Jews, Christians, and Muslims all use the word "pagan" as a pejorative, so it must be emphasized that the real meaning of paganism is simply polytheism. Polytheism is of course every bit as anti-rational as monotheism, and polytheism at the dawn of religious history was every bit as savage as monotheism in its early stages, but that is no longer the case.

In recent years, I have not noticed polytheists taking part in suicide bombings; stifling medical research that might offer cures for deadly diseases; dynamiting ancient Buddhist statues; or claiming that they have a right to land given to them by the One True God. Pagans are quite willing to let other people alone to worship however and whomever they want. Certain monotheists, however, continue to wreak havoc by insisting that anyone who does not recognize their One True God is, at best, an outcast and, at worst, someone who deserves to die.

Since the Enlightenment, most (though by no means all) Christians and Jews have outgrown the more childish, repressive, and violent forms of monotheism. Radical Islamists, an indeterminate minority among Muslims worldwide, have not outgrown violent and repressive monotheism, as we see from their self-immolations and killings of others in the name of their One True God.

Westerners (Gibbon notwithstanding) are accustomed to thinking of the final victory of Christian monotheism over polytheism in the waning days of the Roman Empire as an unqualified good. For an alternative view, I highly recommend Charles Freeman's The Closing of the Western Mind (2003) and Jonathan Kirsch's God Against the Gods (2004).

Of the two books, Freeman's is particularly impressive because it elucidates the ways in which Christianity suppressed and repressed not only the religious tolerance of classical
Greco-Roman paganism but the rationalism of late Greek and Roman philosophy. As he notes, by the fifth century, Pope Gregory the Great was warning that "those with a rational turn of mind, by looking for cause and effect in the natural world...were ignoring the cause of all things, the will of God. This was a vital shift of perspective, and in effect a denial of the impressive intellectual advances made by the Greek philosophers."

I should emphasize that modern American paganism--and most of the groups represented at the July 4 rally--seem more indebted to flabby New Age spirituality, old anti-rational pseudosciences like astrology, and a mishegass of rituals, authentic and inauthentic, drawn from a wide variety of polytheistic cultures, than to the rational side of classical paganism. But there is no reason why paganism should not be afforded precisely the same constitutional protections, and allowed precisely the same privileges, as all of the other irrational religions American cherish so deeply.

If people want to worship in drum circles, or practicing healing arts in honor of goddesses, or gaze at the stars and see gods who control human destiny rather than the universe revealed by scientific astronomy, are they less entitled to a chaplain than "monotheists" who believe there are three persons in one God and have substituted saints and a virgin mother for the lesser classical pagan deities?

As Thomas Jefferson famously wrote: "...it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

But here is another argument in favor of atheism, as opposed to either polytheistic or monotheistic religion. Atheism costs the taxpayers nothing. We really don't pick anyone's pocket. We don't need chaplains, churches, or astrologers, and we don't ask the public to foot the bill for faith-based initiatives.

And thanks to a recent decision of a Supreme Court--evolving backward in a Neanderthal direction as a result of George W. Bush's appointments--atheists (and other individuals) have no right to sue the government to prevent the expenditure of our tax dollars on faith-based social programs that engage in Christian proselytizing.

Somehow, I don't think that Justices Scalia, Roberts, Alito, Thomas, and Kennedy would look favorably on paying Druid chaplains with taxpayer money. Don't call them the Supremes; just call them the Monotheist Majority.