By Sasha McTush and Kristoff Bichens
Special To YNOT

LOS ANGELES – If anyone still has doubts concerning the uselessness of prayer or the abject folly of religious faith, recent natural disasters, ongoing issues with rampant disease and the general lack of consequence experienced by the worst among humanity for their evil deeds should have eliminated any skepticism.

From our respective positions of kneeling hardcore porn star and hunched-over keyboard warrior, we have often warned about religion’s stultifying effect on people’s ability to think and apply reason, particularly when it comes to subjects considered verboten by their favorite old myths and officially sanctioned fairy tales.

Given the Bible and other religious propaganda publications are often freely available in hotel rooms and on college campuses across the nation, as well as at the click of a mouse to anyone with an internet connection, religion has become a public health hazard of unprecedented peril, unless you count things like actual infectious diseases or real substance addictions, which we obviously do not.

Now is the time for a fundamental shift in our private and public thoughts — a “conceptual revolution,” if you will. Simply put, we must educate ourselves and our children to understand that religion is for those who can’t handle uncertainty, tolerate nuance or read science textbooks. Religion, in short, is for losers, the intellectual equivalent of huffing potent model glue off an old rag — a rag stitched together by centuries of manipulative lies, ludicrous cosmological speculation and ceaseless fundraising.

What is required is more than just an honest and open conversation with our families about how irritating our endlessly proselytizing Uncle Joseph is every time he comes by for dinner. We need to extend this conversation into the public sphere so the average American will finally acknowledge the damage being done by religious people every single day.

Are you a transgender person who would like to use a restroom which is appropriate to your current gender, rather than the one you’ve gone to great lengths to leave behind, except you can’t because of some idiotic state law? Pornography is not to blame for your plight. Instead, blame the bunch of self-righteous religious dickheads who think telling you where you can and can’t take a piss is somehow a matter of their “religious freedom.”

Did your father rape you and now for some crazy reason you’d prefer to not have his baby? Guess what: Some asshole sporting a little white collar says you have to bring that baby to term, like it or not. Because God. Is it porn that has so warped the mind of this pitiless priest, or his deluded interpretation of “scripture?”

What’s that you say? There’s supposed to be a separation of church and state in this country? Tell that to Kim Davis. While you’re at it, also tell Judge Roy Moore and tell the U.S. judiciary in general.

At its core, what religion ultimately requires is an unquestioning adherence to a specific set of laws and rules written at a time in history that bears no real resemblance to our modern world. Thankfully, in this country, the primacy of secular law does often win out, which is why a Bible-based defense of keeping slaves (yes, even when done in precise accordance with Leviticus 25:44-46) usually won’t get you too far with the presiding judge.

Of course, in order to believe and abide by rules and laws that are contradicted within the very same book from whence they spring (like, say, Exodus 20:13 and Exodus 32:27), one has to engage in some pretty serious mental gymnastics. In essence, this means the more “fundamentalist” you want to be about your faith, the more schizophrenic you necessarily must be, as well.

Look, it’s a free country. If you want to take advice from and live like a bunch of schizophrenic zombie-worshipers who believe the “higher law” is something revealed to a handful of Jewish fellows eons ago by an all-seeing invisible man in the clouds (who refuses, for some reason, to communicate with us these days with the same manner of clarity, no matter how many sheep we own), knock yourself out. Just stay away from my local, state and national legislatures, please.

For the rest of you reading this, I hope you’ll join us and take the pledge: No more offering prayer as a means of solving problems, offering comfort to those who suffer, seeking social change, or denying others access to the lavatory.

Sasha McTush is an award-winning porn performer and lapsed Catholic who self-identifies as atheist. Kristoff Bichens is a journalist, literary critic and extremely vocal atheist who has often appeared on talk shows in order to savagely ridicule all those with whom he disagrees on any given subject.