I know, I was using a different tense of the word. No need for the English lesson .

CP

I will dispute it. A majority of American do believe and trust in God. But our society is much more diverse than that. There are many religions which do not have the same God or have multiple Gods or some other spiritualism. There are also agnostics, atheists, and brights.

Which brings us to the point of having a separation of government and religion and why "In God We Trust" violates this separation. There are some people who think it is perfectly OK to promote their religion via government. They do think their religion has special status and they represent the majority of America and are the true Americans. This ideology can only lead to problems. That is why we have A Bill of Rights, to limit Government and disallow the majority to infringe upon the rest of the citizens. It is not OK to have a little bit of religion prejudice. We should be a country of laws free of prejudice of religion.

I do agree with you that 'In God We Trust" is declaring America does believe and trust in God. It should not be there. This is not the path to success in our future. Religious freedom can only exist if there is no intervention upon it, neither promoting it or discouraging it. It must be neutral. Government must represent all of society and not just the majority. Government must represent christians, jews, hindu, Islamic, agnostics, atheists, brights, Wicca, and the hundreds of other religions we have. That is why this issue rises to the level of being a constitutional issue. It is important.

I am not sure our country is going in a good direction when so many do not see the importance of this issue. It is even more worrisome there is such a large group which want government to be involved with religion, specifically their religion. If enough citizens do not agree with the concept of the Bill of Rights it will be lost. The Constitution is only a document. The will of the people have the day in the end.

Your point is void. While an overwhelming majority believes in a deity, a God, there are only 23,659,200 who do not believe in God. Now, since when has government ever catered to EVERYone? Has our government let a minority of people get their way with same-sex marriage? Has our government let a minority of people get their way with legalization of drugs and illegal narcotics? A minority of people does not turn the tide of accepted reality, an overwhelming majority of American people believe in a spiritual God, by one name or another. God is a nondescriptive name, if it said Allah, Jehovah or Ra, I would agree with you that it did in fact promote a religion, but simply saying "God," which is a broad term in all religions I have studied, there are a few, is not promoting a specific faith.



So you believe that government officials should work on Christmas, Easter and Good Friday? Fine by me. You believe that we should get our mail on Sundays. Fine by me. Without a hint of religion in our daily bump and grind we become the very totalitarian state we all fear, totally wiping the slate clean and destroying all religious elements from our society can only spell disaster when one group finally does not want to take it and does something radical. We have elements of every major religion in our daily lives if you know where to look. The medical symbol, the serpent and staff, must be abolished because it is imposing paganism on my family. The all-seeing eye that CBS uses must be stricken because it was used by a cult bent on destruction of the Catholic church in the sixteen hundreds. I want the Toyota emblem to cease because it is trying to instill Hinduism on me. I never want to see a swastika printed on the cover of a book again because it is from a tribal religion from Vietnam. If I ever so much as see another star drawn on a school kid's paper one more time I will slap the school board with a lawsuit for promoting Judaism.



See above.

Here's what Reagan had to say about this topic (A Tale of Two Countries, Reagan in His Own Hand, pp. 176)


Some things never change...and some things do.

No. The word "God" branches over all religions, so it isn't necessarily entrenching ONE religion. But regarding atheism: the government funds religions every year, just equally. Atheism can't be funded, because (I suppose) it doesn't have any "church" from where to preach, costs, etc. Also, you can't determine how this is affecting him at all, or anyone. There isn't a rule saying that atheists spending the money have to pay more. No rule saying that they MUST accept the religion to use the money. The fact of SUGGESTING a God is impermissible to him is fallacious. He can't make a general statement saying that it is violating his rights therefore it violates all atheists rights. It doesn't entrench Judaism, Islam, or Christianity. He's suggesting such a radical, impossible concept, it is similar to the feminist's suggestion of spelling "woman" as "womyn", or that urinals entrench domination, so they ought to be banned. His suggestion is similar to a suggestion of equality in the radical sense of womyn ( ) should have urinals as well, or men shouldn't have urinals. I may be trailing off the point. The Establishment Clause suggests not entrenching a religion, as entspeak aptly quoted here . Never states that it MUST maintain atheism. This man's suggestion that any hint of religion must be purged from the government is more of a violation of the Establishment Clause than having the word "God" on the money is. In his world, he would demand for all governmental decisions to never be based upon religious morals.

Practically, the institution of this is almost impossible, and would likely make the economy plunge. The $However-many trillion would have to be reproduced.

I don't know if anyone posted this.

You can draw many branches from the issue, but still I plainly see a breech of the constitution. In god we trust, however you may want to look at it, it is a religious statement, it’s a law by government that is established in respects to religion. All kinds of people with influence are being mentioned, but that does not change the constitution, nor does speaking on the founders religious ideals, they were the ones that wrote the separation clause the way they did.

In god we trust in the most plain and mathematical sense is a breech of the constitution. Now in the human side of the deal I don’t see it ever getting that far as to be abolished for such. To simply just say well, its not a big issue and most people in America accept god so keep it is a fine argument. It makes it easy to not have to care about what the constitution says in favor of other issues farther up on a persons food chain of importance. Not trying to paint a picture with that statement, its to me just the bald truth on it. The sentence for what it relates to in a religious sense is far more important then anything to do with the constitution and related law making from such by the federal government.

As to the first part of that paragraph the argument is so weak as to simply be just plain sad. However just to play the game I would say that it is religion that pushes us towards the type of totalitarian state we fear. I find my bump and grind much smoother without it.
As for the second part about others who will decide to do something radical i guess they can follow in eric rudolphs steps or just alquaeda's--and get exactly what they deserve--a bullet to the head.


Do we really need to go through the list and mention that they are not government institutions? Although i guess you could go after the school borad if you wish--as long as it not a private institution.

And the letter backed up its contention about how the country would be viewed in the future, by pointing to the "goddess of liberty" that appeared on the coins a that time. So in other words, a religious view was being displayed one way or another, so why display a misrepresentation of what the country's views are, instead of an accurate representation?

And frankly, I really don't get what this whole bit is about "intent", anyway. Would a different intent somehow make this less of a transgression of people's rights? In fact when you get right down to it, our coins currently are not being minted in pursuance of that 19th-century law, because the design has changed since then. Presumably, Congress has since passed a new law with new designs. What if Congress's "intent" in keeping the God motto was simply to preserve historical continuity? Would that make everybody feel better?


Pretty much. If you're going to demand that the federal courts make subjective judgments in an attempt to draw the line between "secular" and "religious" expression (a line that can be blurred in a thousand different ways), why not instead have them make subjective judgments determining whether or not government's actually pushing religion on society in some operational sense, such as by granting privileges, funds, regulatory advantages, etc., based on adherence to some religious view or views?

In fact, making that second determination would be a considerably less subjective exercise than making the first, and would also be far more in line with the intent of the First Amendment, as well as the meaning of the word "establish".


That doesn't alter the point I made about the word "establish".


If "In God We Trust" on coins is a violation, then giving tax breaks to churches for being churches would definitely be one. The only real way it could be justified is by grouping them under a general "non-profit" status, which is pretty much how it's done anyway.


I think you might want to brush up on your history. The war began in April 1775, with the battles of Lexington and Concord. Independence was declared in July 1776.

Aside from that, though, whatever semantic arguments you might make about the congress not being an "official government" at the time of the Declaration, there's no denying that it had a profound legal effect: It severed all political ties between us and Britain. Therefore, it was at least as much of a law as the one which put the motto on the coins (which, despite being in the technical form of a "law", was really just a glorified administrative directive to a particular organ of government). Obviously, as I said, the First Amendment wasn't in effect at the time of the Declaration, but there's no denying that it would have condemned it, according to your interpretation. And yet absolutely none of the founders were on record as giving even a hint of disapproval.


"As a society" doesn't mean every last person in society thinks this way. It means that there is a general view common to the vast majority of people in society, to the point where it's part of what defines society's general attitudes. To the extent that there can ever realistically be such a thing as a common social viewpoint, belief in God is definitely one of them.


I'm not sure what you mean by "prejudice". Contrary to what you seem to be suggesting, the motto on the coins does not say, "Only Theists Are True Americans". It simply expresses a view common to the great majority of our culture. No expression of values is going to meet with complete unanimity. Do you think everybody in the country approves of putting Jack Kennedy and Sacajawea on our coins? I'd bet you dollars to doughnuts that there are more people who disapprove of them than who disapprove of "In God We Trust". But that doesn't mean their rights are being violated, or that they're regarded as second-class citizens in any other way. It just means that, as of the moment anyway, their views are not the ones considered to be prevailing in our society.

Stating that "In God We Trust" or "Under God" is more of a reflection than a promotion of religion is splitting hairs isn't it? As I understand it, this "reflection" was instituted only to make a point that we weren't like the god-less atheists of the Soviet Union during the height of the cold war. It is interesting that before the Cold War, "In God We Trust" was not on our currency. That fact in and of itself should testify as to the respect and understanding of the concept of not promoting a religion at the national level. If we are to be "strict constructionists" about the constitution, then why do we tolerate new words scribbled on currency and the pledge, words which were not the intent of the people who authored them?

Not only do these words violate the original intent of the authors of the pledge and society in general in regards to currency, but a statement regarding the role of faith in American society is inaccurate. Why?:



John de Crevecoeur:




(Alan Dershowitz, America Declares Independence, pg.74)

Arguments that we have always been a faithful society is somewhat tenuous in that in the 1860s and early 1950s, efforts to acknowledge Christ as the influence of our government were defeated. The National Reform Association tried it's darndest, but came up short. Even if most Americans are faithful, they evidently do not favor acknowledging it as attested by the defeat of the two measures meant to shore up "The Godless" Constitution.

I am also rather struck by your argument that the statements pertaining to God where not meant to convert atheists or agnostics. If you were one of these two groups, would you not feel that "In God We Trust" was a promotion of religion? You might say that it wouldn't bother you and that some agnostics or atheists don't care, but why is it that religious expression cannot simply be a matter of personal expression and not a matter of government expression on the currency, which shows favoritism to a theistic position?

As an agnostic, I believe it is great that you have the right to the "free exercise thereof" of your religion. Why do I have to be infringed upon when I look at government money(it isn't personal money is it?) or the pledge?(it isn't a personal pledge, it's a government approved one isn't it?) why is it that my ow government favors your beliefs over mine in the public domain instead of allowing us to disagree on our own mutual terms during our private time?

Before I begin, I should mention that you've got your references crossed. "In God We Trust" dates from the 19th century, not the Cold War. You're thinking of the "under God" in the Pledge. That was from 1954. (and incidentally, the Pledge was originally written in the late 19th century, and so could not qualify as being part of the "original intent" of the founders)

But to answer your question, it's not splitting hairs. Promoting a religion means trying to get people to accept it. It means either looking for conversions, or providing some legal benefit to believing in it (or legal sanction to not believing in it). That is not what's being done by including this phrase on the coins. All that's being done is declaring a fact about the common religious views of nealy the entire country.


Unless you're seriously arguing that something in the vicinity of 85% of Americans at the time didn't believe in God, I have a hard time seeing where you're going with this.


I don't know exactly what you're referring to in those examples, but going by your description, it's understandable why people would be more reluctant to have government refer to "Christ", since that's considerably more specific than referring to God.


You could ask the same question about any number of things that the government does. As I mentioned above, not everybody might approve of every historical firgure's face that gets put on the various denominations of our currency. Most people apparently do, but not all. And in some cases, the number of people who disagree are probably greater than the number who disagree with putting "In God We Trust" on the coins. But in no case are their rights being violated by it. There's nothing to suggest that disagreement with these things makes anyone less of a "real" American than those who agree, or that they're entitled to any less than equal treatment before the law. The fact that atheists and agnostics feel that that's what's being done to them is only a reflection of how they themselves choose to see the situation.

No, the Establishment Clause forbids laws "respecting an establishment of religion". First of all, as previously stated, it doesn't say "establishment of ONE religion" or "A religion" it says "religion" period. Therefore the argument that it doesn't promote one religion is irrelevant. But back to the point of "respecting an establishment of religion". As I posted earlier, technically speaking, having "In God We Trust" imprinted on coins [by federal law] the government is passing a law that "respects establishing" religion by definition(s) of the word "establish". What are you basing your opinion on here, if not the definition of the words in the law itself?

CP