Puzzling Atheists #2

Aren’t atheists allowed to celebrate their rationality and have fun? There’s so much seriousness around the Atheosphere these days that I decided to lighten things up with yet another puzzle.

Here’s the deal. Each of the following items contains the last name of a well-known freethinker. To find the appropriate name, all you have to do is figure out where to start and end, and read the letters in order, without skipping any letters. For example: If one of the names was (Jonathan) Miller, the appropriate sentence might read:

As crazy as it may seem, I’ll erupt in an atheistic rant every now and then.

Simple, right?

Well, maybe not. In each item, exactly one of the letters of the name has been replaced by a different letter.

If you write these new replacement letters in order from number 1 through number 10, you’ll find the second half of a laudatory sentence about atheists. You can discover the first half of the sentence — two five-letter words — by scrambling the initials of the first names of the people you find. The correct solution is the entire sentence.

If you need a hint, I’m listing the first names in alphabetical order in the first comment to this post. Here’s another hint: There are no repeat atheists from my previous puzzle.

1. I’ll meet you on the Creation Museum picket line at ten. No rough stuff, though, OK?
2. Any human can provide love that’s more meaningful than an imaginary god’s.
3. The evangelical preacher’s wife wears frugal WalMart earrings around town, but expensive jewels on vacation.
4. Everyone knows that America is Jesus’s favorite land (i.e., Republican theocrats think so).
5. A godpusher like Ron Paul can run and run and run again for office, but I’ll never vote for him.
6. Do churchgoing women really believe that some god gives a crap about their froufrou donned on Sunday mornings?
7. I’ll go on a diet right after I finish eating this chocolate crucifix.
8. The “Religious Literacy” advocate would not proselytize, he promised. I soon heard him leading the class in prayer, however.
9. That radio talk-show host, a religious right-winger, sold her ignorant audience on the idea of voting only for social conservatives.
10. Alas, I’m ostracized from running for most elective offices because I’m an atheist.

Do leave comments if you’d like, but please do not post your solution. Instead, email me with the answer when you get it. I’ll give an honorable mention to anyone who cracks this thing.