On those grounds, I would argue that religious people can’t be patriotic. After all, it was one of them who changed the pledge, turning it from a patriotic and unifying thing into a divisive statement placing God (not just any god either, their W.A.S.P. God) above the country.
A challenge (in a different form) first issued by a believer in Jesus.
I’m sorry, but you believe that the imposition by the government of the recitation of a pledge of allegiance, as if this was some totalitarian state that needed to remind its members to be faithful to the government, is a good thing?
Excuse me? We are discussing atheist individuals, not atheist governments. A government that, for philosophical reasons imposes atheism on all of its citizens is more like a theocracy–such as Robertson, Wildmon, and Falwell pray for each night.
There is, for the reasons I outlined above, no reason to believe that an atheist individual will ever impose atheism on a pluralistic society–a society whose pluralism is currently threatened by the imposition of Christian slogans on non-religious domains.
DesertGeezer
[Moderator Hat ON]
DesertGeezer, direct personal insults are NOT approriate in this forum. Quit it or Pit it.
[Moderator Hat OFF]
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Neil Kinnock was not an atheist.
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He was not elected to power.
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If he had been elected to power, he would never have been in the position of selecting the head of the Church of England, because the head of the Church of England is the Queen.
He’s not ? Do you have cite ?
I know… hence came very close.
I was very careful to say “spirititual leader”. The spiritual leader is the Archbishop of Canterbury. Who is technically selected by the Queen, but is actually selected by the prime minister from a shortlist provided by the Synod.
Did I cover everything ?
I meant to say “On the grounds that an atheist has (so far) successfully challenged the right to recite a patriotic pledge [in a public school].”
So I was sloppy. But not absolutely, completely, wholly and entirely wrong, I think.
I took my lead from the New York Times which said …
If they got it wrong, then maybe you’ll forgive me for getting it wrong too.
Who is talking about individuals in a pluralistic society? I thought we were debating whether it was reasonable for a god-fearing patriotic american to believe that atheists might want to ban religion.
HAH! 
Have to remember that the next time I get into one of those “Us poor Christians are being persecuted” discussions.
And, in a related vein, check out “Life In Our Anti-Christian America.”
I think you should retract this and apologize. I spent 14 years in the Air Force defending this country and I consider myself very patriotic.
Also you said this:
The reason an atheist is challenging this pledge is because you and your ilk had to go and add God to it. Atheists, and I suppose folks of other religions, would love to recite patriotic pledges that doesn’t have YOUR god in it.
I apologize, Gaudere, for some reason I thought I was in the Pit (been spending so much time there). So I apologize to kevlaw specifically for name-calling in GD, even though he resolutely refuses to see reason (presented much better by Tom than by me. I’ll just lurk until this thread plays itself out and hope to catch him in the Pit at a later date.
Again, sorry for breaking the rules.
Well, by specifying “American” we have set some parameters to keep this discussion in the real world, rather than in all of the possible imaginable worlds. The U.S. is a pluralistic society (the efforts of Robertson and Falwell notwithstanding). Within this real world, self-identified religious people make up well over 90% of the population (with Christians, specifically, making up the overwhelming majority of that group). So, while it may be possible that some number of individual athiests may or may not actually wish to ban religion (as opposed to the demonstrated numbers of purported Christians who have already claimed that they wanted to ban athiests), the idea that “athiests” as some not-well-identified and not-well-represented group wish to ban religion is laughable. Certainly “Athiesm” as some sort of perceived group has never called for the banishment of religion in this country and there is no reason to believe that they would.
The distinctions are:
- There is one specific political movement in the world (one which had a brief run in history and is now dying off) that called for the destruction of religion. It lasted fewer than 100 years.
- In the 200 years preceding that movement, since the first public musings of atheists had been published without having a (church-backed) government forcibly silence them, there have been several such philosophers who expressed the thought that the world would be better off without religion. Only one of them actually laid the groundwork for a call to destroy religion–and even Marx did not call for religion to be banned: he expected it to shrivel up and blow away as a result of the dialectic. It was the people who built a political movement on his writings who imposed bans on religion.
So, we have evidence that atheists have not called for the destruction of religion in the political arena outside one failed movement. (On the opposite side of the fence, we have had any number of self-identified religious people who have called for the exile, banishment, public humiliation, castigation, and, occasionally, punishment of atheists.) Therefore, it appears that the only reason that a religious person in the U.S. would believe that an atheist might wish to call for the destruction of religion is that that is the sort of thing that a religious person would do. I believe that is known as projection, and it is not a very sound principle upon which to base one’s fears–much less one’s laws.
But, you see, you still got it wrong–and you were not paying attention to the NY Times which did not get it wrong.
The Times noted that the pledge “as it exists in federal law” could not be recited. The lawsuit that was brought did not object to the Pledge of Allegiance; it objected to the wholly politically motivated insertion of the phrase “under God.” There are those who object to being called upon to recite the pledge as an offical act in school. However, the God-fearing student who made that objection was already supported by the Supreme Court during the height of World War II, when the Court ruled that a student could not be compelled to recite the Pledge (which, at that time, did not have the “under God” phrase jammed into it). This lawsuit objected to a student who did not believe in a god being compelled to witness her classmates each morning as they recited the Pledge while claiming that the country was “under” a god that she did not believe in. If you did not discern that aspect of the story in the Times, then you were not paying attention to the particulars of the case.
Kevlaw, you are correct, Neil Kinnock is an atheist. Took me ages to find a cite for that, and it finally turned up on a ‘list of famous non-believers.’ http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/4619/religion/famous/il.html
Guess who else was on there? Thomas Jefferson!
However, since he was never elected Prime Minister, and lost both elections by a landslide, he’s not really a very informative example for this discussion.
I don’t know where you get that athiests want to outlaw religion. We’d like to see the country run via the constitution rather than the bible (christianity being the religion that crops up time and again on our money, in our courtrooms, i.e. the ten commandments). I’ve never seen another religion try to get their motto printed on money or someone else’s religious icon erected in a town square. The other religions seem content to worship in their churches, freely and legally, without foisting their beliefs on others. They haven’t tried to make us SECOND CLASS CITIZENS because we don’t attend their church.
Popular Majority? Hmmm…I don’t see me being any part of the popular majority here, which is of no importance to me anyway. But your statement is quite amusing nonetheless.
minty green Thank You 
Well, I am talking about in this country, not on this message board - I think the country has a higher overall percentage of ignorant morons than this MB.
Glad you are amused. I’m not amused. I find your position to be a case of wanting special treatment when you deserve none. It’s not as repulsive as the idea that an atheist can’t be patriotic, but it sure is foolish and bigoted.
In short, keep your awful, evil, ugly, non-existant god off my damned money and out of our courts. I don’t accept his existence, and if I did, I still wouldn’t worship the evil pig-fucker. Screw him.
Separation of church and state. I don’t understand how it got so confused. It seems pretty fucking simple. Fuck it, let’s put “Hail Allah!” on the money. Got a problem with that? I figured you did. Silly rabbit.
DaLovin’ Dj
DNFTDJ.
Yeah, he wants freedom of religion. Imagine that? He wants the churches and the state to be separate. The nerve. . . .
I’m not amused, not at all. I have no problem understanding how you feel dalovindj, we’re all entitled to fight for what we believe in.