Well good, you might be thinking, serves him right for being an atheist. The atheist in question, Pete the Atheist, has persuaded Secular Ontario – I’m sure they didn’t need much persuading – to sue Grey County council for $5000 to soothe his excluded, rejected, anguished ego and restore his “enjoyment of life.” It’s well known that recitation of the Lord’s Prayer has been cutting a swathe of excruciating angst through its hearers for centuries: it’s time someone put a stop to it.

As he points out:

He said councillors are infringing upon his Charter right to freedom of conscience and religion, referencing a 1999 Ontario Court of Appeal decision that ordered the town council in Penetanguishene to stop reciting the Lord’s Prayer.

“I don’t like politicians who break the law, and our county council is breaking the law,” said Mr. Ferguson Tuesday from his home in Kimberley — one of nine municipalities within Grey County. He said if he wins the case, he’ll donate the $5,000 to Canadian Civil Liberties Education Trust.

“I don’t really care about religion that much, I care about the law. I care about being fair.”

So it’s a matter of the Law. But as one of Pete the Atheist’s probable heroes, Sam Harris has pointed out in his book Free Will, the councillors had no choice but to recite the Lord’s Prayer. What appears to be choice is actually rigid determinism disguised as choice: their chemicals made them do it. They were not responsible, so there is no point in punishing them.

As a corollary, Pete the Atheist has not chosen to be an atheist because if he is right, according to Sam Harris – and I agree with Harris on this – there is no such thing as choosing.

Thus, if Pete the Atheist’s views are correct, they are little more than the inane divagations of an automaton to which no-one should feel obliged to listen. And that’s where we came in.