Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Dave G on July 22, 2009 at 3:27pm

I pretty much agree, Mark. In God We Trust was first added to coins during the Civil War, in response to a push from evangelicals for the US to be a 'Christian Nation', in violation of the Constitution. Then it was added to paper money and made the US motto in the 1950's, again in response to a push from evangelicals, and boosted by the Cold War.

It is blatantly un-Constitutional, but very few people know the Constitution, or US history, well enough to realize it.

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Permalink Reply by Julie on July 22, 2009 at 4:53pm

I agree, and not because I'm an atheist but because I believe in upholding our constitution. I wrote a blog post about this yesterday at my site:

http://attemptsatrationalbehavior.blogspot.com/2009/07/separation-o...

I ended with: "But the fact of the matter remains that the First Amendment states we cannot establish one religion over any others. Therefore using the word "God" as representative of the Christian God is a violation of the US Constitution. Our founding fathers gave us the right to worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster or any other faith in our own homes or churches if we wanted to, but they restrict that right when we try to introduce those beliefs to our government (which includes anything federally funded from the post office to our public education system). That is the law, and that law should be upheld."

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Permalink Reply by Julie on July 22, 2009 at 11:38pm

That's what I don't understand; separation of church and state is fair for everyone. What if there was a shift and suddenly Islam became mainstream in the US...wouldn't the Christians like the separation then?!

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Permalink Reply by Nelson on July 23, 2009 at 1:48am

yeah, people don't understand that the wall of separation protects both the state from religion and religion from the state. they fail to consider that without it the state could dictate how, when, and where people could worship. it's this fact that has led many church organizations from the very beginning to be in favor of church/state separation and why many still are today. it has never been the one-way street that the religious characterize it as.

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Permalink Reply by Johnny on July 23, 2009 at 4:59pm

I've pushed this with a few family members who were posting things on Facebook about the government pushing God out, and religion needing to make a stronger presence in the government. I push the "which flavor of Christianity?" angle. And ask "what if it is one of the flavors you don't agree with?"

Only a couple days back-and-forth, and I had won over a number of my extended family as supporters of SOCAS. Even if they weren't budging on their views of their religion and their faith, at least they understand SOCAS.

(Listing dates is another favorite; its amazing how few people realize how recent some of those insertions were.)

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Permalink Reply by Julie on July 23, 2009 at 6:57pm

oooh...if you have any screen shots of some fun facebook god posts send them my way; I'll protect the innocent ;-)

http://attemptsatrationalbehavior.blogspot.com/

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Permalink Reply by Nelson on July 22, 2009 at 8:15pm

totally agree.

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Permalink Reply by Mark Placanica on July 23, 2009 at 12:15am

And also did anyone hear news reports a while back saying ever since Obama was elected we are seeing "a decline of christian America" when i heard that i was like O.O O.o "wait isn't this supposed to be a free country?" I mean really man who said this was a christian nation? The founding fathers certainly didn't.

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Permalink Reply by Sophie on July 23, 2009 at 7:21pm

Very cool

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Permalink Reply by Jordan Adorno on July 26, 2009 at 10:12pm

It would seem that God wouild be the last person to trust. He let 6 million of his "chosen people" be brutally murdered. It should definitely be CONSTITUTIONALLY removed, indeed.

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Permalink Reply by Dave G on July 28, 2009 at 12:14am

It certainly has not lost its religious context to the evangelical Christians who keep using it to try and prove that the US is a Christian country.

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