal appeals court declare atheism to be a religion is if the U.S. Supreme court declared liberal-naturalism to be a religion. And that, my friends, should be our utter, concerted, cause for which we should be willing to sacrifice nearly all.

Why, you ask?

For forty years in the USA, we have been fighting the waves of contagion spilling from our court system as, time after time, rulings have been handed down against Christianity and Christian principle explicitly because our beloved faith has been inarguably a religion.

The targeting and public rejection of our convictions has been strictly and solely because they are religious convictions.

You may not have a cross on the seal of the city because it is expressly religious. But note now my friends: you may not have the absence of one because it is expressly a religious absence.

It has been permissible in this land to remove principles, symbols, practices, policies from the public square explicitly because they are religious.

But we may now show that the removal of these things is also explicitly religious - it satisfies the religious convictions of atheism. As such we have a new opportunity: the state may neither affirm the cross on the council’s wall nor take it down in support of atheism.

Every man on the street knows that the state continually assaults the public decency by approving of atheism in any and every way and rejecting public Christianity in any and every way. It is obvious to the casual observer that a program to atheize society has been pursued by the courts. We can now sue the government for this forced atheism and we should.

This will require great vigor, subtlety, and thought. Do not just knee jerk do whatever the Family-blah-blah council says to do. In this, an attorney with such a group has totally missed the cultural sword that has been handed to us. Instead we must recognize with freshness and newness all that God is doing.

For thinking people it is stark offense, grating and shameful like Lance Armstrong’s yellow girlfriend, that the state, full of coercive power and unelected officials, has forced its religion on the populace through the tyranny of the arbitrary in the judiciary.

But never the less, this judiciary has to give some reasons for what it does. It is, to some lesser extent, bound by the previous things it says, by the contortions of logic it institutionalizes.

There are arguments they have constructed over the years to carefully justify the railroading of Christianity from public life; things you say can and will be used against them in a court of law - as we make the same arguments to strip atheism from public life.

We cannot remove the cross from city seal! It would be a state endorsement of atheism. We cannot force a time of prayer long established in a state legislature to become a “moment of silence”.

Atheists practice moments of silence in substitute of prayer. Making such a substitution would mean that the state were publicly conforming public practice to support atheistic doctrine. The court has no purview.

We cannot deny the investigation of Creationism on public property simply and only because we must remove mention of the Supreme Being from the schools.

Atheism explicitly endorses the removal of mention of the Supreme Being from public schools - it is the convicted faith of atheism to be antithetically hostile to, for example, the Christian or Jewish presentation of God. As such the state cannot be involved.

Do you see the manna which has just fallen from heaven?

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