An atheist org has bought hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of ads in papers across the nation celebrating the secular nature of the US Constitution. The ads, sponsored by the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), pointed out our founding document is free of references to a deity despite what many political leaders like to say:
HuffPo — Elsewhere in the country, some of FFRF’s nearly 20,000 members fought back against a recent newspaper ad campaign by Hobby Lobby that sought to promote God’s role in the nation’s founding.
While Hobby Lobby ad, first published around July 4, put the phrase “In God we Trust” front and center, the Albuquerque FFRF chapter countered with, “In Reason we Trust.”
“Freethinkers can all celebrate the fact that the founders of our nation were first among nations to adopt a godless and entirely secular Constitution, whose only references to religion are exclusionary,” FFRF co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor said of the ad, purchased in the Albuquerque Journal. “It’s not a coincidence that the U.S. Constitution is the longest-lived constitution in the world. Much of the success of this ‘living document’ is due to the fact that it places sovereignty not in a divinity, but in ‘We the People.'”
“… [O]ur founding document is free of references to a deity…”
Not true. At the very bottom, the Constitution clearly states: “Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independance of the United States of America the Twelfth”
Proof that the United States was created as Christian theocracy! Or something.
I can’t help but giggle at the expression on Thomas Paine’s face. He looks like he was piss-drunk for his entire portrait sitting. Nobody else is smiling, though I guess Jefferson has a bit of a smirk himself.
I live in the midwest in a rural county of less than 50,000 residents. And so I was shocked to see this in our local paper! I was estatic, but shocked.
Too bad some traveling evangelical doomsday group had also been putting ads in our paper. For two weeks they will be at our county fair grounds exposing the antichrist and helping people prepare for the end times.
Thank you FFRF for giving me at least one day’s joy while reading our paper!