The Star Tribune reports:
The nation’s largest group of atheists and agnostics filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to block an architect from engraving “In God We Trust” and the Pledge of Allegiance at the Capitol Visitor Center in Washington.
The Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in western Wisconsin, claims the taxpayer-funded engravings would be an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.
The House and Senate passed identical resolutions this month directing the Architect of the Capitol to engrave “In God We Trust” and the pledge in prominent places at the entrance for 3 million tourists who visit the Capitol each year…
The foundation is seeking a court order to stop the engravings, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will cost less than $100,000.
“In God We Trust” has been the national motto since 1956 and has appeared on U.S. currency since 1957.
The lawsuit says both the motto and the words “under God” in the pledge were adopted during the Cold War as anti-communism measures. Engraving them at the entrance to the U.S. Capitol would discriminate against those who do not practice religion and unfairly promote a Judeo-Christian perspective, it says.
Members of Congress who supported the measure swiftly denounced the lawsuit.
“This lawsuit is another attempt by liberal activists to rewrite history and deny that America’s Judeo-Christian heritage is an essential foundation stone of our great nation,” said Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa.
King has a valid point. On the one hand, this is typical atheist grandstanding. But these kinds of lawsuits are a very real threat to our country and shouldn’t only bother religious people but anyone with common sense.
If you ignore God you ignore the source of all of our rights including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The whole idea of inviolable worth of each individual this country is based on is at heart a Christian concept. That’s why the whole argument over whether the Founding Fathers were deists, theists or Christians is almost beside the point in that their whole frame of thinking was Christian. All of their assumptions were Christian.
One of the marks of tyranny is the refusal to grant personhood to “the other.” You see it through history that when a government doesn’t recognize the rights of certain individuals be they the disabled or a certain ethnic group a body count is sure to follow. Our Founding Fathers knew this and made our rights “unalienable” precisely because they emanated not from government but from God.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”
If our country doesn’t allow a God or a Creator to be acknowledged, our rights are therefore given or taken at the whim of the government.
Ironically, atheists have the right to protest in these asinine ways precisely because we are a Christian country. God help us and them if we cease to be.
July 15, 2009 at 5:55 am
This lawsuit sounds frivolous to me. There's nothing unconstitutional about the government endorsing religion in general. The constitution merely prevents the establishment of a state religion. If anyone's violating the constitution it's those who want to make atheism the de facto state religion banishing religion to the private sphere.
July 15, 2009 at 5:57 am
You mean we don't get our rights from Nancy Pelosi? Ho, I think you are mistaken, sir! I just read this AP headline:
House rolls out plan to make health care a right
I don't recall my Creator endowing me with a PPO — maybe it's in one of those obscure OT books, like Haggai or something — but I'm willing to bet that if He did, it would cover more than 70% of out-of-network costs.
July 15, 2009 at 6:47 am
I think Brian is onto something: we should argue that the separation of Church and State is historically based on the refusal to have an established religion (as in England since 1533), that 'in God we trust' appeals to more (ir)religious positions than not, and argue that this is establishing atheism.
I think we can go far with this if we articulate it correctly. Of course, the Scarlet A people will make this easier.
July 15, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Of course, no word what the Atheists will do with the 50 state constitutions that reference God…
July 15, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Boy, for people who are supposedly more mature and intelligent than us, they sure have a way of acting like schoolchildren afraid of catching "God cooties" don't they?
July 16, 2009 at 10:34 pm
"The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man."
-Chapter 19, What I Saw In America, 1922 GK Chesterton
July 17, 2009 at 12:22 am
Let them bring their lawsuits. They are only wasting their own money, since this would never hold up on a Federal level (state is another story).
July 18, 2009 at 5:33 am
"If you ignore God you ignore the source of all of our rights including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
The Declaration of Independence says otherwise. "We hold these truths to be self-evident" meaning that we have these rights just because we are. That it's simply obvious that we have them. This is in contrast to how pre-enlightenment kings and queens were believed to draw their power: that they were the supposed direct descendants of Adam and Eve, and their power was therefore god-given.
This huge shift, from supposed god-granted monoarchy to personal-freedoms reason-driven authority, was basically the entire focus of the Age of Enlightenment, which is what guided the foundation of the US.
Unfortunately, I don't expect anyone here to have any idea what I am talking about, so I'll just leave this off here.
July 18, 2009 at 8:03 am
Anon. 12:33AM 18 July:
'The Declaration of Independence says otherwise. "We hold these truths to be self-evident" meaning that we have these rights just because we are…'
Well, not exactly. You should read on in that sentence:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…"
Something there about creation and Creators might give you to think.