“Since when have atheists been evangelical?”

They think they're so smart when they come out with cracks like that. There is the unspoken assumption that the religious will try to recruit new believers and that atheists shouldn't. Why? What gives them the right to promote absurd beliefs and denies, in the name of free speech and tolerance, the right of anybody else to say that they are lying?

Why should it be a one way street? And if a one way street is acceptable why is it acceptable that the promoters of credulous acceptance of transparently untrue claims get the right of way? Surely the burden of proof should be on those making the outrageous claims, and you can't get much more outrageous than the nonsense that religions sell.

Because there is no resistance to religious ideas as they are spread, at home, in churches and schools, the effect is similar to a ratchet. Lies are forced into people's heads, then science, society and the media doesn't push those lies, but doesn't point them out as lies either. Then the religions crank up some more lies. Ratchet-like the lies accumulate.

They lie. We let them.

They lie some more. We let them.

They lie again. We let them.

They claim the right to spread their lies. We listen and let them.

They denounce us as evil. We meekly let them.

The time has come to stop the ratchet. We should resist their moves. We should reverse their twisting.

We need make no apology for spreading the truth and encouraging other people to come to the truth. We are on the high moral ground here, we are not telling people to believe absurd ideas just on our say-so or the “authority” of some words written down long ago. We are inviting people to think and make their own minds up.

Truth does not set you free, except from the hold of other people's lies.