Franklin Graham: Atheist Lawsuit Against “In God We Trust” on Money Spells Doom for the Nation
"… on July 30, 1956, President Eisenhower signed a law officially declaring “In God We Trust” to be America’s official motto."
UM …so prior to 1956 everything war in shambles? What a moron. Also there the whole separation of church and state thing but nevermind that.
My 12yo step-son got on a plane yesterday to go to Hawaii for a holiday. My wife and I got him some US dollars as spending money….when he looked at it, the first thing he said was "Why do they have the Illuminati on their money?"
#parentingdoneright 🙂
In God we trust indeed for He is Almighty, the author and the perfector of our faith, the Alpha and Omega. We can't do anything without Him
+Paul Snedden That's HILARIOUS!
+Thati Masie Which god? There's are thousands of them throughout history and ZERO proof that any of them exist.
"Which God?"
Any god, all gods, any one you would like to worship, including the one that the 'offensive' motto is printed on.
Come on people, do words on a piece of paper hurt you so bad as to need it to be expunged? Just another case of butt-hurt atheists giving the rest of us a bad name.
…..man do I hate this world, what it has become, and all the people living in it. When is the apocalypse? …and can it get here ASAP?
…..no, seriously, I hope the world ends in a fiery cataclysm, and I hope it's real, real soon.
+West Kagle " Come on people, do words on a piece of paper hurt you so bad as to need it to be expunged? Just another case of butt-hurt atheists giving the rest of us a bad name."
How about since it wasn't there in the first place we return it to it's former, non-religious promoting, version of our currency?
+Paul Spoerry
I don't care if it's there or not. It's an absolute non issue. I think that these people should stop whining about this type of non issue and do something constructive like, oh I don't know, do something about the runaway lawlessness in our halls of government.
If it has been there since we created our currency I'd consider it a non-issue as well. Given that it was added long after the fact, I find it an endorsement of religion.
The First Amendment states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…". While it can be argued that it doesn't specify a particular deity… it's certainly referencing a deity. That's something that only exists within the confines of a religion.
+Paul Spoerry
Well, our defenders of the constitution don't seem to be paying any part of it any mind lately. So as I said, all this wasted energy on basically nothing (it's not indorsing any religion in particular, all religions have a god), should be directed at the complete disregard for the laws of this country by those who have been entrusted with their enforcement.
…and I know you brought up the all religions have a god thing, but the part of the 1st amendment covering religion is there it prevent the state from establishing a national religion (that's the establishment of religion part). As this does not single out any religion in particular it doesn't really violate that amendment.
So, like before, maybe we need to get our overseers back within the confines of the law (and on issues that are truly taking apart the constitution).
"it's not indorsing any religion in particular, all religions have a god"
Not all people have a religion though… so it's still endorsement.
+Paul Spoerry
It may be a technicality, but everyone has a 'god' they worship. They just don't call it god or worship it in a building with stained glass windows. If you don't think atheism, or science, or feminism, or patriotism, aren't religions, then your not looking at them seriously enough.
Any thing that someone follows with a slavish devotion is no different than someone who carries a holy book and sits in a designated holy building listening to a holy person talk about said holy book. That's where we get sayings like muscle-heads declaring lifting is my religion and the gym is my temple.
I know this is starting to go off topic, but I've always found the subject of people who claim that religion is an archaic concept, yet are unwitting worshipers of a secular religion, to be quite interesting if not a bit disturbing. All you need for a 'religion', is blind devotion to a certain subject matter. They even often have 'holy' books that the disciples follow without question.
Atheism is not a disbelief in gods or a denial of gods; it is a lack of belief in gods. Therefor it is not possible to have an atheist religion. There are Humanist societies.. they meet to discuss ethics and things of that sort. However, those don't require the supernatural to be invoked.
I know what you're saying… in that religion can be something someone simply strongly believes (a la meat head gym analogy) but you know that's not how I am using the term and I'd argue that nor would most devout religious people.
There are of course things like Taoism… which are devoid of the typical things associated with religions (Western… Abrahamic religions to be specific; that require you to follow their god, those rules, etc… that really isn't a thing in pure Taoism… but like all things there are offshoots that contradict that) that despite lacking the features I would still classify as religion because they typically as lumped in with that category. (Dude I was a philosophy major with an emphasis on Eastern studies I could go on and on about the differences in East and West).
So for the purpose of discussion "muscle-heads declaring lifting is my religion and the gym is my temple" do not qualify as a religion in the manner that I'm referring. I understand what you're saying but for discussion purposes I would say it needs a more narrow view/description.
Religion(s) ARE archaic. The human need for spirituality (not the hippy dippy shit but communion with humanity, the universe, whatever you want to call it) has obviously come up throughout the ages for a reason. It's freaking hardwired into us as humans. And that's totally cool. What's not cool is accepting 2,000+ year old, rewritten during transcription texts, based off of accounts of stories of people that aren't first hand but handed down via oral history, as religion. It's bogus. Humans do have a need for that sort of thing: AWE. But refusing to update our notion of it is ludicrous to me.
+Paul Spoerry
I would love to be able to sit and talk about east/west philosophies, It's a fascinating subject. Much less tangible than the things I've spent my life studying like history or geography, but so much more faceted.
I know that what I'm saying is not a solidly viable argument to why the words should stay on the currency (and I really don't care if it does), I'm not really arguing that it should. The argument I'm putting forth is that it's not really a big deal Even though we have more and more become a secular society, all we have really done is supplant one form of worship with others. Whether it's dictionary defined religion or not, humans will always desire to attach themselves to something greater than themselves (and that's really all that religion comes down to).
So that's why I think is a needless fight. It's not like it's being considered or has only been recently added to the money, and there for the top end of the slippery slope. It's been there for all of my life and years before. In all that time there hasn't been a religious takeover of the government. There hasn't even been an upswing in the religious aspect of the countries society. It's actually been the opposite.
I'm just real tired of certain segments of the population trying to sanitize everything. I don't think having those words on the money represents a slippery slope leading to theocracy. It's more like the start of a trend that leads to outlawing religion (I know it's an extreme scenario). That's not freedom, or freewill, it's not even fairness. What's the point of fighting this huge battle for equality and tolerance and fairness, if something like that can be even a possibility (and it's not like history hasn't provided examples).