antikoan

 |::| Friday, June 28, 2002

 |::| Render Thou.  11:33:26 AM 

From MeFi:

God, politics and America's most notorious coinTeddy Roosevelt described the appearance of "In God We Trust" on U.S. money as "dangerously close to sacrilege." He ordered the motto kept off new $20 gold coins designed by famous sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Congress demanded the motto restored, making the earlier coins into collector's items. The motto didn't appear on paper money until 1957, just after "In God We Trust" replaced the secular "E Pluribus Unum" as the national motto and the words "So help me God" were added to the oaths of office for federal judges. Meanwhile, religious conservatives are using the motto to put "In God We Trust" posters in every classroom in America. -- posted by mediareport » June 27 5:04 PM | 21 comments

Also on MeFi:

History repeats itself?Lest we forget, constitutional qualms about the Pledge helped bring down Mike Dukakis 14 years ago ... will the Democrats, in an urge to avoid the same fate, let through Bush's slate of conservative nominees? How about a new Justice if Rehnquist retires? -- posted by MattD » June 27 11:13 AM | 3 comments

A little clarity should always be welcome in any discussion. Theodore Roosevelt didn't want "In God We Trust" on the coinage because the idea was morally offensive to his Christian faith. One of my co-respondents in today's paper -- a retired Air Force chaplain -- takes a similar attitude in response to the flurry of political activity. I understand them both better than most religionists will ever be willing to accept.

I've met few people of faith -- my old family minister, Ron Conklin, and my brother's old collegue, Father Tom Streight, PhD, both seem to be in this group -- who are willing to accept that non-believers can understand the concepts of the sacred. Some of us can't (or won't -- I suspect that both are true, depending). But many of us do. We do understand the deep affinity people like my father and Theodore Roosevelt would feel between critiques of capitalizing on Christmas, "In God We Trust" on the money, and Jesus tossing the money changers out of the temple.

One of the things that's always appealed to me about Judaism is that it seems, alone among the semitic faiths, to be capable of accomodating the concept of secular spirituality. Many individual Christians and Muslims can grok the idea, but Jews have insitutionalized it. It seems to have evolved to a core belief in the diaspora (to be later burned out, of course, by the more radical and intolerant orthodox sects).

Some christians -- Quakers spring to mind, and I suspect some of the old Congregationalists thought this way -- hold and understand deeply that one does not attain salvation through works, but through God's grace. Good, moral behavior, to these sectarians, is not something to engage in with the aim of attaining salvation -- that won't work -- but rather, something to engage in for it's own sake. It was a sign of blessedness, not a cause. Those same people then had to deal with the question of why some non-Christians seemed to be blessed. And in at least some cases, the answer they arrived at was not "God is mysterious", but rather, "God has blessed that person for His own reasons."

Sects have personalities. People may drift into a sect because it reflects or complements their personality, or they may be born, grow, live, and die in the sect, even though its personality is often in conflict with their own. In much the same way, people are born, grow, live, and die in societies with which they are often in conflict. It is the variety of types and outlooks that give a great society the strength to resist demagoguery.

In that way -- the shrill cries of the "anti-P.C." crowd notwithstanding -- diversity truly is strength.

Put another way: Monocultures are the first to fall to pestilence. They lack the varied resources to respond to new conditions. In the same way, human social groups that are demographically dominated by a single personality type are easily radicalized. It's a matter of feedback: If you're a neo-nazi plastic-doll fetishist, and the only people you associate with are neo-nazi plastic-doll fetishists, then you're liable to make what amounts to a religion out of it.

I don't want to live in that America. I want to live in the America where I can stop at the diner or the corner bar and have a conversation with somebody I disagree with, and be able to realistically have the expectation that s/he'll treat me with the same respect I show. The reaction I see to the Pledge ruling doesn't give me hope for that America.

 |::|   10:45:34 AM 

I'm sitting here looking at my category navigation, and it's driving me nuts.

I'm looking at it in Mozilla. In Mozilla (and I'm sure the same is true in Netscape 6/7), the caregory menu items overlap like 3x5 cards in a card file. If you know what they say, and you have a fine touch with the mouse, you can use them. Otherwise, forget it.

And the font's too small, too. I need to spend some serious time tweaking my CSS on this thing. Fortunately, I've separated that level of control from the Radio template system...

 |::|   10:06:28 AM 

Just got a very interesting phone call, from a man who'd read my letter in the paper and wanted to express support. "You have to be careful about being too up front with these [religious] people," he offered. Here's hoping that the negative offerings stick mostly to cursing in silence.

 |::|   8:42:44 AM 

It was my friend Patty's birthday, yesterday. I won't say which, because it was one of those where you don't say which.

 |::| Looks like I'm 'out' at last  8:28:56 AM 

I sent an email to the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle yesterday, regarding the recent 9th Circuit Appeals Panel decision on the Pledge. Less than 20 minutes later, I got a phone call (I never get phone calls) asking my permission to print it. So it looks like I'll now be 'out' as an atheist, outside of the insulated little online worlds where I've debated atheism and religious issues in the past.

Probably not the best of times in America to reveal that -- either now, or now when I'm also without a job -- but it couldn't be helped. Some stands need to be taken. The narrow-minded folk who want to tell me that I do indeed live in a "nation under God" need to understand clearly and explicitly that as far as I and at least ten percent of the nation are concerned, I most certainly do not.

Here's the full text of my email to the editor:

I Pledge Without Meaning, To The Flag...

As an American and an atheist, I find the reaction to the recent appeals panel ruling regarding the Pledge of Allegiance to be quite curious (albeit pretty much what I've come to expect, growing up in America). I can expect it, but I'll never quite get used to the vitriol and angry puzzlement that I experience when friends or acquaintances discover that I'm not a believer. (It seems I'm a member of the last American minority that's still widely regarded as "OK to hate.")

Critics of the decision have tended to use one or both of two arguments against it: Either references to the deity are trivial and meaningful only in a "civic" sense, and hence not worth an atheist's time and worry; or the references to the deity are critical and fundamental, and must be defended violently and vehemently, with modifications to the Constitution, if need be.

Which leads me to ask: If the words are trivial and meaningless, then what place do they have in a solemn oath? Put another way: If I'm expected to swear an oath on a deity that I don't believe in, what good is my oath? If the words "Under God" are part of the Pledge, it becomes impossible for me to honestly swear it as an oath. I'm already lying as soon as I utter it.

And it also leads me to ask: Doesn't the vehemence of the response to this ruling amply demonstrate the need for it? Religionists most often accept without question that any views they hold which have any relation to their religion are correct, simply by that virtue. Doesn't swearing to God essentially allow one to say "This is the country and these are the laws that MY God ordained, and I will and must interpret them to His will"?

And if that's the case, why don't we just pass an amendment to make people like me illegal?