Remove 'in god we trust'

[Richard81]

Having God on our currency and in our Pledge of Allegiance fuels the false belief that the United States is a Christian nation. As declared in the Treaty of Tripoli, 1796, "...the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." This was signed by president John Adams. Having God in our currency and in our Pledge of Allegiance directly disrespects those among us who are not of the Christian faith, and it should be removed.

I took that from this site https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petiti ... e/sx9gbfgW
It is a petition to remove 'God' from our currency and pledge of allegiance. Do you agree that this should be done? Why or why not? If you do, please sign this petition.

[East of Eden]

And those cases have obvious flaws that the ones listed by SailingCyclops do not. Unless, of course, you'd care to point out how they're flawed in ways similar to Dred Scott, rather than simply waving your hands and shouting "activist judges!"

Here is Justice Stewart explaining how the 1962 prayer case is flawed:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/h ... 21_ZD.html

Sure. I remember a few that came close.

And did that harm you, or establish a state religion?

Honestly, I have no idea what good you think pursuing this particular argument can do. Until we clone Walter Cronkite, the folks manning the classrooms will be flawed humans. What's more, college students are adults; it's expected, encouraged even, that they will be confronted with ideas that challenge their own. It's not a bad thing that professors are not all script-reading automatons.

Nobody is calling for that.

I'm not surprised. You've entered this debate with the bizarre assumptions that 1) the Founders would agree with everything you're saying;

With more that what you're saying.

and 2) what the Founders would have found funny is of anything but passing interest to modern legal thought.

That's the problem with the left, they have little regard for the Founder's opinions.

You mean like hang Obama for [strike]being black[/strike] treason? Because I live in rural West Virginia, and I guarantee you there are folks here who want to do that.

Uh, how did we get from school prayer to lynching?

In all seriousness, it's because when you write "they," what you really mean are the 75% or so who broadly share your privilege. If non-Christians object, hey, too bad, you're the majority.

Pretty much, if you had read the Stewart dissent above, nobody was coerced into participating. What you want is the tyranny of the minority.

Poor thing. You must be just horrified that people who don't share your ideology are trying to subvert your privilege using arguments and legal channels!

It's the really bad arguments and legal channels that activists judges use I object too. You should too.

Also, "militant secularism"? Really? I'll just leave this here:

Nice try, but you can't compare a church with 50 members (most of whom are related) to millions of Muslim Jihadists or 100,000,000 dead victims of atheistic communism. Fred Phelps never hurt a fly. If only we could say that for your fellow atheists.

Stewart fell into that particularly icky trap of assuming that the absence of X entails the presence of Y.

I guess the Founders fell into that icky trap also, huh?

Needless (I hope) to say, the lack of promotion of a religion does not mean that a competing philosophy is promoted thereby.

This is impossible because you can't have a curriculum of any type that is completely neutral. They all have a perspective, and that perspective is either ackowledges God or it does not. Either it ackowledges the sovereignty and supremacy of God (as our Founders did) or it doesn't. It can stay silent, but that silence is a statement of some kind.

We'll see if that's enough to counter the steady movement of younger generations out of the church.

In the dying West, yes. As I have said before here, it may be winter for my faith in the West, but in much of the rest of the world it is springtime. If present trends continue, by 2050 there will be six nations with 100,000,000 Christians, only one in the West.

Anyway, foolish young people often come to their senses later in life.

Oh, I wouldn't think of it. WorldNet Daily is a worthless rag regardless of my feelings toward that particular article.

Your inability to counter their facts is noted.

[East of Eden]

I may have pointed out before, the first amendment to the US Constitution makes no mention of church. It refers only to religion. The government is not to promote nor prohibit religion. Employing teachers to lead students in prayer is the promotion of religion.

So what, military chaplains do that, and I reject your interpretation of the 1A.

I miss the relevance. Of course religion and government must interact. But government is not to promote religion.

No, the federal government (many states had established churches at the time) was not to establish a state church.

Yes, very well. When our secular governments take the Churches' place by promoting prayer and religious rites, then according to Paul's example, we have the right to disobey those governments.

Participating is not promoting.

If it made no mention of it at all, then we skeptics would leave it alone. However when the writers of the Bible display their erroneous understanding of how things are, then it is fair to challenge the assertion that the writers of the Bible did write truthfully.

The Bible doesn't say the earth is flat.

Can you find many non-religious people who can put forth a solid argument against gay marriage?

For 5,000 years of recorded human history, marriage has been defined as between men and women. It's common sense really.

If the laws against murder were based solely on divine revelation, then we should not have such laws. Yes, Christians do have the right to continue to be involved in public policy. But they need to remember that public policy is just that: public. It should not be based on their own private religious teachings.

We disagree, what motivates someone to vote is none of your business. Should ML King have shut up also?

Not at all. My point was that these Christian apologists for slavery are evidence that the Christian religion has not always been as clear on this issue as East of Eden would have us believe. Various Christians, using the same Bible have, over the centuries, argued on both sides of the slavery issue. Thus, a reasonable person would conclude that the prohibition of slavery cannot be a central and unchanging tenet of Christianity.

Of course it isn't, the central theme of Christianity is the salvation of mankind through faith in Jesus Christ. Where the Bible did address slavery, it was in a more humane direction. I would personally rather be a slave on my way to heaven than Warren Buffet on his way to hell.

Where? Chapter and verse.

1 Timothy 1:8-10
New International Version (NIV)
8 We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. 9 We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, 10 for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine

Were Roman Catholic slaveholders in Maryland excommunicated, or was the threat an empty one?

They would be the Catholics who disobeyed, I presume.

I know of no anti-slavery movement outside of the West.

Thank you. Is that just a coincidence?

When Jesus taught about taxation, did he not say to render unto Caesar what is his? He did not tell his disciples that they should have representation as a condition for taxation. Thus, it seems that Jesus himself taught taxation without representation.

He didn't express an opinion, although my previous link does show how Christian principles going back to Magna Carta resulted in Western rights.

The argument from silence is not always a fallacy. Jesus taught that the taxes of Caesar on Israel should be paid, even though the people of Israel had no representation.

Again, arguing from silence is a poor one.

[JohnPaul]

East of Eden wrote:

Funny I never hear those groups complaining, only atheists...

I can't let this one pass without comment. My wife was a Wiccan Witch and later a Theosophist. She often complained, but only after having suffered a physical attack by three fundamentalist Christian women. She used a table lamp to defend herself and very severely "enlightened" one of them with it.

P.S. The women called the police after the altercation, but the police lost interest after hearing their accusation that my wife was an "evil witch."

Your wife needs a concealed carry permit.

My wife and I both had CCW permits for several years, but that was long after her encounter with the Christian women.

Before I married her, my wife warned me that she had a coven of witches and a motorcycle gang to protect her, so I better watch my step. I knew about the motorcycle gang, but I didn't meet the witches until later. A Wiccan priestess officiated at our wedding. That was in Washington state, where Wicca is a legally recognized religion.

Soon after we were married, my wife needed to make a long automobile trip alone, so I suggested she take my pistol with her in the car, just in case. She thought that was an excellent idea, but insisted on having her own gun and doing it legally. We went to a gun show for her to try several different handguns. She first tried a .44 magnum "Dirty Harry" style revolver. I warned her it was more gun than she wanted, but she insisted on trying it anyway. She fired six shots without hesitation, but then agreed it was more gun than she wanted. She finally settled on a short-barreled .38 revolver. We then went down to the local police station outside of Seattle and got her a CCW permit, with no problems. (Apparently her earlier use of the table lamp as a weapon wasn't on her record.) She never carried the gun on her person, but she did carry it in the car with her.

[East of Eden]

East of Eden wrote:

Funny I never hear those groups complaining, only atheists...

I can't let this one pass without comment. My wife was a Wiccan Witch and later a Theosophist. She often complained, but only after having suffered a physical attack by three fundamentalist Christian women. She used a table lamp to defend herself and very severely "enlightened" one of them with it.

P.S. The women called the police after the altercation, but the police lost interest after hearing their accusation that my wife was an "evil witch."

Your wife needs a concealed carry permit.

My wife and I both had CCW permits for several years, but that was long after her encounter with the Christian women.

Before I married her, my wife warned me that she had a coven of witches and a motorcycle gang to protect her, so I better watch my step. I knew about the motorcycle gang, but I didn't meet the witches until later. A Wiccan priestess officiated at our wedding. That was in Washington state, where Wicca is a legally recognized religion.

Soon after we were married, my wife needed to make a long automobile trip alone, so I suggested she take my pistol with her in the car, just in case. She thought that was an excellent idea, but insisted on having her own gun and doing it legally. We went to a gun show for her to try several different handguns. She first tried a .44 magnum "Dirty Harry" style revolver. I warned her it was more gun than she wanted, but she insisted on trying it anyway. She fired six shots without hesitation, but then agreed it was more gun than she wanted. She finally settled on a short-barreled .38 revolver. We then went down to the local police station outside of Seattle and got her a CCW permit, with no problems. (Apparently her earlier use of the table lamp as a weapon wasn't on her record.) She never carried the gun on her person, but she did carry it in the car with her.

So you do believe in the supernatural, or just your wife?

[JohnPaul]

East of Eden wrote:

So you do believe in the supernatural, or just your wife?

I am an agnostic, not a committed atheist. I do accept the possibility of some deeper reality, but I am quite sure it is not described in the Bible.

[PhiloKGB]

Conveniently enough, the right to collective prayer hasn't been removed. The only impermissible sort of prayer is the kind where some part of the school day is officially set aside for prayer alone.

You mean like Congress does, including the first Congress who wrote the 1A?

While I believe Congress shouldn't do it either, Senators and Representatives are at least (ostensibly) adults.

Of course, you're welcome to explain whose rights would be infringed if Congress decided not to open session with a prayer.

[JoeyKnothead]

From Post 123:

...
And Paul disobeyed Caesar when Caesar took God's rightful place.

I challenge you to show you speak truth in this regard.

1st challenge.

Let's go on and mark this the second'n.

[East of Eden]

East of Eden wrote:

So you do believe in the supernatural, or just your wife?

I am an agnostic, not a committed atheist. I do accept the possibility of some deeper reality, but I am quite sure it is not described in the Bible.

Thanks, always good to know where people are coming from.

[East of Eden]

Conveniently enough, the right to collective prayer hasn't been removed. The only impermissible sort of prayer is the kind where some part of the school day is officially set aside for prayer alone.

You mean like Congress does, including the first Congress who wrote the 1A?

While I believe Congress shouldn't do it either, Senators and Representatives are at least (ostensibly) adults.

Minors don't get civil rights?

Of course, you're welcome to explain whose rights would be infringed if Congress decided not to open session with a prayer.

Fine, if they don't want to. What I object to is people stopped from praying using bogus legal arguments to advance militant secularism.

[PhiloKGB]

Minors don't get civil rights?

Not a full set. That's why they're called, y'know... minors.

Of course, you're welcome to explain whose rights would be infringed if Congress decided not to open session with a prayer.

Fine, if they don't want to. What I object to is people stopped from praying using bogus legal arguments to advance militant secularism.

How is it possible that you don't realize that no one can be stopped from praying? And we're not talking about locking people up in gulags; we're talking about merely not setting aside time during an official function to guilt everyone into praying.

Incidentally, do you know what Jesus said about the type of prayer that you seem to find so necessary?