How is it not true? Also, how is it not the crux of the arguement? I think you haave let the OP get away from you. From the article lonked to in the OP:
[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
I neither inferred nor implied that. If you’ll scroll up you’ll see that what I said was that atheists “don’t necessarily have a positive belief” that gods don’t exist. It is not a definitive characteristic of “atheism,” but a subcategory.
I addressed all this in my last post. Strong atheism is not a “teaching” and is not a part of any larger body of beliefs. It is not a “doctrine” in the sense that people who study and write about religion use the word.
I can understand the feeling you describe. I don’t believe that feeling is the crux of the arguement. I also don’t believe that preventing someone from feeling left out or uncomfortable is a powerful reason since 1. nobody is forced to recite the pledge much less the two objectionable words in it. 2. someone will probably feel bad or left out either way. In that sense someone feeling bad is unavoidable.
The arguement is about the 1st amendment and the POA. The sub catagories are numerous.
You don’t see that the wording of the original pledge excludes no one? You don’t see how the fact that-
Oh, never mind. ::Picnhes bridge of nose, takes two aspirin and a glass of water and goes to bed.
Once more, it is not the recitation of the PoA by citizens which is the issue, it is the government endorsing monotheism that’s the issue. Just because the government (or the teacher in the classroom) can’t say “under God” doesn’t mean that no one else is free to.
As I said, I was nit picking. As far as most common use, I believe you are correct.
Butting heads occasionally is part of the fun.
Given it’s origin and the offensive actions of some fundamentalist groups I tend to agree. I stated before that in order to keep the playing field level. Lekatt called this country a Christian nation. I object. I think the founders made a concerted effort to make sure it wasn’t that. It is a nation first and the fact that it’s citizens are predomimantly Christian is a statistic. I think that’s an important difference.
Go figure!
I see. My next question is, would the teacher be allowed to say “under God” if she or he chose to? Are believers required to give up a certain amount of their right to express their beliefs in order to work certain jobs?
I’m sure there are incidents of cruelity and I acknowledge social pressure to conform but the voluntary nature of the POA relieves this for the most part. Still, to best serve all the public it seems best to make theistic references voluntary and protected rather than sanctioned by the federal government. That may mean we hear them just as often.
Then there’s the question of state and local governments. Can a small town put up a nativity scene on the town square?
Well the quote was in post 398
my point was that some Atheism, even if it’s a subcategory, is a belief. Since you said mentioning God in the POA denies all other forms of belief it seemed reasonable that you saying “Atheism is not a belief” meant all atheism. But we’re just messing with semantics again and it’s not nessecary.
I know you did. I wrote my post before I saw that one.
I conceded that in it’s most common and widely accepted use you are correct. I point out that most common and widely accepted are not the same as exclusive.
I get that. So if 90% of the students decide to include it it’s okay as long as it’s not sanctioned by government? Wouldn’t that place the same social pressure on minorities.
I have mixed feelings about what the teacher is allowed. I see the seed of a movement to make a discussion of religion in our public schools very non PC. I think that’s really shortchanging our kids education.
I read a article in a Christian newsletter about a teacher being fired for his beliefs and how this represented Christianity being persecuted. Turns out he was witnessing in math class and had been warned repeatedly. He deserved to be fired. OTOH I read another article about a teacher who wore her cross to school and was asked not to. When she refused she was suspended. I thought that was inappropriate.
Great, now we are both relieved. 
Damn it, I go away for a weekend, and this thread goes berserk. I hope I’ll get a chance to respond in greater length to dangling posts tomorrow. Anyhow, I can’t let this slide.
So… there’s a town near New York City which has some Yankees fans and some Mets fans. It has a town song. One year, there are a majority of Yankees fans, and they get “Yankees Rule! Mets Suck!” added to the town song. A few years later, some Mets fans object to this. They would like “Yankees rule! Mets suck!” removed from the town song.
Would removing this phrase be:
(a) fair
or
(b) unfair to the poor beleagured Yankees fans?
One of the recurring arguments people keep making are things like “removing ‘under god’ from the pledge would make society more secular… and there are lots of OTHER things that people have proposed that would also make society more secular, like forbidding schoolkids from wearing red and green, that are stupid. Let’s mock how stupid they are. hahaha. Now, what were we discussing again?” and “well, first you’re going to remove ‘under god’ from the pledge, then you’re going to forbid anyone from ever being offended at all, PC PC PC, self esteem self esteem self esteem, strawman strawman strawman”. PLEASE either demonstrate that anyone in this thread supports banning red and green clothes in December, or intends to forbid all prayer in pubilc by private citzens, or anything of that sort, or STOP BRINGING UP THESE EXTREME EXAMPLES!!!
Thank you.
Oh, and:
Yes. But there are (at least) two problems with teachers leading the pledge with ‘under god’ in it. One is the peer pressure. Which is bad, and we should alleviate it if possible. Alleviating it won’t fix all of the world’s problems, but saying “fixing A won’t fix B or C, so let’s not bother fixing A” is silly. The other is that ‘under god’ being in the pledge, which is an official thing officially endorsed and written down and enshrined by the US government, makes a statement about what the official USA position is. This makes those who don’t believe in God feel like they are not really included, and it gives ammunition to those who would want non-believers excluded. This should NOT be the case.
If there’s a school where gangs of bullies beat up skinny kids, and there’s a paragraph in the school charter saying “bullies should beat up skinny kids”, then for god’s sake, take that paragraph out of the charter! That won’t immediately stop all bullying, but damn it, that’s no reason to just leave it in.
I regarded all such rote recitations to be nothing more than some utterly meaningless series of phonemes since I was a child, and I soon learned to despise them as a result. That includes the Pledge and the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostle’s Creed and all other such inanities. Being forced to recite them simply made me lose respect for them more and more each time. I would have made a poor Nazi (and it did make me a poor Catholic).
I can only hope that’s true for the children who are now faced with such nonsense.
Now, now: You seem too well informed to not know the answer to that! The Courts have long viewed just about any public formality which shows a preference to one religious viewpoint over another to be a violation of the Establishment Clause, even though no State Religion is actually being established. Surely I didn’t need to remind you of that?
As I’ve said elsewhere in this thread, the Courts have long viewed just about any public formality which shows a preference to one religious viewpoint over another to be a violation of the Establishment Clause, even though no State Religion is actually being established. For exactly this reason, the Pledge must be ruled unconstitutional if the decision is to be honest.
[QUOTE=MaxTheVool]
Yes please stop. Your extreme example of Mets and Yankees isn’t the same thing at all.
No, thank YOU!
Yes there are problems. More than those two. Another one would be how do we protect the teachers right of free speech and freedom of religion while protecting the rights of the kids and their parents?You may think the answer is obvious but please excuse us poor dolts who don’t agree. The problem I have with the peer pressure arguement is that peer pressure works both ways. The arguement that is presented is that we can easily prevent unwanted peer pressure. No we can’t. We can only shift it around a bit.
As for me, my opinion has shifted slightly. I still don’t believe that “under God” is unconstitutional, or that spending the taxpayers money on anything that smacks of theism is either, I do think the federal government should strive to be as neutral as possible and best serve all citizens while defending the rights of citizens to worship and express their religious beliefs. In this particular case that would mean “under God” not being sanctioned by the government but the right to insert it defended. That might mean , considering the ratio of people who support it, that nothing would change. What it would probably mean is that in a generation or two fewer people would be saying it
I thought you wanted to stay away from extreme ridiculous examples 
Given the nature of this discussion does that mean that a Christian president {not the phoney we have now but a sincere Christian} should not be allowed to swear in on the Bible? That’s even more specific than “Under God”
Should all federal buildings that contain references to our religious heritage be reodne and those references removed, since they are maintained by the taxpayers money?
Should a Christian Congress person be allowed to openly express their beliefs in a public forum? What if they are addressing school kids?
It’s hardly ridiculous. God and thuggish behavior are practically synonyms. Even a casual knowledge of religion and it’s history should tell you that religious belief tends to produce intolerant and often violent behavior.
Nope, no swearing on Bibles, not here or in courtrooms. It’s overtly religious and doesn’t do any good anyway. When was the last time religion promoted honesty ? Never, as far as I can tell.
Also, what makes you think he’s a ( religious ) phony ? Disgusting as he is, he seems sincerely religious. In fact, that’s the obvious motivation for much of his bad behavior.
Yes.
If it’s not a state sponsered event/location, they can say what they want. Personally, I don’t think letting a professional liar talk to children is ever a good idea.
I find it significant that your idea of religious freedom seems to center so much on pushing it onto other people. Why can’t the religious just leave the rest of us alone ?
[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
Except that that wasn’t an example. That was an analogy. Don’t you see the difference between:
“Well, here are 5 examples of things THAT HAVE HAPPENED IN REAL LIFE, and despite the fact that no one in this thread has endorsed any of them, and despite the fact that they are only superficially similar to the ‘under god’ discussion, I’m going to keep bringing them up and intimating that everyone arguing against ‘under god’ is also arguing for these extreme nutcasey things”
and
“here’s a totally made-up situation which is admittedly silly and ridiculous, but which is designed to boil down a particular part of an issue to its most simple parts”?
I mean, those are CLEARLY two entirely different types of things, and I have no idea how you can conflate them.
So, once again, you have two subgroups of people, they have an official song/statement/slogan/pledge/motto, then one of them, the majority, gets “our belief rules!” inserted into the official song/statement/slogan/pledge/motto, and then a few years later, the other subgroup tries to get it removed. Is that:
(a) fair
or
(b) unfair?
What’s so difficult about that? Whatever mechanisms we currently have in place to protect the teachers’ right of free speech would continue to operate. If those mechanisms are insufficient, then they are ALREADY insufficient, and that’s a problem that needs to be solved anyhow, but is not directly related to the pledge. (Note, by the way, that this is a tricky issue… I mean, I’d personally say that it’s OK for a teacher to wear a necklace with a cross on it, or other similar small religious symbols, and mention in passing what his or her faith is, but there’s a continuum of activities from that all the way up to outright trying to convert students in class, and there has to be a line somewhere, and reasonable people won’t always agree on where it is. Which is why we have courts.)
huh? What does that have to do with anything?
No it isn’t. Who has argued that? Who said that removing “under god” would instantly make the Christian and Atheist kids join hands and sing on the hillsides?
Very close to 100% precisely my opinion as well
The trickiest question for me here is teachers. I assume we both agree that when they’re off duty, teachers should be able, in the privacy of their own homes, to say “under God” while saying the pledge. But should they be able to say it while leading the class? I mean, I suspect you’d agree that it’s OK for teachers to spend their saturday mornings wandering around knocking on doors spreading the gospel, but it is NOT ok for them to do that during class hours, so it’s obviously the case that what teachers can do while operating in their official capacity is more limited than what they can do, in general.
I disagree with Der Trihs on basically every one of these questions, interestingly.
That’s up to the president himself. If he himself is a Christian, then he should certainly swear that way if that’s what has the most solemn meaning to him.
If you mean things like the Smithsonian history museum, which might have an exhibit about the impact religion has had on our country throughout history, particularly if it’s an honest and even-handed one (ie, “before the civil war, biblical quotes were used as a justification for slavery, but at the same time, many leading abolitionists were motivated by their Christian beliefs”), then absolutely not. And in general, I don’t really have a problem with things like this, because whatever the design of murals in the lobby of the commerce department is, that’s not something that’s intruding every morning into every citizen’s life, nor is it something with the same official imprimateur that the pledge has. On the other hand, I think the 10 commandments should sure as heck not be on display in courtrooms. Can you be a bit more specific?
100% absolutely yes.
In private? Ie, a church invites a congressman, who happens to be Christian, to speak to its youth group? He should be allowed to say any damn thing he wants. At a public school in a mandatory assembly for all students? His restrictions should be basically the same as a teacher… ie, mention the existence of the beliefs in passing, not be allowed to proselytize.
Noooo ! My life is over !
Ok, I agree with your example of the Smithsonian; I forgot about that sort of thing. In fact, I’ll say that I have no problem with state institutions like schools having even handed educational programs about religion. When you get right down to it, the people who oppose that the most aren’t the atheists, it’s the fundementalists. People who believe they know the One True Way and everybody else will burn forever aren’t likley to support teaching “false religion”.
Besides, in all honesty I think a good “History of religion in America” course would produce more atheists, agnostics and liberal religionists than fundies; the behavior of the more extreme Christians in this country has not been very nice.
To me, the DofI basically seems like this:
"Men have rights. They come from God. [No further explanation].
Now, George has violated those rights. Here are MANY MANY examples of how, and they go on and on and on and on and on and on and on.
So we reject him."
The vast body of the document is not talking about inalienable rights, or talking about how those rights come from God, or demonstrating a linkage there or anything, it’s talking about what a weaselhead George was. Replacing “Men have rights. They come from God” with “Men have rights. They just do.” or something like that, wouldn’t alter much of the document at all. To me, the “they come from God” part isn’t the revolutionary part, the revolutionary part is “we’re consciously choosing to disassociate ourself from our mother country, we’re carefully explaining why, and we’re doing it is a group of concerned and equal citizens, not as a dictatorial junta”.
But what if that pledge was crafted, did not mention that notion at all, and then 60 years later, a mention of it was added not to pay homage to the founders, but to differentiate the organization from its rival organization? You keep talking about the relationship between the pledge and the founders as if there is one, when, at least in a strictly directly and practical sense, there isn’t at all. The founders didn’t write the pledge. The guy who wrote the pledge didn’t add “under god”. And the stated motivation for adding “under god” wasn’t “oh, this pledge just isn’t paying sufficient homage to our great founders”.
I must admit that I’m a bit skeptical about the importance of Natural Law theory, as I’m a quite patriotic, well read, generally knowledgeable trivia buff who’s read WAY more about history than the average American and took US History AP, and you’ve mentioned Natural Law theory more times in this debate that the sum total of all the times I’ve heard it mentioned in my life, up until now.
Good question. Although, honestly, both of these arguments are fundamentally unconvincing:
Atheist: Men are created equal and have the right to life liberty and the P of H.
Q: How do you know that?
Atheist: I just do
and
NaturalLawGuy: Men are created equal, and are endowed by a nonspecific nonChristian God with the right to life, liberty and the P of H.
Q: How do you know that that’s what God wanted/meant/created/endowed?
NaturalLawGuy: I just do
Maybe there’s a better deist argument to be made for Natural Law, but if so, TJ sure as heck didn’t make it in the declaration.
Well, that’s yet another side issue. But if I said to you “does religion make society better or worse, in general”, it would be quite disingenuous of you to say “well, religion led to Natural Law theory, which led to the DofI, which led to the USA, which is awesome, so it makes it better, end of argument”.
OK. Here goes. Ready?
Men have rights.
There, I asserted it. Maybe you thought I was saying something else?
A reasonable position. Of course, if we all agreed on whether or not some citizens’ rights were being violated by the current pledge, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. As you yourself pointed out two sentences later.
This seems like a good place to take a step back and explain my entire position. I think it should be the official position of the USA that it values its citizens equally. This means that the officially governmentally sanctioned rituals and realities of American life should be, whenever possible, set up to be inclusive rather than exclusive. So if there were an official bar-mitzvah-like ritual that happened when citizens turned 18 and became official adults, it would be crucial that this ritual be doable by short people, tall people, men, women, fat people, skinny people, people with most common handicaps, etc.
Basically, I don’t really care what the constitution says about the pledge. Or rather, I don’t particularly want to argue that, because it’s pretty clear to me that the constitution doesn’t 100% inarguably say no or yes to “under God”. If it did, we wouldn’t be having this argument. Constitutional law is a big and slippery area, and it’s quite possible for reasonable people to disagree. What I DO want to argue about is, even if it is constitutional, is it something that as Americans we should support?
A few notes:
-It’s one thing to try to be inclusive. It’s another thing to try to be inclusive of EVERY SINGLE PERSON. If some cult in Texas is upset because they believe in wearing hats and the portraits on currency have no hats, screw them. I trust you can see the distinction between every person in the US who doesn’t feel comfortable saying “under God” in the pledge, and a cult.
-There are certain classes (race, religion, gender, orientation) which are frequently given special protection against discrimination. Does that mean it’s OK to discriminate based on, say, height, or left- vs right- handedness? I’d say no. And when you think about it, the reason that race is a protected class is because history teaches us that lots of people have traditionally discriminated based on race. If there were thousands of years of a tradition of height-based discrimination, you can bet your ass that height would be a protected class also.
-The US certainly doesn’t value ALL citizens equally. Convicted felons and sex offenders, for instance, are not equal. But they were equal until proven non-equal.
So, that’s my position, and I hope you can see why I think that the religion-vs-philosophy question is tangential at best. Now let me ask you a few questions:
Should congress pass a law saying “it is the official position of the United States of America that a higher power exists”? Would such a law violate the constitution?
The question is… is it society as a whole which is mocking me for walking around in swim fins and a propellor hat, or is the government which is doing it? If people don’t like me, or do things differently than me, then fine, hey, that’s part of being a person, I’m not asking the government to protect me from that. What I AM asking is that the government not OFFICIALLY SANCTION AND ENCODE IN LAW such mocking/disparagement.
(Talking about the Bob and Sue argument).
So, if someone says to you “I believe that the universe was created by a 50,000-year-old mute clown on a unicycle”, that’s certainly not a belief that belongs to any known organized Religion. But is it still a religious belief? And if so, why is that a religious belief, but “I believe in a higher power, but know no more than that” NOT a religious belief? And what about “I don’t believe in a higher power, but do believe in following the teachings of Yogi Rajneesh Dippadappa, and joining with his followers every thursday evening to sing the sacred songs”?
As I’ve said many times, those extremes are silly and wrong.
You know, I was wondering about that too, but I’m writing this while I’m at work and should be working, and don’t have the energy to go back and try to figure out what happened. I strongly suspect it was just a miscommunication, and if it was actually me being a jerk, I apologize.
Well, given that I already disagree with the pledge, I obviously also disagree with that. And in general, that’s the kind of thing which might sound fine and neutral in isolation, but which I worry is actually kind of the equivalent of Intelligent Design, that is, if it actually were proposed in the current USA, it would almost certainly be because Christians wanted Christian things to happen in school, realized they couldn’t get them, so recouched them in seemingly non-Christian language.
I wish I had more time to respond in greater depth, but these posts are already long enough as it is…