Presidents of the United States tend to speak in God’s name, although none of them has let on if He communicates by letter, fax, telephone or telepathy. With or without His approval, in 2006 God was proclaimed chairman of the Republican Party of Texas.

That said, the All Powerful, who is even on the dollar bill, was a shining absence at the time of independence. The constitution did not mention Him. At the Constitutional Convention, when a prayer was suggested, Alexander Hamilton responded:

“We don’t need foreign aid.”

On his deathbed, George Washington wanted no prayers or priest or anything.

Benjamin Franklin said divine revelation was nothing but poppycock.

“My mind is my own church,” affirmed Thomas Paine, and President John Adams believed that “this world would be the best of all worlds, if there were no religion in it.”

According to Thomas Jefferson, Catholic priests and Protestant ministers were “soothsayers and necromancers” who divided humanity, making “one half fools and the other half hypocrites.”

-Eduardo Galeano (1940-2015) RIP