[Happy Monkey]

"Science" wouldn't have worked; they wanted to use the "It's OK to have religious groups" loophole in an attempt to close the loophole. They're trying to harness that gut feeling to get the loophole closed, and themselves banned.

They could have used a parody religion, like Discordians or SubGenius, but that would require a lot more backstory in the local news. They could have used a real religion that the Christians might object to, but that would bring collateral damage on the actual members of that religion.