Headline: Notions of proper government shift wildly. Or: Alabama continues to be Alabama. Or maybe: Legal fisherman lure Supreme Court sanctions. What would we do, fellow agnostics and atheists, without stupid, insulting crap like this? Sleep soundly?

Ala. town’s criminals get choice: Jail or church
CBS News

BAY MINETTE, Ala. – Authorities say non-violent offenders in southern Alabama will have a new choice: Go to jail, or go to church every Sunday for a year . .

The city judge in Bay Minette will let misdemeanor offenders choose to work off their sentences in jail and pay a fine; or go to church every Sunday for a year.

If offenders select church, they’ll be allowed to pick the place of worship but must check in weekly with the pastor and police.

This is a dodge around the First Amendment’s protections, I think. A judge’s discretion may be independent from a government’s imprimatur. Though this is certainly a violation of the spirit of the Bill of Rights, no doubt.

If you ask me, you can send the convicted to a yoga class. Or teach him breathing techniques to manage his impulses. Or maybe give him boxing lessons? Anything but 52 visits to Magic Bullshit Crucifix Mountain. Church might as well be porpoise whistle lessons.

If you haven’t been brought up in the mythology, who cares? It’s laughably stupid. Christ is all powerful, but he can’t appear before us? He intervenes frequently in his world in order to destroy your loved ones? He’s a loving God whose home for his most precious creation is frighteningly chaotic and hopelessly violent? I’m not buying it.

Now the government would have you swallow this crap. Why? Because the people who run the government had obedient, unthinking parents, and it’s time they told you the same thing: Religion is Good Magic. And Good Magic will cure the problems we’ve always avoided. It will turn these petty criminals to civilized jello, and what was that about the ‘cheesemakers’ again? *BOING* I’m a good person now, thank you, Jesus.

Cue dolt Dennis Prager:

The intellectual class and the left still believe that secularism is an unalloyed blessing. They are wrong. Secularism is good for government. But it is terrible for society (though still preferable to bad religion) and for the individual.

One key reason is what secularism does to moral standards. If moral standards are not rooted in God, they do not objectively exist.

What I am is firmly rooted in my morality. But there’s no ‘God’ there. So, Prager-wise, I’m not here, tearing him a fresh asshole. I must be Christ.