Replace John Paul Stevens with an atheist

By GottaLaff

This post may raise a few eyebrows. I happen to agree with Marc Cooper's op-ed (He is the editor to the Nation magazine and director of USC Annenberg Digital News.

Do you?

Though the court without Stevens will be left with six Catholics and two Jews, the open seat should not go to either domination. Nor should it go to a Presbyterian, a Lutheran, a Methodist, a Muslim or even a Zoroastrian. If it did, that would make nine people who all have one religious principle in common: a belief in religion.

Clearly, the next person to take the bench should be an atheist. [...]

"And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter," [Thomas] Jefferson wrote. "But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors."

In other words, Jefferson liked what Jesus, the man, stood for, but could definitely do without the rest of the bunk.

... contrary to what we're hearing from those persistent "We're a Christian Nation"-ers. I can hear them now, screaming in perspiration-drenched, appalled unison: "Bunk?!"

That's right. Bunk. There aren't a lot of us, but something like one out of six Americans calls himself a nonbeliever. Holy moly! That means we would still be underrepresented with just one justice.

Five words: Separation of church and state.

Five more: What's so hard about that?

When it comes to some Sunday soul-searching introspection, or when faced with a personal crisis that haunts your nightmares, it's your constitutional right to ask yourself, "What would Jesus do?"

When it comes to deciding who will be the ultimate arbiters and defenders of the most advanced and enlightened governing document in history, we would all be a lot better off if, instead, we asked ourselves, "What would Jefferson do?"

That wacky, crazy, unpatriotic, sacrilegious founding father. Pfft, what did he know? If he were alive today, he'd probably be stopped by the authorities for wearing the wrong shoes and then renditioned to a black site for being unAmerican.

Please read the entire piece here.