and mari - i stated earlier that everyone of has a god of some sort. if you are saying "under god" why do you assume we all have to be talking about the same one.

one person may be saying "under Allah"

another "under jeshua"

another "under Jesus"

another "under troubleshooter"

Never mind the phrase "under God," why should little kids in effect be programmed with a loyalty oath everyday before school? Doesn't that seem a little Orwellian?

A lot of people who enter this country from elsewhere in the world find this aspect of American life to be one of the strangest. I've had more than one visitor from Europe and South America note that they found it creepy that children recite the pledge almost robotically every single morning. "Why do you need to pledge your allegiance every day? Don't they believe you the first time?" When viewed from an outside perspective, I suppose it does seem really odd, but I can't remember a school day going by without it, ever, so I don't know anything else.

In thinking of it this way, I became really curious as to the origins and reasoning behind the pledge.

Pledge Origins

Back in November of 2001, in reaction to the September 11th terrorist attacks, Wisconsin passed a law requiring all schools to offer the Pledge or anthem daily in grades one to twelve.

This is really weird even to me -- an American who attended school and heard it everyday. Why must a law be passed in order for students to reaffirm their patriotism? Shouldn't that sense of pride in your country come about on its own?

From this day forward the millions of our schoolchildren will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and rural schoolhouse, the dedication of our Nation and our people to the Almighty. ...Over the globe millions have been deadened in mind and soul by a materialistic philosophy of life. ...In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America's heritage and future; in this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever shall be our country's most powerful resource in peace or in war.

i also read about a lady in NY who was extremely pissed about the flag-waving, and all the pro-America rhetoric at a public event. of course she was only quoted in the newspaper because she was one of the first group of to gain citizenship after 9/11.

why does FL have a law making it illegal to screw an alligator? because politicians like to get face time by introducing useless legislation.

Hey! Wanna know what Colorado's new state rock is? Oh, never mind.;)

why does FL have a law making it illegal to screw an alligator? because politicians like to get face time by introducing useless legislation.

Huh. Wouldn't it be weird if that is what this whole "Pledge" this was to begin with? Oh, wait...

They shouldn't.Like I said, it's more complicated than that. Some Buddhists believe in God, some don't. I used it to meet lookout123's "some eastern philosophies" quote. The difference is probably countered by some of the "Random other" which I gave to the "God" side, but in the end it doesn't affect the argument much.

another undertoad?

whatever floats your boat. i just think that if you are your own god it would be a real kick to hear every one say "under _____" every morning, and secretly know they are talking about me.

Naw, I's just playing the play on words. I think it would be too much responsibility to hear all these people making requests of me and such. Although it would be good to have my name called out every time somebody orgasms.

I still haven't read/heard any reason why an atheist would be 'hurt' by saying or hearing the world God.
Ok, so this guy goes off to sue to have Under God removed because its presence is harmful to his daughter. That being the case, why stop there? If it hurts and offends him so much, he should push to ban words and phrases, like Oh my God! or God-given, in the same way people push to have books banned. He should give Webster a call and demand to have those words and phrases removed from dictionaries and thesauruses and like books because his daughter just might read them. NBC should get an earful anytime one of the Friends says "Oh my God!" Let's go, buddy boy, your Crusade has only just begun! (oh wait...can I even call it a crusade?)

Why just single out the government when his daughter is more likely to hear and repeat the term God from so many other places than in the Pledge? Maybe its because the government is capable of the biggest pay out, just in case he wins?

The issue is...by having the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, is the government endorsing religion?

Why just single out the government when his daughter is more likely to hear and repeat the term God from so many other places than in the Pledge? Maybe its because the government is capable of the biggest pay out, just in case he wins?

I think these are the issues most people have with it:

The public school system is/was forcing children to say the pledge under threat of punishment.
The pledge contains the words "under god".
This version of the pledge, unlike the original, gives the impression that pledging your allegiance to the United States of America requires that you recognize that it is "under God".
"Under God" is understood, by most, to specifically refer to the Christian version recognized by the majority.
The words "under god" are thought, by most, to suggest that our government is endorsing this Christian god. Many people find this unconstitutional.

This doesn't have to do with the word "god" causing aethist's ears to burn and heads to explode as much as it does that there is the suggestion that people of other religions or no religions are not able to pledge their allegiance to the country and are excluded from this activity that takes place in every classroom in every public school in the nation.

GHWB (41) in 1988:

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.

There you go CW: an American Vice-President, at a press conference where he is running for President, using the pledge to state that Atheists are not citizens or patriots. And the result? He was elected.

Nice goin'

Is that a real quote? That's amazing to me that Bush would say that. I think I hate the guy as much as I can, and then you show me reasons to hate him even more.

Edited to say I just saw the part that it was his Dad that said it. Nevermind.

[quote]Originally posted by Cyber Wolf
OK, now we're in "sticks and stones will break by bones but words will never hurt me" category. If it doesn't "hurt" atheists to acknowledge God, surely it won't "hurt" Christians to be coerced into publicly deny the divinity of Jesus. It's just words, right? Why stop at the Pledge of Allegiance? We could mandate the recitation of the Apostle's Creed! Hell, it's just words, right?

You just can't say "it won't hurt the damned athiests because it's just a formality and nobody takes it seriously anyway" because then you've trivialized it, and it doesn't mean anything to the believers anyway, does it?

But enough of this. I agree with marichiko. All this religious talk distracts from the issue of Stepford-like indoctrination directed at the flag!! Not the country... not the constitution... not even our beloved government officials... but the flag... a fetishization which, in my book, borders on idolatry (for those of you who've read the First Commandment).

borders? It is idolatry.

You guys are really getting off track. Idolatry is the worship of an idol representing a diety. Since Christians worship Jesus and God, and since they are baying the loudest over keeping God in the pledge then it stands to reason that they are not worshipping the flag. They are pledging their allegience - loyalty- to the United States as represented in the classroom by the flag. All "allegience" means is that you will not put another country ahead of the United States - what's so bad about that? If you can't or don't want to then don't become a citizen (or renounce your citizenship and all the bennies that come with it).

I don't know what the big deal is about the pledge. If athiests don't want to say "under god" then no one should make them. They should be permitted to recite the old "pre-god" version. People who are religiously opposed to the pledge should not be forced to recite it at all - they can lip synch a prayer orremain seated. The very idea that we need to cancel the pledge because someone who sits it out "might" get some derision is so beyond asinine that I don't have any words for it. Sitting out the pledge on some valid principle is the most American thing I can think of and the courage of any student who did so in the face of derision is a model American for the other students to observe and learn from. Its a teacher's job to point that out.

All this fuss for such a small deal.

A president put "under god" in the pledge and, since he was president and all, he gets to do stuff like that. Some other president is free to take it out. Maybe the Kerry supporters could encourage Kerry to make that part of his platform.

Glatt, in fact, W has the opposite opinion of his pop, mentioning lack of faith as something that has to be accepted in the same way as other faiths.

a belief in no god is no different than a belief in god. it is accepted on faith. so therefore atheism is a faith in it's own right.

Umm. That makes no sense.

Athiesm is based on an absence of faith not on faith.

atheisim is a belief that there is no god. it cannot be proven that there is no god so atheism has to be accepted on faith.

I can see we are going around in circles on this one. We'll just have to agree to disagree.

i agree. buuut. think it through. a belief in something that cannot be proven is a belief based on faith. a belief that there is no god cannot be proven, so it must be based on faith.

i'm not trying to say that you belong to a religion, merely that atheism is not a lack of faith.

Nyet.

A mouse that lives in my garage and I were talking last week and he told me that there is a planetoid exactly on the other side of the moon such that we can never see it. That is where his family lives. He seems credible and has good stash so I take what he says on faith.

Now before you read (past tense) this post, you did not (I hope :-) believe there was a planetoid of intelligent mice on the other side of the moon. Hopefully you still don't. So, I can say with reasonable certainty that your belief system hasn't changed in spite of my tale. So, at what point did it become an act of faith on your part that you didn't/don't believe in a 2nd moon?

But the atheists HAVE considered whether there is a god (planetoid) before. If the atheists had never heard of god, your analogy would work.

And then they'd merely be Heathens :p

Bald is also a hair color, and not collecting stamps is a hobby.

I still think my analogy works (can't help it - I'm stubborn :-).

My point is this. Atheists never believed in God. When someone else introduced them to the idea, they still didn't. It didn't spontaneously become an act of faith at the instant they became exposed to the idea even if they briefly considered it.

Belief in the absence of evidence is faith.
Disbelief in the presence of evidence is faith.
Disbelief in the absence of evidence is not faith (imho).

Note to self: add atheists to the list of "i before e" exceptions :)

ok now you have screwed up my day - i'm giong to be stressed out about an invasion of talking mice from outer space.
here's the thing - unless i can PROVE that there is not a planet filled with talking mice, then my belief that there isn't is a matter of faith.

belief without proof is faith. period. if you can point out to me why this is inaccurate i will alter my view. but you can't. if it was proveable it would be a fact, then you can choose to accept or ignore it. if it is unproveable then is a choice to believe or not believe - no matter which side you land on you are relying on faith.

So for you, faith is almost meaningless? I guess I thought the word had a stronger, more active implication. I've got faith in things like friends and family, not in the lack of faeries.

Ah, but you do have evidence -- previous exerience -- on the reliability of your friends and family. Not on the almighty.

I am a life-long atheist; I really wanted to pick a fight about the damn pledge back when I was in school. But all my teachers said was "Fine, sit down." None of the other kids even mentioned it to me. Total non-issue. And here I was, spoiling for a good fight. :rar:

- Pie

no, it is not meaningless. it is very important and powerful, faith is what allows you to believe the unproveable.

i refuse to get into a discussion trying to prove the existance of god, but here is the scenario - You believe there is no god. you are placing faith in the fact that revelation is just a man-created book, that no second coming will occur and therefore no consequence to your choice not to believe in god.

but you have not ALWAYS been an atheist. at some point in your life you there was a moment that you stopped and said "is there a god?" for whatever reason, you decided that there is no god so you don't feel the need to participate in someone's ridiculous rituals. you made a choice not to believe and participate based on your faith in the absence of god. it cannot be proven so it is an action or decision based on faith.

I've got no faith in that. That's just the default position if I've got no faith that it's true.

OK, look. I presume we all agree that the universe, including the earth and the surrounding galaxy exists, right? Well, why SHOULD it exist? How come there's not just nothing? Wouldn't "nothing" be simpler, all around? Give me scientific proof of the reason for existence of energy and matter. If you can give me that scientific proof, then I'll allow that atheism isn't as much a "faith" as anything else. Atheists believe with absolutely no proof that no higher power exists. God can be neither proven nor disproven. A firm belief either way is an act of faith. The man who lacks faith is the agnostic, not the atheist.

mari, you and i rarely land on the same side of an issue... *sniff, wipe tear from eye* i just don't know what to say. i'm going to call it a night.

I love you, man! (staggers off in disbelief into the Colorado night).

I guess what we have here is a failure to communicate. I don't have any religious faith, so what I know of it is how other people describe it. From those descriptions, I assumed that it was more powerful and meaningful than my disbelief in, say, unicorns. But if you are telling me differently, I'll take your word for it. My disbelief in the various gods is equivalent to each other and to all other mythological creatures. If you consider that to be on the same level as your religious faith, so be it.

way to twist it HM. what i said is that anything that any belief that cannot be proven must be based on faith. you are reading way too much into it. don't get pissed just because you suddenly realize you have faith of a sort.
i believe you are talking about the strength of faith. that is an individual issue. how much do you actually care about the belief?
1) suddenly god appears before you with a newsreel from the beginning of time. he has proven his existence - that would probably shake you up pretty deeply, right?

2) peter jennings reports on the news that they found an island of unicorns. you shrug your shoulders and keep eating your pot pie. big deal.

the existence of unicorns doesn't consume much thought for the average person. at some point in life, most people spend some time contemplating the existence of god. both views have to be based on faith because they are not proveable. if one day both issues can be settled by hard proof, which issue will have a greater effect on you?

faith is the starting point, the basis for acceptance of an idea. disbelief in god and disbelief in unicorns are not equal.

Sure, HM, the thought of god leaves you indifferent, but what if you imagined yourself trying to believe in some sort of God? Do you feel a strong sense of rejection of the very thought? As a scientist, I can state that my disbelief in unicorns is based on sound factual evidence. No reliable source has ever reported sighting one, and there is no evidence that unicorns ever existed in the fossil record. That is not faith. No one has yet to prove to me that a disbelief in God can be shown to have a basis via scientific evidence. Science can come up with the big bang theory, but it has yet to come up with a theory for the existence of matter. So matter just exists with no reason? There's no logic to that.

As I said, if that's all it takes to have what you consider faith, then I'll concede it.

In terms of levels of faith, I have the same faith in the nonexistence of gods and unicorns. Debating God is more interesting because there are people who do believe in Him.

As for the relative importance of me being proven wrong, it wouldn't shake me up much at all if God showed up. I'd be more surprised by that than unicorns (God has more fantastic powers), but you can't really organize your life around the nonexistence of God, so I wouldn't have much in my life to rearrange.

You sound like more of an agnostic than an atheist to me, HM.:confused:

No reliable source has ever reported the existance of god; and there is no evidence to support the "supernatural".

No, it goes the other way. Existance needs to be proved, not non-existance. I can postulate the existance of a creature called the undingquat and provide you with its vital statistics; that doesn't mean that it does exist. Hard evidence is necessary.

Heard of the Higgs boson? It's the current frontrunner for the role of creating mass. But, you see, scientists won't state that conclusively till there is hard evidence... :)

- Pie

i once heard that scientifically that it is impossible to prove anything - it is only possible to disprove alternatives.

but anyway - pie, Can you conclusively prove there is no God?

No. I just consider it silly, the same as the power of crystals, homeopathy, astrology, and -of course - unicorns.
Well, you're disagreeing with lookout123 there. He's saying that both are faith. Regardless, no one will ever prove to you that disbelief in God can be shown to have a basis via scientific evidence - because it can't. No matter what science discovers, one could always say that God made it happen. Random particular details in interpretations of scripture can be disproven, but then the scripture can be reinterpreted. Don't wait for science to disprove God.First, I don't feel the need to fill holes in science with magic. I just consider them unknown information. Second, there's no theory for the creation of God, either. He is just assumed to have always existed, or to have spontaneously generated. That's no more logical than the universe having always existed or spontaneously generating.
Perhaps. The details of the differences between them fluctuate based on who's doing the defining. I'm on the border between them. I feel there's no way to tell for certain, but my opinion is on the atheist side. Some call that a weak atheist, some say it's a weak agnostic.

atheist = there was and is not supreme being, creator, etc.
agnost = there was a creator who has left us on our own with no further input.

Irrelevant. Can you conclusively prove there is one?
I won't live my life as a slave to someone else's delusions... Prove they're not delusions, and I'll consider it on its merits. Otherwise, it's a load of hooey.

- Pie

That's true, but only for alternatives that are defined in a disprovable way. It is not possible to disprove God, because no matter what is discovered, you can always say, "God is omnipotent - He made it that way." Therefore, it is not a question that science can address.

whether there is or is not a god, is not the issue. can you PROVE either idea? if not, then your belief must rest on faith.

i know that - that has actually been my idea in this whole thread. i was just asking in general. i think i was referring to one of Pie's posts but i don't remember.

Like I said, the definitions are not always agreed upon.

A quick trip to Google found this:
By those metrics, I am an "empirical agnostic" and a "weak atheist".

Actually, an agnostic is someone who says God may or may not exist. Period. Someone who believed in a creator who left us to our own devices would still be a believer in God.

And I didn't mean to imply that I think there's any scientific proof regarding God one way or the other. As far as I'm concerned, science can neither prove nor disprove the existance of God. Either way its a matter of faith.

Do you believe or "have faith" in all things unprovable? If not, why did you pick this one?

By your argument, I also "have faith" that undingquat don't exist.

It's an irrational argument.

- Pie

B]BRICK WALL[/b]



*SMACK*

i think we've hit the wall folks

The problem is that people keep comparing apples and oranges. Faith is not the pervue of science. An imaginary colony of mice on the other side of the moon or a unicorn is hardly in the same category as God. In the former cases we are speaking of things that if they existed would give solid physical proof of doing so. By definition "God" is not a physical entity. I have chosen to believe that a higher power exists because I find it psychologically and morally appealing to believe that there is an Intelligence which animates the universe. I cannot prove this, but no one can disprove this either. I have no problem with someone who chooses to believe there is no God, but its still just a belief either way.