Texas family sues over "under God" reference in pledge

I agree. Indoctrinating children to pledge allegiance to *anything* isn't the best way to faciliate a healthy dialogue about the world outside the classroom.

 

Yep, when a minority student tries to kill a classmate because he doesn't like him and thinks he might have a weapon that nobody can find that's a problem. That's a good analogy, thanks.

 

i don't necessarily disagree when i put on my lawyer hat.

but when i take that lawyer hat off, it saddens me that we can't have any vestiges of a culture...of any shared values...for fear we may offend someone.

 

Excellent points. Religion is the *ultimate* controversial issue, followed closely by politics. Why combine the two?

In my eyes, judges should use blind justice as a standard, not religion.

 

FT - you are my hero.

Why would anyone want to acknowledge this nation is under God anyway? This nation has been headed to hell for years.

Show me one passage in the Constitution of the United States that mentions anything about Seperation of Church and State. It was a statement mentioned by Thomas Jefferson in a letter with the intent of Keeping the government out of the churches.

Yeah those "Christian Zealots" sure are ****ing pathetic, God forbid my kid should be exposed to that idiotic way of thinking.

But feel free to teach him how to **** the girl who sits next to him, and suggest he should use protection so there's no responsibilty, and while you're at it, tell him it's ok if maybe he wants to swing the other way because we don't want to be labeled bigots.

Then you can also teach him he evolved from a lesser species that there is no God he has to answer to because the earth was created so perfectly by a random chance. But that "You have no responsibility in the world" attitude could never be the reason he decided to shoot up the classroom.

Why won't he listen to a word I say? Hmmm, Maybe because you're trying to force on him something he is learning to rebel against for 6 hours every day.

No, it must have been his damned parents who didn't keep the guns hidden, WE NEED GUN CONTROL! LOCK UP THE DAMN IRRESPONSIBLE PARENTS! (Geez, where did these parents learn anything?)

Or maybe it was those evil video games, PUT RESTRICTIONS ON THEM!, MAKE IT SO A KID HAS TO GO THE NEXT KID's HOUSE WHO HAS AN OLDER BROTHER SO HE CAN LEARN THE VIOLENCE!

So teach him he can live by any rules he wants. Maybe as he passes under the metal detectors and gets searched by security guards in the place that was once a haven from the treacherous outer world, he won't think to question it because he doesn't know any other way.

What a sad world this has become, rather then either side wanting to fix anything, all we can do is hurl back the blame back and forth like an never-ending game of Guilt-Filled Ping Pong.

 

Ok, let's be progressive and lets change the words 'under God' to something that is more inclusive. We don't want people to think about God the Father when we say God. So, we need a word that would include the god of Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc. Can't use Yahweh, because that's name ascribed to God by the Jews. Can't use Allah because that's a name ascribed to God by the Muslims. I know, how about "God"? It is generic and shared by most everybody. So, there's our substitute: "under God."

It's not a shell game. Christianity in English happens to use a word that is a generic name for the omnipotent deity. Should we strip the country of all references because of a grammatical misfortune?

But enough with all that. I think this whole thread started on a silly footing and as a result hasn't gotten to the heart of the subject, which I would contend is this: does "under God" and "In God We Trust" and other such references cause undue burden or injury to one or more of our citizens? And at what point does the relief of a burden on the minority actually become a burden upon the majority? I say it's a question of injury because these terms do have the historical precedent. And, I think they are worth keeping if they do not cause injury because it is a marker of our culture and our heritage (sue me, I like history). So, what affect does it have on our citizenry -- and specifically on our children in this case -- really? In my own estimation, it does little to no damage to the education, rearing and admonition of our children. And, it has no real affect at all on the adult citizenry who can mostly see or hear these words and not even think twice about them; they understand it to be a relic of our nation's religious heritage and obviously not a reflection of the real current mores of our society. Without injury or burden, I don't see what the point is of changing it.

 

Not good enough. Just continue wallowing in your own turd little girl.

 

ARTICLE VI

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

 

Huh. Looks like we're doing pretty good!

 

ok..and now show me the application for that provision in any scenario involving public schools!

 

This is why God made the ACLU.

 

now your not being fair

uhm,

Reps authorize funding for public schools so the schools that are publicly funded can't have religious oaths either ?

look at that, and ive never even set foot in a law school or a courtroom for that matter



but seriously, what the heck is the purpose of putting "under god" in a pledge or on the money ?

 

Well that's helpful and insightful. You'll have to explain which rights the US has been denied by the UN. There is no right to invade whoever you want for whatever you want whenever you want.

 

honestly i don't know. and i'm not real keen, as a Chrisitian, with other believers making idols (follow me there?? i'm not trying to be condescending, but idolatry is a pretty heavy subject for many Chrisitians) out of words or monuments or the like. I think if they invested half of that effort towards showing the love of Christ to the world, we'd all be better off.

but as an american...sans being a Christian...i think there are some shared values. i mean americans overwhelmingly believe in the existence of God...particularly when juxtaposed against other nations. a society has to share some common threads...and in a very heterogenous society like ours, it's tough to find many.

but...from my view...God isn't going anywhere, no matter what the outcome of all of this is.

 

Originally posted by JuanValdez
Ok, let's be progressive and lets change the words 'under God' to something that is more inclusive. We don't want people to think about God the Father when we say God. So, we need a word that would include the god of Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc. Can't use Yahweh, because that's name ascribed to God by the Jews. Can't use Allah because that's a name ascribed to God by the Muslims. I know, how about "God"? It is generic and shared by most everybody. So, there's our substitute: "under God."

It's not a shell game. Christianity in English happens to use a word that is a generic name for the omnipotent deity. Should we strip the country of all references because of a grammatical misfortune?

Why do we need the words at all? We know they didn't exist in the original version of the pledge. The word God is capitalized as to mean a particular god, not an abstract generic one. We're not under god, we're under God. If Christians called their God Hector the pledge would probably read under Hector not under God. I don't think it's grammatical misfortune as much as Christianity being intertwined into our language as to exclude other religions but MacBeth might run me over on that one.

But enough with all that. I think this whole thread started on a silly footing and as a result hasn't gotten to the heart of the subject, which I would contend is this: does "under God" and "In God We Trust" and other such references cause undue burden or injury to one or more of our citizens? And at what point does the relief of a burden on the minority actually become a burden upon the majority? I say it's a question of injury because these terms do have the historical precedent. And, I think they are worth keeping if they do not cause injury because it is a marker of our culture and our heritage (sue me, I like history). So, what affect does it have on our citizenry -- and specifically on our children in this case -- really? In my own estimation, it does little to no damage to the education, rearing and admonition of our children. And, it has no real affect at all on the adult citizenry who can mostly see or hear these words and not even think twice about them; they understand it to be a relic of our nation's religious heritage and obviously not a reflection of the real current mores of our society. Without injury or burden, I don't see what the point is of changing it.

I don't understand how prohibiting the word God to appear on currency or in the pledge of allegiance could ever be a burden on the majority. If they want to practice their religion they're free to do so however when they use government institutions to push their beliefs on others like with the pledge, with creationism as intelligent design, with In God We Trust, with God Bless America, with Congressional prayers, with the Ten Commandments and Bibles in courthouses then that's an infringement. We see right here evidence of injury and burden. A young girl is harrassed by a school teacher because she refuses to say that phrase. Even simply allowing students to not say the pledge makes them stand out as different in front of their peers, also a potential injury and burden on a child. If students want to get together before and after school to say prayers then fine, there's no reason why that type of intimidation needs to occur in the classroom however. There's no reason why teachers should be allowed to inject their religious beliefs in the classroom. A parent has a right to know that he can raise his child into whatever religion he intends to without interference from government employees. This is nothing more than Christians running wild using history as a pretext to inject their religious beliefs into government. We're a nation not only founded by religious men but men who understood religious persecution and that's why they chose to prohibit the government establishment of religion. I believe the Supreme Court has claimed these issues are tradition and don't constitute an endorsement of the existence of God, something I feel is ridiculous. If something was wrong to begin with then I'm not much for continuing that tradition. I'm confident these things will be changed in time no matter how many Roy Moores climb out of the woodwork.

 

Not true.

Our god is named Harold.

As in "Our father, who art in heaven. Harold be thy name..."

 

Dude, your passion may get you into heaven, but your hate won't bring many with you.

 

Fantastic points, MM. Very well said. Jesus was a beautiful, compassionate man who changed the world with peace and understanding -- not through forcing his beliefs on others or slamming his opponents.

I also doubt he's so vain he'd demand his name be placed on currency and recited in school everyday.

 

ONE MORE TIME, "IN GOD WE TRUST" IS NOT A REFERNCE TO THE CHRISTIAN GOD.



— from a conversation with Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth c.1986

We need myths that will identify the individual not with his local group but with the planet. A model for that is the United States. Here were thirteen different little colony nations that decided to act in the mutual interest, without disregarding the individual interests of any one of them.

That’s what the Great Seal [of the United States] is all about. I carry a copy of the Great Seal in my pocket in the form of a dollar bill. Here is the statement of the ideals that brought about the formation of the United States. Look at this dollar bill. Now here is the Great Seal of the United States. Look at the pyramid on the left. A pyramid has four sides. These are the four points of the compass. There is somebody at this point, there’s somebody at that point, and there’s somebody at this point. When you’re down on the lower levels of this pyramid, you will be either on one side or on the other. But when you get up to the top, the points all come together, and there the eye of God opens.

This is the first nation in the world that was ever established on the basis of reason instead of simply warfare. These were eighteenth-century deists, these gentlemen. Over here we read, “In God We Trust.” But that is not the god of the Bible. These men did not believe in a Fall. They did not think the mind of man was cut off from God. The mind of man, cleansed of secondary and merely temporal concerns, beholds with the radiance of a cleansed mirror a reflection of the rational mind of God. Reason puts you in touch with God. Consequently, for these men, there is no special revelation anywhere, and none is needed, because the mind of man cleared of its fallibilities is sufficiently capable of the knowledge of God. All people in the world are thus capable because all people in the world are capable of reason.

All men are capable of reason. That is the fundamental principle of democracy. Because everybody’s mind is capable of true knowledge, you don’t have to have a special authority, or a special revelation telling you that this is the way things should be.

[These symbols] come from a certain quality of mythology. It’s not the mythology of a special revelation. The Hindus, for example, don’t believe in special revelation. They speak of a state in which the ears have opened to the song of the universe. Here the eye has opened to the radiance of the mind of God. And that’s a fundamental deist idea. Once you reject the idea of the Fall in the Garden, man is not cut off from his source.

Now back to the Great Seal. When you count the number of ranges on this pyramid, you find there are thirteen. And when you come to the bottom, there is an inscription in Roman numerals. It is, of course, 1776. Then, when you add one and seven and seven and six, you get twenty-one, which is the age of reason, is it not? It was in 1776 that the thirteen states declared independence. The number thirteen is the number of transformation and rebirth. At the Last Supper there were twelve apostles and one Christ, who was going to die and be reborn. Thirteen is the number of getting out of the field of the bounds of twelve into the transcendent. You have the twelve signs of the zodiac and the sun. These men were very conscious of the number thirteen as the number of resurrection and rebirth and new life, and they played it up here all the way through.

This is not simply coincidental. This is the thirteen states as themselves symbolic of what they were.

[That would explain the other inscription down there, Novus Ordo Sedorum.]

“A new order of the world.” This is a new order of the world. And the saying above, Annuit Coeptis, means “He has smiled on our accomplishments” or “our activities.”

He, the eye, what is represented by the eye. Reason. In Latin you wouldn’t have to say “he,” it could be “it” or “she” or “he.” But the divine power has smiled on our doings. And so this new world has been built in the sense of God’s original creation, and the reflection of God’s original creation, through reason, has brought this about.

If you look behind that pyramid, you see a desert. If you look before it, you see plants growing. The desert, the tumult in Europe, wars and wars and wars — we have pulled ourselves out of it and created a state in the name of reason, not in the name of power, and out of that will come the flowerings of the new life. That’s the sense of that part of the pyramid.

Now look at the right side of the dollar bill. Here’s the eagle, the bird of Zeus. The eagle is the downcoming of the god into the field of time. The bird is the incarnation principle of the deity. This is the bald eagle, the American eagle. This is the American counterpart of the eagle of the highest god, Zeus.

He comes down, descending into the world of the pairs of opposites, the field of action. One mode of action is war and the other is peace. So in one of his feet the eagle holds thirteen arrows — that’s the principle of war. In the other he holds a laurel leaf with thirteen leaves — that is the principle of peaceful conversation. The eagle is looking in the direction of the laurel. That is the way these idealists who founded our country would wish us to be looking — diplomatic relationships and so forth. But thank God he’s got the arrows in the other foot, in case this doesn’t work.

Now, what does the eagle represent? He represents what is indicated in this radiant sign above his head. I was lecturing once at the Foreign Service Institute in Washington on Hindu mythology, sociology, and politics. There’s a saying in the Hindu book of politics that the ruler must hold in one hand the weapon of war, the big stick, and in the other the peaceful sound of the song of cooperative action. And there I was, standing with my two hands like this, and everybody in the room laughed. I couldn’t understand. And then they began pointing. I looked back, and here was this picture of the eagle hanging on the wall behind my head in just the same posture that I was in. But when I looked, I also noticed this sign above his head, and that there were nine feathers in his tail. Nine is the number of the descent of the divine power into the world. When the Angelus rings, it rings nine times.

Now, over on the eagle’s head are thirteen stars arranged in the form of a Star of David.

Do you know why it’s called Solomon’s Seal?

Solomon used to seal monsters and giants and things into jars. You remember in the Arabian Nights when they’d open the jar and out would come the genie? I noticed the Solomon’s Seal here, composed of thirteen stars, and then I saw that each of the triangles was a Pythagorean tetrakys.

This is a triangle composed of ten points, one point in the middle and four points to each side, adding up to nine: one, two, three, four/five, six, seven/eight, nine. This is the primary symbol of Pythagorean philosophy, susceptible of a number of interrelated mythological, cosmological, psychological, and sociological interpretations, one of which is the dot at the apex as representing the creative center out of which the universe and all things have come.

The initial sound (a Christian might say, the creative Word), out of which the whole world was precipitated, the big bang, the pouring of the transcendent energy into and expanding through the field of time. As soon as it enters the field of time, it breaks into pairs of opposites, the one becomes two. Now, when you have two, there are just three ways in which they can relate to one another: one way is of this one dominant over that; another way is of that one dominant over this; and a third way is of the two in balanced accord. It is then, finally, out of these three manners of relationship that all things within the four quarters of space derive.

There is a verse in Lao-tzu’s Tao-te Ching which states that out of the Tao, out of the transcendent, comes the One. Out of the One come Two; out of the Two come Three; and out of the Three come all things.

So what I suddenly realized when I recognized that in the Great Seal of the United States there were two of these symbolic triangles interlocked was that we now had thirteen points, for our thirteen original states, and that there were now, furthermore, no less than six apexes, one above, one below, and four (so to say) to the four quarters. The sense of this, it seemed to me, might be that from above or below, or from any point of the compass, the creative Word might be heard, which is the great thesis of democracy. Democracy assumes that anybody from any quarter can speak, and speak truth, because his mind is not cut off from the truth. All he has to do is clear out his passions and then speak.

So what you have here on the dollar bill is the eagle representing this wonderful image of the way in which the transcendent manifests itself in the world. That’s what the United States is founded on. If you’re going to govern properly, you’ve got to govern from the apex of the triangle, in the sense of the world eye at the top.

Now, when I was a boy, we were given George Washington’s farewell address and told to outline the whole thing, every single statement in relation to every other one. So I remember it absolutely. Washington said, “As a result of our revolution, we have disengaged ourselves from involvement in the chaos of Europe.” His last word was that we not engage in foreign alliances. Well, we held on to his words until the First World War. And then we canceled the Declaration of Independence and rejoined the British conquest of the planet. And so we are now on one side of the pyramid. We’ve moved from one to two. We are politically, historically, now a member of one side of an argument. We do not represent that principle of the eye up there. And all of our concerns have to do with economics and politics and not with the voice and sound of reason.

Here you have the important transition that took place about 500 B.C. This is the date of the Buddha and of Pythagoras and Confucius and Lao-tzu, if there was a Lao-tzu. This is the awakening of man’s reason. No longer is he informed and governed by the animal powers. No longer is he guided by the analogy of the planted earth, no longer by the courses of the planets — but by reason.

And of course what destroys reason is passion. The principal passion in politics is greed. That is what pulls you down. And that’s why we’re on this side instead of the top of the pyramid.

[That’s why our founders opposed religious intolerance —]

And that’s why they rejected the idea of the Fall, too. All men are competent to know the mind of God. There is no revelation special to any people.

They are Masonic signs, and the meaning of the Pythagorean tetrakys has been known for centuries. The information would have been found in Thomas Jefferson’s library. These were, after all, learned men. The eighteenth-century Enlightenment was a world of learned gentlemen. We haven’t had men of that quality in politics very much. It’s an enormous good fortune for our nation that that cluster of gentlemen had the power and were in a position to influence events at that time.

 

I'm going to shock the world here. Timing, I think you make a good point.

This teacher was WAY out of bounds. A child does not have to say the Pledge. It is expected that the child will sit quietly and allow the Pledge to go on undisrupted. There is no evidence that this child disrupted anything though.

Any teacher who uses their position as a bully pulpit should lose everything lock, stock and TRS.

If this is the point you were making, rock on Timing.

As to the "Christian zealots," I think you are a tad off base. This issue was visited by the 9th Circuit (most liberal Circuit in all the land) and they vacated their initial ruling. The Pledge issue is more than a few religious wackos.

Maynard made the reference to slavery and women's sufferage. Both of these status quo practices are now illegal. What has not been mentioned is that BOTH required amendments to the Constitution to get it done. There is CLEARLY not enough support on this issue (even on the far left) to even think about amending the Constitution.