Wayne Laugesen: Imagine No Religion = Imagine No Charity, Morality?

One popular means anti-atheist bigots attempt to encourage distrust of and animus towards secular atheists is by trying to reinforce the popular perception that religion is necessary for social goods like morality, lawfulness, charity, etc. There is no evidence for such claims, and even more than little evidence against it, but bigots don't care about facts or reason. I believe this is essentially the case with Wayne Laugesen, who seems to be trying to establish a reputation as a prominent anti-atheist bigot through regular anti-atheist screeds published in The Gazette of Colorado Springs.

Praise God for those activist atheists at the Freedom From Religion Foundation. At no expense to anyone else, this anti-First Amendment club is paying $1,400 to rent billboard space on North Academy Boulevard, where the organization's leaders said it will be seen by Focus on the Family employees. The lighted sign will resemble a stained glass church window, featuring the statement "Imagine No Religion."

The organization routinely and unsuccessfully asks the court system to suppress First Amendment protections of freedom of religion and freedom of religious expressions.

Source: The Gazette

This editorial is unsigned, but the language and attitude match that of an earlier unsigned editorial which Wayne Laugesen admitted to writing. A moral and decent human being would never want to admit to being responsible for such calumny, but a moral and decent person would also never dream of writing such material in the first place. Wayne Laugesen is neither of those things; Laugesen is instead just like every other bigot in the world but rather than aiming his poorly-reasoned invective at people who don't share his skin color or who don't share his religion, he targets anyone who dares not believe in any gods.

Wayne Laugesen makes a pretty serious accusation against the Freedom From Religion Foundation and in fact repeats it more than once, but how much evidence does he present for the claim that they seek to "suppress First Amendment protections of freedom of religion and freedom of religious expression"? Well.... nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zippo. Laugesen isn't able to cite a single incident or court case where the FFRF or indeed any organization of nonbelievers has tried in any fashion to suppress or even infringe upon the personal liberties of private citizens.

What Laugesen does cite are examples of where the FFRF has sued to stop the government or agents of the state from engaging in certain activities which they argued were violations of the separation of church and state. Laugesen probably doesn't agree that any of those activities do violate church/state separation, though he doesn't make any argument for this and I frankly doubt he can. What's significant here is the fact that government employees, when acting as agents of the state, don't enjoy the same constitutional protections as when they are acting as private citizens.

This is because the government itself isn't protected by the Constitution, it is limited by the Constitution. So when a person or group sues and argues in court that a government agency, institution, or employee has been acting inappropriately, they are arguing that the correct limits have not been adhered to. This is not the same as trying to take away any "protections" normally enjoyed by individuals because those constitutional protections only apply to people when they are acting as private citizens.

Either Wayne Laugesen doesn't understand this, in which case his ignorance of the basics of the law prevents him from having an informed opinion on the matter, or he does understand this but is deliberately trying to mislead his readers. Either way, his arguments here can't be taken any more seriously than they could the last time he chose to vent his hatred and bigotry on the pages of his poor newspaper. Indeed, most of what he wrote this time around is just some re-phrasing of the falsehoods and irrationalities he wrote last time, so not only is he a bigot but he's an unoriginal bigot as well.

When I "imagine no religion," the first thing I try to do is imagine the absence of faith-based bigotry from faith-intoxicated bigots like Wayne Laugesen. It's not easy, but I try because I'd like to believe that people don't need to be as hateful, vicious, and dangerous as Laugesen is. To be fair, though, people don't need religion to be hateful and bigoted. This means that without religion, Wayne Laugesen might be just as much of a bigot, but about different things and for different reasons.