By Eric Jayne

 

(Letter to the editor, titled "Day of Reason" was published in the Sunday's 05.08.11 editoin of the St. Paul Pioneer Press)

 

It was disappointing that Gov. Dayton chose to celebrate the National Day of Prayer with church pastors on the Capitol's steps instead of celebrating reason with the Minnesota Atheists in the Capitol rotunda on May 5. While the group outside prayed for lawmakers to support the discriminatory ban on same-sex marriage, we spoke of the need to keep ethnocentric myth-based beliefs out of public policy decisions.

 

I hate to think what America would look like if the Constitution's framers spent the majority of their time praying to God and reading Bible stories instead of studying science and reading John Locke. Thankfully, Benjamin Franklin knew that "lighthouses are more helpful than churches" and John Adams set the record straight when he proclaimed "the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."

Rational thought and reason are what our nation was founded on, and that is what our nation needs now, more than ever. The Minnesota Atheists will continue to hold the National Day of Reason at the Capitol, and we hope Gov. Dayton won't reject our invitation next year.