Reciting Pledge of Allegiance in public schools ruled unconstitutional. Discuss.

[MEBuckner]

@cosmosdan

Please note that I recommended tolerance and understanding for minority and majority alike. Wouldn’t you say that “Under God” was catering to the majority while trying to find compromise. There have been several proposed amendments that specifically wanted to name Jesus as Lord and were shot down. Wouldn’t you say compromise is a form of tolerance? Are you asking for tolerance from the majority or aquiescing?

How exactly is saying “under God” instead of “under Jesus Christ” a compromise at all from the point of view of an atheist? It’s a “compromise” in the sense that the Christian majority didn’t run roughshod over the Jewish minority, but “under God” excludes atheists just as surely as “under Jesus Christ” would, it’s just that instead of the large Christian majority doing the excluding, it can at least be claimed that the fractionally larger “Judeo-Christian” majority is doing the excluding.

@ambushed

First, that’s not relevant to our Pledge debate. Second, even though they’re irrelevant, could you provide cites for that claim?

Calls for a constitutional amendment proclaiming Jesus to be Lord go back to the 19th century, with a revival of the idea in the 1950’s; there are still fringe groups out there pressing for the idea.

Of course a constitutional amendment would be worse than any number of mere legislative acts; and the people who want to amend the Constitution to proclaim this to be a Christian nation have far worse things in their agenda than just messing around with the preamble (the “National Reform Association” these days is controlled by hard-core Christian Reconstructionists who want to impose “biblical law”, complete with laws against “idolatry”). But as far as the purely symbolic mottoes and amendments to the pledge go, I almost wish Congress had made it “one nation under Jesus Christ” and “In Jesus Christ We Trust”; then we wouldn’t have any of this “ceremonial deism” nonsense around which all good Americans–Catholics, Protestants, and Jews–can rally around, to the exclusion of those godless probably Communistic atheists.

[ambushed]

@cosmosdan

appreciated although a bit redundant. Dio already pointed this very thing out to me. And I have already noted that most atheist fall into the “lack of belief” catagory. My point was that not all do, which I think is still correct. Any reason you found it nessecary to repeat this info?

Yes. It was clear that you formerly believed that ordinary dictionaries can be relied upon to accurately define technical philosophical and religious terms.

Now, I hope you no longer believe that.

[ambushed]

This is to more definitively answer the GHWB question raised earlier as well as to show that Newdow isn’t the first to raise this issues with the courts.

George HW Bush and Atheism

When George Bush was campaigning for the presidency, as incumbent vice president, one of his stops was in Chicago, Illinois, on August 27, 1987. At O’Hare Airport he held a formal outdoor news conference. There Robert I. Sherman, a reporter for the American Atheist news journal, fully accredited by the state of Illinois and by invitation a participating member of the press corps covering the national candidates had the following exchange with then Vice President Bush.

Sherman: What will you do to win the votes of the Americans who are Atheists?

Bush: I guess I’m pretty weak in the Atheist community. Faith in god is important to me.

Sherman: Surely you recognize the equal citizenship and patriotism of Americans who are Atheists?

Bush: No, I don’t know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.

Sherman (somewhat taken aback): Do you support as a sound constitutional principle the separation of state and church?

Bush: Yes, I support the separation of church and state. I’m just not very high on Atheists.

On October 29, 1988, Mr. Sherman had a confrontation with Ed Murnane, cochairman of the Bush-Quayle '88 Illinois campaign. This concerned a law-suit Mr. Sherman had filed to stop the Community Consolidated School District 21 (Chicago, Illinois, suburb) from forcing his first-grade Atheist son to pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States “one nation under God” (Bush’s phrase). The following conversation took place.

Sherman: American Atheists filed the Pledge of Allegiance lawsuit yesterday. Does the Bush campaign have an official response to this filing?

Murnane: It’s bullshit.

Sherman: What is bullshit?

Murnane: Everything that American Atheists does, Rob, is bullshit.

Sherman: Thank you for telling me what the official position of the Bush campaign is on this issue.

Murnane: You’re welcome

This suit, now in federal district court for over three years, is not considered to be bullshit by the federal judge before whom it is pending. During the time it has been in the federal court, Robert Sherman’s son, now age nine, has been physically and psychologically brutalized in his school for refusing to pledge to a “nation under God.”

After Bush’s election but before his taking office, American Atheists wrote to Bush asking that he consider being sworn into office on the Constitution instead of the Bible and also asking him to retract his August 1987 statement. Bush had his White House buddy, C. Boyden Gray, counsel to the president, reply on White House stationery on February 21, 1989, stating that substantively Bush stood by his original statement.
“As you are aware, the President is a religious man who neither supports atheism nor believes that atheism should be unnecessarily encouraged or supported by the government.”

American Atheists had not asked Bush to either “unnecessarily” or even “necessarily” encourage or support them. All they wanted was an apology for the insult. Many Atheists wrote to Bush over the issue and Nelson Lund, the associate counsel to the president, found it necessary to reply on April 7, 1989, directly to the American Atheist General Headquarters, Inc.

This letter from the White House said that Mr. Gray was adhering to his statements in the February 21, 1989, letter. On May 4, 1989, Jon Murray, the president of American Atheists, again wrote to President Bush demanding a clarification of and an apology for his statement that Atheists “should not be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots.” Bush ignored the letter, as did Gray and Lund. Mr. Murray also asked for an appointment so that a group of representatives of American Atheists could meet with Bush.

Mr. Joseph W. Hagin 11 responded on May 25, 1989, again on White House stationery. He stated that the president “appreciated your taking the time to write and your willingness to share your thoughts” but that “due to heavy commitments on his official calendar” the president could not meet with representatives of American Atheists.

On January 9, 1990, George Bush, in signing a proclamation for the Martin Luther King holiday, had the gall to remark that “bigots” must be brought to justice. Again, American Atheists threw his words back in his face, asking what his designation of Atheists as being unworthy of citizenship was. On February 5, 1990, Mr. Nelson Lund replied again on White House stationery–stating
“We believe that our position has been adequately explained in previous correspondence.”

This information backing up Bush’s statement is more authoritative than most press stories. The onus now is on those who claim Bush never made this statement to prove that all this information is bogus.

[ambushed]

@cosmosdan

I didn’t claim they were planning on inserting Jesus at that moment in history, although there was in fact a movement for a Jesus amendment during that time and it wouldn’t surprise me to discover that “Under God” in the pledge was a fall back position. Please don’t put words in my mouth and then call your words my strawmen.

True, you didn’t explicitly claim it, but you certainly suggested something along those lines. You argued that the phrase “Under God” was a compromise, and the antithesis you offered that it was ostensibly a compromise of was the strong suggestion on your part that they wanted to refer to Jesus instead.

That was a strawman, and I stand by my statement.

[ambushed]

Oops, I quoted the wrong page regarding GWHB. I wished to quote: George Bush on atheism and patriotism

I will now quote the more relevant portions from that site:

The exchange appeared in the Boulder Daily Camera on Monday February 27, 1989. It can also be found in “Free Inquiry” magazine, Fall 1988 issue, Volume 8, Number 4, page 16.

The exchange was further discussed in a story from UPI on May 8, 1989.

[lekatt]

@cosmosdan

I entered late in the thread and decided to go back and read it all. I can’t resist commenting on this
Lekatt if you can’t see the blatent intolerance, prejudice, and bigotry reflected by these numbers then IMO you are in some serious denial.

Not sure what you mean by blatent intolerance. I quoted some polls by Gallop in 2002 if I remember right. Check out the link. Then I reminded others that this is a country of the vote. Are you saying I am in denial, or the people who answered the poll are in denial.

I don’t feel either way about the poll, it just is. I do feel this country is being pulled into a division of sorts between those who believe in God and those who don’t.

True, I know God is real, and I would rather see a county of more liberal believers in God, but don’t expect to get it. I am not afraid of either group. People seldom do what is in their best interests, so we will just have to wait and see what happens.

[lekatt]

@ambushed

Kindly allow me to aid a bit in your education, lekatt. The Enlightenment was a politico-philosophical movement that, among other things, decried religion and a religious God/Creator. Please read the following:The Enlightenment

From that source: lekatt, my friend, you must admit that you are a strong believer in superstition. Your history of unquestioning defense of the existence of ghosts and visiting aliens and psi and other such anti-rational, anti-scientific claptrap do not do you proud in this respect. You would have been, and it appears you are still, a clear enemy of the Enlightenment.

You should work on your imagination, lekatt. The idea of the equality of humans is generally incompatible with the notion of a God or Higher Intelligence. This is certainly true for Christianity, in which the unsaved are by no means equal to the saved, and unbelievers are by no means equal to believers.

First of all, anti-scientific is not necessarily anti-rational. You like other scientists don’t understand religion, spirituality, or the things that happened through history that made it what it was. You only take the most negative parts and herald they as representing the whole, which they do not. Your view of spirituality and religion is totally false. As for believing in God, and spiritual things, I am in good company. Over ninty percent of the world believes with me.

Skeptics would like to preach that God can not be proved, was thought up by man because man was weak, and is sustained on faith. All of which are false.

Maybe some day you will study spirituality and learn the truth.

[Scott_Plaid]

You, (and cosmosdan, to a far lesser extent) seem to have a straw man stuck in your ear. here, let me get it out for you.

eRRRGhhhhhhh!

Stop holding on to the other ear. If you keep holding on, we’ll never get it out.

gggaaaaHHHHH

Forget it, just forget it. However, if you, lekatt, would like to know what people think about your faith that " scientists don’t understand religion, spirituality, or the things that happened through history that made it what it was" then see this.

[cosmosdan]

@ambushed

Yes. It was clear that you formerly believed that ordinary dictionaries can be relied upon to accurately define technical philosophical and religious terms.

Now, I hope you no longer believe that.

Did that seem clear to you? It happens to be incorrect.

[cosmosdan]

@MEBuckner

How exactly is saying “under God” instead of “under Jesus Christ” a compromise at all from the point of view of an atheist? It’s a “compromise” in the sense that the Christian majority didn’t run roughshod over the Jewish minority, but “under God” excludes atheists just as surely as “under Jesus Christ” would, it’s just that instead of the large Christian majority doing the excluding, it can at least be claimed that the fractionally larger “Judeo-Christian” majority is doing the excluding.

Maybe I’m just nit picking, but it is still a compromise, just not the compromise atheists prefer. It does reflect the majority’s beliefs. The fact that you don’t have to recite the pledge at all is at least in part a recognition of other beliefs and the option of leaving out “Under God” another.
“Under God” was placed in to mean the Judeo Chiristian God by and for Judeo Christian community which comprises a huge percentage of our population. Looking at the numbers of people who support leaving it in I’d have to say that even many folks who don’t go to church and don’t even consider themselves Christian still prefer leaving it in. Regardless of who put it in and why it’s just a word and when and if I recite it, it means exactly what it means to me as an individual. I have no problem if the majority wants it in. Saying Jesus is Lord doesn’t allow me as much room for interpretation.
I might add that I have already stated that personnally, if it was up to me alone, to decide what I thought was best for all our diverse citizens, I’d leave it out.
It isn’t, so as long as the majority shows some respect for my right to believe as I choose, I see no point in expending much energy swimming upstream.

[cosmosdan]

@ambushed

True, you didn’t explicitly claim it, but you certainly suggested something along those lines. You argued that the phrase “Under God” was a compromise, and the antithesis you offered that it was ostensibly a compromise of was the strong suggestion on your part that they wanted to refer to Jesus instead.

That was a strawman, and I stand by my statement.

In rereading my statement I understand how you got that impression. That was not my intended meaning and I should have chosen my wording more carefully.

[lekatt]

@Scott Plaid

You, (and cosmosdan, to a far lesser extent) seem to have a straw man stuck in your ear. here, let me get it out for you.

eRRRGhhhhhhh!

Stop holding on to the other ear. If you keep holding on, we’ll never get it out.

gggaaaaHHHHH

Forget it, just forget it. However, if you, lekatt, would like to know what people think about your faith that " scientists don’t understand religion, spirituality, or the things that happened through history that made it what it was" then see this.

What you are showing me is a bunch of adults acting like children. That hardly tells me they know anything, except perhaps that they know how to make themselves look foolish. Do you really have to go to school to learn that?

People who consistently belittle another’s beliefs, show they are threatened by those beliefs. Now the only way they could be threatened by opposing beliefs is that they are not all that confident of their own. In order to correct that situation ones needs to read the best of both sides and then make up their own mind irrepective of what their peers think. That is the road to emotional growth and enlightenment.

[MEBuckner]

@lekatt

Since no one can prove or disprove God, either position is a position of faith.

@lekatt

Skeptics would like to preach that God can not be proved, was thought up by man because man was weak, and is sustained on faith. All of which are false.

:dubious:

So, which is it:

“No one can prove or disprove God”

or

“God can not be proved” is “false”?

[magellan01]

@Scott Plaid

However, if you, lekatt, would like to know what people think about your faith that " scientists don’t understand religion, spirituality, or the things that happened through history that made it what it was" then see this.

I don’t think it is helpful to the debate to cite someone’s pitting—especially when you do so with the implication that she is not aware of it. I think your attempt to just throw crap at Lekatt is cheap and disengenuous. I’m surprised you would do that. Just because someone started a pit claiming someone—anyone—to be an idiot doesn’t necessarily make it so. The fact that Lekatt may hold a bunch of opinions that you or I might not agree with does not make his/her opinion automatically invalid. If his/her points are so unsound, it should be failrly easy for you to reveal that fact by attacking them on their merits. It would also make for a better debate thread.

[tomndebb]

@lekatt

People who consistently belittle another’s beliefs, show they are threatened by those beliefs. Now the only way they could be threatened by opposing beliefs is that they are not all that confident of their own.

So when you persistently misrepresent both the statements and beliefs of other people regarding science, you are actually just demonstrating that you find science threatening and that we should just accept that you are merely lacking in confidence in your own beliefs.

I can accept that.

[magellan01]

@ambushed

That’s highly debatable, if not outright false. The Ninth Amendment, even though it has not been used by the courts, clearly represents a very strong desire on the part of the drafters to make plain that there ARE other rights enjoyed by the People that are not enumerated in the Bill of Rights.

Like the right of a majority to decide to encourage children to recite a Pledge that pays homage to the Founding of this country?

From your opening line you seem to imply that these as-of-yet-unidentified “actions” enjoy the same protection as those enumerated. They may or may not. If one of them is brought to the fore it may then be deemed a “right” and having be so delared, be protected. Until then, a particular ‘action’ does not enjoy the same protection as a “right”.

[tomndebb]

@Scott Plaid

then see this.

Scott, the thread to which you linked is not a direct personal disagreement that you had with lekatt (although I recognize that you were willing to pile on) and, as such, it really is not germane to this discussion. (It is also a demonstration that you are willing to stoop to lekatt’s tactics of claiming that knowledge is, itself, subject to popularity contests, only expressed in a more mean spirited way.)

Stick to this discussion, please.

[Der_Trihs]

@lekatt

People who consistently belittle another’s beliefs, show they are threatened by those beliefs. Now the only way they could be threatened by opposing beliefs is that they are not all that confident of their own.

No, people often belittle other’s beliefs because they consider those beliefs stupid. As far as being threatened by the beliefs of others go, there are more reasons than a lack of confidence to fear the beliefs of others. People have been harrassing, censoring, assaulting, imprisoning and killing each other over beliefs for all of history.

I fear religion because it has a history of extreme irrationality and rabid, brutal intolerance. I have absolutely no fear of being proven wrong, not when the other side is such blatant nonsense.

[Scott_Plaid]

Um, a little reality check here. The thread I linked to does insult lekatt, true. However, it also spends a great deal of time discussing what is wrong with his or her theology. As well, it also shows that there are Christians who don’t bash him because they “hate the truth”, but because of his personality. I didn’t think that s/he/it should be left in the dark about the problems his “all scientists hate religion!” glurge.

:smack: Ah, wait a minute. Nothing will ever shatter his illusions. Never mind.

[MaxTheVool]

@cosmosdan

You don’t? You called some examples extreme and not really relative to the arguement. I called your analogy extreme and not really relative to the arguement. See the comparison?

Bluntly, no. Analogies are SUPPOSED to be somewhat extreme, in that they are designed to boil a complex issue down to a particular subissue, in this case whether it is “fair” for UG to still be in the pledge. And, for goodness sake, what’s extreme about a town with Yankees fans and Mets fans? You want extreme, I’ll propose an analogy involving Christians killing and eating Atheist babies. THAT is extreme.

I was kind of confused why you mentioned extreme examples in responding to me. Have I presented an extreme example to defend leaving “under God” in?

It’s a bit hard to keep track of who’s said what in a thread this long and active, but I believe you’ve expressed great concern that schoolkids still be allowed to say “under God” if you want to. In other words (unless you can show me a different interpretation), you’re afraid that the mean old atheists, not satisfied with having removed “under God” from it’s rightly sanctified place in the pledge, are next going to go and start passing laws forbidding people from choosing to express their religious faith. Which seems both somewhat extreme and totally unjustified.

This is better than the last one but I still don’t think it has any real meaning concerning this discussion. How about this one?
There is a single group that makes their decisions by the “majority rules” principle.
etc, etc. Isn’t my analogy as close as yours?

OK, let me make my analogy better. There’s a town. Some of the people in the town like bowling. Some of the people in the town like minigolf. There’s a bowling alley and a mini golf course. Some go to one. Some go to the other. It’s all good. Now suddenly a new lot becomes available for development. Two different companies put in bids for what to erect there. One proposes an Awesome New Bowling Alley. One proposes an Awesome New Mini Golf Course. The town holds a meeting to vote what to put there. The bowlers outnumber the minigolfers 55% to 45%, so they carry the vote. A bowling alley is erected.

Is this fair or unfair?
A few decades later, there’s been a spike in the minigolfer birth rate, and there are now more minigolfers than bowlers. The minigolfers, still bitter about the above debacle, call a town meeting, and in this town meeting, they propose that all schools shall officially have teacher-led minigolf as the only PE activity for all schoolchildren. But it won’t be MANDATORY. Children not wishing to participate will be able to sit quietly on the sidelines and not play. The minigolfers win this vote and the law is passed.

Is this fair or unfair?
In both cases, it’s just majority rule. But there’s a difference betweeen majority rule which decides a public policy issue that needs to be decided, and majority rule which enforces the beliefs/actions of the majority, in an officially societally mandated way, onto the minority.

You would have to establish that your two sub groups have an ethical or moral obligation to defend each others rights. Moving on.

It’s called being a decent human being and an American. It is my responsibility as an American to defend the rights of all Americans. 50 years from now, if Atheists are a majority, and someone proposes adding “and there is no God” to the pledge, I will vote against it.

That, being the thing you will shortly describe as “the trickiest question”?
See, it is tricky. It isn’t easy to draw the lines and you are correct, people won’t agree.

:smack:

What’s your point? Yes, there’s gray area. If everyone agreed with precisely where the separation of church and state lines should be drawn, this would be a short and simple debate. But there’s ambiguity now. Demonstrating that removing UG would lead to a situation in which there’s ambiguity is hardly an argument against doing so.

A kid is having a real life crisis and a sincere concerned teacher feels the need to offer prayer or suggests turning to God for help. The parents who are atheists object. What’s best, right, or fair? The teacher is paid in part by federal money. Does that mean the teacher represents the goverment and is not allowed to pursue their sincere beliefs in this situation?

Good question. We could both spend all day coming up with hypothetical situations that blur the lines. I claim that UG-in-the-pledge is NOT such a situation. Again, what’s your point?