Why is it such a big deal if "under God" in the pledge of allegiance, is ruled constitutional?

I do remember thinking it was a colossal waste of time….and that it was unfair that the Jehovas Witnesses were allowed to sit it out and ignore the whole thing – which I don’t think they truly understood why they were ostracized at the time, us being like 3 and all. Big deal cuz it undermines separation of church and state and assumes that everyone believes in “god”.

Because not all people believe in god. I don’t say it and I would never want a child who was a non-believer to be forced to say it.

If it was ruled constitutional, I’d be dismayed. That’s a fundamentally opposite stance on the separation of church and state.

dangit @augustlan you stole my answer

Is the case to retain “under God” in the constitution before the Supreme Court right now? If so, that’s very distressing.

I thought the Supremes refused to take any new Pledge cases.

What if you’re a teacher that doesn’t believe in God and therefore refuse to partake in this tradition? Do your students all skip it, too? Would that enrage some parents?

Okay, what bugs me about the Pledge of Allegiance and also the “In God We Trust” on money is that both were changed to add “God” during the Cold War. I would have way less issue with it if it was a matter of tradition, say if both mentioned “God” from like 200 years ago.

The fact that both were added during a time of national distrust and fear for reasons supposedly separating us from the heathen commies, that’s what bugs me. I mean, it cheapens the meaning, it’s contrived, and it should make it a lot easier to change it to something that is more tolerant of non-Christian religion today.

I do think pledging allegiance to a flag is a little weird, though as a kid I took it pretty seriously, even though I really didn’t know what the hell it meant.

@Captain_Fantasy What’s the big deal if it’s ruled unconstitutional?

@MissAnthrope I had thought that “under God” was in the pledge when it was authored, and based on that was prepared to support keeping it in the pledge to honor tradition. Thanks for opening my eyes.

I think the issue is that it opens the door to other things. I have no problem personally with “under god” being in the pledge. When I got old enough to understand what it meant, I just went silent during that part of the pledge. However, a little thing like this can grow. If it is ruled constitutional to be able to put “under god” in the pledge, what other things can religion be injected into? I’m worried that this issue will snowball until they’re praying in public schools and using the ten commandments as precedent in court.

I started leaving out the “under God” part when I was in high school.

Regardless of personal belief, it is unconstitutional. If only Seperation of Church and State was actually upheld…

Your questions assumes that none of the words mean anything. Of course, it is for adults that it was designed.

(BTW, I do not believe the words under God, which were added in the 1930s belong in the pledge.)

@MrItty I just said constitutional because it has been recently ruled constitutional by a Federal appeals court.
Personally, i think the pledge is an empty gesture either ruling woudn’t have bothered me in the slightest.

It is a big deal. Plenty of people in the USA do not believe in god, not just the atheists but everyone who is not a Christian. If the pledge of allegiance includes that phrase, it denies the existence of all those people as American citizens. It implicitly draws a line between everyone who doesn’t believe in god, and the real Americans. I for one think that’s disturbing.

The same goes for “in god we trust” on your money. If “we” is supposed to mean the American people, that means all the non-Christians do not belong to the American people.
And if “we” is supposed to be just the Christians, then who the heck gave them permission to put their personal creed on the money everyone has to use?

@Fyrius I’m confused. Non-Christians believe in God, unlike atheists.

We should take “under God” back out of the pledge, remember originally it was not written with God in there, I think it was added in the 40’s. If the supreme court rules it constitutional for it to be left in, it would be a dissappointment, although I agree most children just say it without notice to what the words actually mean. My sister was one of the children who got in trouble for not standing or reciting the pledge when she was in Jr. High, in what was a fairly liberal county (there was recently a big issue in the same county now 25 years later when a girl ould not stand for the pledge). My mom was called into school, it was a whole deal, like it was for this other girl. The supreme court has ruled that no one is to be forced to stand or say the pledge, so I am guessing the supreme court will not rule it in favor of keeping under God in the pledge. My sister and I are very patriotic, love our country, but are atheists. What if the atheists insisted the pledge say, “one nation, without God, indivisible…” Just leave God out.

Why are the Christians so terrified to take under God out? What is going to happen? a lightening bolt will strike us all dead?

@Dr_Dredd Uhm. No. There are significantly more religions out there than just the ones that believe in “God”. Have you ever heard of Buddhism? Hindu? Shinto? Or any of about a thousand others?

I always thought that forcing kids in the US to recite the pledge of allegiance on a daily basis at school was akin to Nazi Germany indoctrination of the Hitler Youth and having them Sieg Heil alla da time.

@JLeslie “I think it was added in the 40’s.”

It was added in 1954.

there is also an issue of compelled speech,
“Compelled-speech issue
The compelled-speech issue seemed to have been resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court more than 60 years ago with its landmark 1943 decision West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette. Despite the decision allowing to students to opt out of saying the pledge, children have been punished for refusing to stand during or to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. In March 1998, a 13-year-old Jehovah’s Witness in a Seattle middle school was forced to stand outside in the rain for 15 minutes for refusing to say the pledge. In April 1998, a 16-year-old student in San Diego was forced to serve detention for her failure to recite the pledge.”

“In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a resurgence of patriotism has swept the nation. Public schools have helped fuel this patriotic zeal by placing an increased emphasis on the pledge. Several state legislatures have either considered or passed laws requiring the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.”

@Dr_Dredd
In addition to what @MrItty already pointed out, even the other monotheistic religions don’t refer to their deity as “god”. If you say “under god” or “in god”, there’s really very little room for doubt that the one you’re thinking of is Jehovah in particular.
“Under a god” and “in a god we trust” would be an improvement, thought that would still exclude the atheists and agnostics.

@Fyrius well, maybe it would exclude the agnostics and maybe not ;)

And further from the above link

“Establishment-clause issues
Another First Amendment challenge to the Pledge of Allegiance concerns the phrase “under God,” which was added by Congress in 1954. The pledge was proposed in 1892 by the children’s magazine The Youth’s Companion, as part of the celebration of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ discovery of America. Attributed to clergyman Francis Bellamy, the original version read: “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands: one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.”

In June 1954, President Eisenhower signed into law a measure adding “under God” to the pledge. A congressional report accompanying the measure read: “from the time of our earliest history our people and our institutions have reflected the traditional concept that our Nation was founded on a fundamental belief in God.”

Further, “Michael Newdow, an atheist in California, challenged the constitutionality of the Pledge of the Allegiance and its recitation in public schools. Newdow sued because he did not want his elementary school-age daughter to be forced to hear the words “under God” in the pledge. After a federal judge dismissed the suit, Newdow appealed to the 9th Circuit.

In June 2002, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit ruled 2–1 in Newdow v. U.S. Congress that the 1954 law adding the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional. Judge Alfred T. Goodwin reasoned that the pledge violated the three most common tests used to analyze establishment-clause cases — Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s endorsement test, Justice Anthony Kennedy’s coercion test, and the Supreme Court’s oft-criticized Lemon test from its 1971 decision Lemon v. Kurtzman.”

And then,

“Goodwin first applied O’Connor’s endorsement test (from her dissent in Lynch v. Donnelly) and wrote that “in the context of the Pledge, the statement that the United States is a nation ‘under God’ is an endorsement of religion.”

“Although students cannot be forced to participate in recitation of the Pledge, the school district is nonetheless conveying a message of state endorsement of a religious belief when it requires public school teachers to recite, and lead the recitation of, the current form of the Pledge,” Goodwin wrote.”

@poisonedantidote
“In god we trust, kind of, maybe”?
They’d need larger bills.

Bottom line, the Supreme Court is very wishy-washy on this issue, with Bush Justices claiming it is okay to use the term “Under God” in the Pledge, and the others finding ways out of making a decision.

They seem to agree that you cannot force a child to say the pledge in Public Schools.

@augustlan
Separation of Church and State is an un-Constitutional sham. All that the Constitution has to say about religion is that Congress can’t make laws to enforce one.

@Fyrius I see what you mean. Interesting point…

In all honesty, I really don’t mind saying “under God” in the pledge, or knowing that our currency says “in God we trust on it,” and I’m an agnostic teetering on the edge of atheism.

I know the history behind the mottoes, and I do know the constitutional arguments against the mottoes, but as an individual, I really think we have more pressing matters to deal with as a country.

@Nullo actually it says they can’t make laws respecting any particular one. That’s rather different.

@Nullo
I just went and looked up some background info on the notion of ‘separation of church and state’. Wikipedia says it’s “generally traced to the letter written by Thomas Jefferson in 1802 to the Danbury Baptists, in which he referred to the First Amendment to the United States Constitution as creating a “wall of separation”[4] between church and state.”

The original point I was about to make and wanted to verify is that the concept is widely recognised around the world as a crucial precondition for all modern Western civilisation, but I think you might find this more relevant still.

It was added to the pledge in the 1950’s.
We can survive without it.
(I am a Christian)

@Nullo What @Fyrius ^^ said.

@MrItty
If you wanna get technical (I will admit to paraphrasing in my post), the first amendment says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
“Respecting” is used in this context to mean “pertaining to,” and is related to terms like “respective” and “respectively.” Not the act of expressing respect.

@Fyrius That may be Jefferson’s take on the matter, certainly. But unless I am mistaken, he didn’t write the Constitution, nor did he single-handedly formulate its content or its Amendments. If the intent of the amendment were to keep the religiously minded out of government (which kinda flies in the face of the sentiments of such recent events as winning independence from Great Britain), then it might have said as much.
Certainly, I can understand the importance of keeping the Church from running the government, and keeping the government from running the Church – the most charitable interpretation that I can find of the SOCAS doctrine. But this does not mean that the two can’t share concepts (I’m told that a surprising number of laws hereabouts were lifted right out of the Old Testament), and it doesn’t mean that the faithful cannot also serve in government, as so many seem to want it to mean.

@filmfann Certainly, we can survive without it; Christians throughout the ages have done wonderfully under even more taxing forms of persecution. But we shouldn’t have to, should we? In an effectively democratic society where we still have significant numbers?

@Nullo Did you seriously just call removing under God or In God We Trust “persecution”? Really? Sorry, in my view you just lost all credibility. There are certainly good arguments to be made in favor of retaining those phrases. “It’s persecution to remove them” is not one of them.

@MrItty Kindasorta. I see it as part of an overall trend that pushes Christianity into the margins of society. It’s not a particularly important hill, as hills go, but it has strategic value in the Culture War.
Unfortunately, we are not well-enough acquainted for your opinion of me to have any kind of weight.

I have always had a huge problem with saying “under god”. I have never believed in god and it was insulting to be forced to say it.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard For me I have been fine saying it also. I kind of think it is not necessarily worth fighting about this one, but I do 100% think under God should not be there. And, certainly people can leave out those words when saying the pledge.

@all Saying the pledge of allegiance had little influence over how loyal and proud I am about being an American. People get all sorts of offended if someone will not stand for the pledge, or don’t want to recite it because of “under God.” People should stop being offended, it is a gift that our government is secular (or supposed to be) with freedom of religion for everyone. Being an atheist has nothing to do with supporting our country. I can’t tell you how many times people have said to me, “your an atheist? So you are a communist?” People are stupid, what can I tell you.

Atheists don’t want “Under God” in the Pledge. I (and those like me) do. Why should they get their way and not us? What makes them so special?

@Nullo Why should they get their way? They are being forced to pray to god. That is incredibly insulting. People came to America in the first place to have freedom of religion. If people want to pray in school, they can go to a private religious school.

@Nullo
“They” should “get their way” because their way is the neutral way.
If those words are in the pledge, then everybody is forced to show commitment to theism, and to Christianity in particular (you know as well as I do we’re not talking about any unspecified god here). You would have a point if them getting their way would force people to show commitment to atheism, if they were trying to get “without god” edited in there, but what your opponents want is the removal of all forced expressions of commitment. That’s fair on everyone.

You always try to make it sound unfair if the Christians are treated like everyone else, instead of getting a privileged position.

@Violet No they’re not; anybody can skip out on the pledge.

@Fyrius Like heck it’s the neutral way. Atheism is as much a religion as Catholicism. There isn’t enough evidence out there to objectively determine the existence or nonexistence of God; this means that atheism has a faith component as much as any other belief system. The main difference is that rather than worshiping God, atheists worship things like Science, Nature, People, Time, Life, Cosmopolitan, and Popular Mechanics. It has its doctrines, its dogmas, its teachers, its evangelists, places of worship, its holy days, and yes, even its crimes.
In the United States, secular humanism has been ruled a religion, in the Supreme Court case Torcaso v. Watkins.

You always try to make it sound unfair if the Christians are treated like everyone else, instead of getting a privileged position.
That’s because kicking it into the same category as Islam, Animism, and Wicca goes a long way in smothering the guiding light of salvation. Add to that the fact that Christianity is the default religion around here and has been the default religion going back a few hundred years, and it’s being pushed around by a very, very small percentage of the population. Seriously, atheists account for something like 2% of the world’s religious population.

@Nullo Whoa, hold on there. We Jews don’t think Christians have a monopoly on the “guiding light of salvation.” And we wouldn’t call Christianity the “default” religion, either. Many people do happen to be Christians, but it’s not by default.

@Nullo
You know, Nullo, sometimes I get so tired of you and your sophistries. And that’s when I end up writing posts like this.

“Atheism is as much a religion as Catholicism. There isn’t enough evidence out there to objectively determine the existence or nonexistence of God; this means that atheism has a faith component as much as any other belief system.”
For one thing, this is irrelevant. Taking those words out would not be siding with the atheists, it would be siding with no one. Keeping them there would be siding with the Christians.

For another, this line of thought is dead wrong, and this has been explained so often now that you really have no excuse for not knowing better.

Credibility is not absolute, but relative. The absence of absolute certainty does not mean all hypotheses are equally probable. In the absence of definite evidence, you are not allowed to believe whatever you like.
There are definite probabilistic rules to determine how plausible an idea is, and thus even in uncertainty there are formally correct ways to judge whether something should be believed or not. Thus there are almost-certainly-true statements such as “taking an aspirin will help against this headache you’re giving me” and there are almost-certainly-false loads of drivel such as “there is a worldwide conspiracy to keep people from knowing the earth is a disk”. Even if you can’t claim complete certainty about the truth of either.

Understanding of probabilities makes all the difference between a reasonable assumption and blind faith. Please remember it this time.

“In the United States, secular humanism has been ruled a religion, in the Supreme Court case Torcaso v. Watkins.”
Secular Humanism is not atheism.
And even if it were, that would be moot, because taking those words out would not be siding with the atheists.

“That’s because kicking it into the same category as Islam, Animism, and Wicca goes a long way in smothering the guiding light of salvation.”
Bullshit.
Give me one reason to think Christianity is anyting more than just another arbitrary memeplex like all the other religions. Just one. Then talk to me about it being the sole way to salvation.

“Add to that the fact that Christianity is the default religion around here and has been the default religion going back a few hundred years”
If there’s any such thing as a “default” religion anywhere, it’s agnosticism, the one people are born with.
But yes, okay, Christianity might have managed to conquer a dominant position for itself. So then what? Does that mean it deserves to be put above the other ones? What happened to the “melting pot” culture the Americans used to be so proud of? What happened to America being a place where everyone is equal regardless of their roots? If the Christians are in charge after all and everyone else can put up with them or take a hike, then our own Netherlands live up to the American dream more than America does.

“and it’s being pushed around by a very, very small percentage of the population. Seriously, atheists account for something like 2% of the world’s religious population.”
I doubt that, too. Do you have anything to back up those statistics?
I recall Bill Maher mentioning that the American population has an atheist minority of 10%, actually. Which is a larger group than several minorities that get their way significantly more often.
Furthermore, do you really think the atheists are the only ones who ever oppose you? Is this a binary war between the Hegemony of Christianity against the United Federation of Atheists? Don’t oversimplify. Your faith has as many opponents as there are competing religions, just as each of those is an opponent of the atheists.
Not to mention again that’s all moot, because taking those words out would not be siding with the atheists.

And now I wrote a wall of text. I don’t know why I even bother writing you walls of text. I feel like Don Quichotte riding out with a lance of rationalism against a windmill made of deaf ears and fallacies glued together with dogma.

@Nullo – Fyrius covered things pretty damn well. My one thought on this is how convenient it is that you state that Christianity has been the default religion for a few hundred years. It’s convenient because that matches up with Christianity’s heyday and completely neglects to take into account the long history of human existence and religious views.

Lest we forget that when Christianity first popped up, it was considered a laughable cult. Ironically, Christians were persecuted just as the Christians later persecuted others when its members grew in power. It is merely a matter of chance and marketing that Christianity grew into popularity. I respect your beliefs as a Christian, but never forget that one religion is not a one-size-fit-all. It is completely necessary in this global day and age to have tolerance of others, yet Christians are still trying to keep their foothold on their religion’s position, even if it means continuing to persecute others. I would think, in 2010, that we might have gotten a clue that none of this is okay.

So, as I said previously, it would bother me so much less if the mentions of God on money and in the Pledge had been there since the beginning. I have room to allow such expressions of tradition, and I wouldn’t really mind it, knowing that most people of European descent were God-fearing at that time. It’s that these things were added a mere 60 years ago that is irritating. What that says to me is that it is not tradition, it was the government trying to separate America from the heathen commies. Which, again, is understandable in a sense, but seriously, we live in an entirely different era now and those words are not necessary. Insisting they stay is offensive to many people and marks you as a stubborn, closed-minded, intolerant person.

@Fyrius “I feel like Don Quichotte riding out with a lance of rationalism against a windmill made of deaf ears and fallacies glued together with dogma.” Now you know how i used to feel back on airow debating him and Falcon.

You add these religious symbols, phrases, etc, to government property, pledges, public schools, and then youo are going to have to live people wanted to do the same thing with non-Christian symbols and phrases in communities where the majority, or at least a significant number of non-Christains have taken over the population. Why allow for that? Why not just not mix government and religion. People want prayer in school? Do you want it if your community is 50% Jewish, and the majority of teachers are Jewish? You think it is ok to ADD under God, good let’s add under Allah to something in Dearborn, MI. Christians are so secure in their majority right now, they fail to think that on day they may not have the majority and they will have started a precedent.

Leaving God out, is not saying there is no God; leaving God out, means you get to teach your God in your home and in your churches, and no one will interfere from the government.