Atheists! Look in your purse or your pocket;
There’s God on the money you carry around!
The motto is yours, though you atheists mock it,
And God’s how we know that our money is sound!

Your using this money is clearly hypocrisy
Atheists ought to refuse it—the fools!
Sucks to be you, though; our Christian democracy
Trusts in our God—and majority rules!

The courts say it’s legal, so quit your complaining—
No reason to get all your bills in a wad!
We Christians find atheists so entertaining—
Each time you use money, you’re praising our God!

Rant, after the jump:

For the general rationale for “undead scarecrow” posts, see this one. Basically, these are arguments that are so stupid that no one in their right mind would use them–they’ve got to be strawmen. But no. Out there in the real world, people don’t use sophisticated theology, they use incredibly stupid arguments.

Today’s has shown up before, which is why I am re-using an old verse. Jessica Ahlquist’s court victory, though, means that comment threads are full of unthinking Christians (and I by no means mean “unthinking” as describing all Christians–just this subgroup) with hurt feelings, arguing that the court decision was wrong. One of the arguments I have seen in multiple places is that atheists are hypocrites because we use money that says “In God We Trust” on it. JT has one such example.

Actually, I think that if these commenters had read the current verdict, they might be a bit more circumspect in their speech. The judge made note of the fact that the school board and members of the public most certainly did not treat the “school prayer” like a bit of ceremonial deism; they were quite religious in their fervor to protect this bit of ostensibly non-religious history. Their behavior at school board meetings made it very clear that an atheist was considered an outsider, that their club was Christian-Only.

And the notion of ceremonial deism is what allegedly keeps “In God We Trust” legal. The more these commenters treat “IGWT” as a bludgeon, the more it serves as an example of the government taking sides to exclude non-believers.

The same words, in different contexts, have different meanings. “In God We Trust” was ruled a bit of meaningless fluff; if it turns out it is being used specifically to belittle nonbelievers, perhaps some day we can have these pinhead commenters to thank for sending “IGWT” the way of the Cranston School Prayer.