In God We Trust?
Posted April 16, 2007
One of the most common complaints Christians have about atheists recently is that "they are trying to push their [non-]beliefs onto us". This comes as a response to atheists who would like to see a more honest separation of church and state by removing artifacts of religion, such as "In God We Trust" and "Under God" on our money and in our Pledge of Allegience, respectively. The idea that secularists are "pushing their beliefs" is pretty ridiculous.
The first problem is that secularists rarely have any religious beliefs to push in the first place. They are not proposing that we replace "In God We Trust" with "Praise Allah!". They are simply trying to insulate everyone from all religious beliefs by removing the artifacts of Christianity from our government. The second is that the Christians' argument is extremely hypocritical. There are numerous groups around the country who push their Christian views of the world on everyone else, asserting that those who "do not accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior will burn eternally in the fires of Hell". And probably more importantly, there is incredible pressure from parents for children to believe the same things that their parents do. An excellent example is this video of a son trying to tell his mother he is an atheist.
"In God We Trust" was added to U.S. coins in 1864 after the suggestion of Reverend M. R. Watkinson, so that "...the antiquaries of succeeding centuries [would not] rightly reason from our past that we were a heathen nation." In addition to clearly being a very religious man making religious suggestions to the government, his reasoning came down to mere appearances. More importantly, his reference is specifically to the Christian God, which at least a quarter of Americans have no belief in.
Likewise, "under God" was first proposed by the Knights of Columbus, finally finding it's way into the Pledge in 1954, after 62 years of religious neutrality. Again, this reference applied specifically to the Christian God and is an overall endorsement of the Christian religion.
One thing I find interesting, but do not fully understand is that both of these religious additions were enacted by Congress, which seems to be in direct violation of the First Amendment, which states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...". So how did these additions get made? And why haven't they been repealed? I wonder if the have become such a part of American history that, even if they are unconstitutional, it is impossible to remove them.
