The atheists put up billboards, the Christians put up billboards. What’s the difference? One small difference can be found in this story about new pro-theocracy ads going up in Florida.

The billboards showcase quotes from early American leaders like John Adams, James Madison and Benjamin Franklin. Most of the quotes portray a national need for Christian governance.

I don’t believe the founding fathers were infallible, so just digging up quotes from old dead white guys who liked Jesus doesn’t impress me much. But wait! That’s not the difference yet. This is the difference:

Others carry the same message but with fictional attribution, as with one billboard citing George Washington for the quote, “It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.”

“I don’t believe there’s a document in Washington’s handwriting that has those words in that specific form,” Kemple said. “However, if you look at Washington’s quotes, including his farewell address, about the place of religion in the political sphere, there’s no question he could have said those exact words.”

This opens up whole new realms of Biblical scholarship, you know. Maybe their god didn’t say in these particular words in this specific form, “The fool says, ‘There is a God'”, but there’s no question that those words could have been there, and it’s certainly in line with the biblical gestalt.

Or, just maybe, atheists shouldn’t make stuff up.