Buffman

Stating "Under God" is just not a religious endorsement of anything: especially to a bunch of high school kids who do it out of tradition anyway.

Au contraire! Look up the definition of "God" with an upper case "G." The federal government, by legislative action, has declared that to be a full, patriotic, citizen of the United States one, of any age, must pledge themselves to be under a supernatural entity. Hogwash! That is a divisive, anti-freedom of individual conscience, religious requirement... whether ceremonial "monotheism" or not. It is, most definitely, a religious test requirement. In the case of Ceremonial Deism, it "establishes" monotheism as the religious faith belief law of the land.

Now look up the definition of "Deism" prior to the verified evidence for the validity of the Theory of Evolution. Deists did not (and do not) believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ or any of the other so-called "religious" Prophets. So to attempt to hide your personal religious faith beliefs behind Ceremonial Deism is to deny the divinity of Jesus and the supposed superiority of the Christian cultists. All this legal talk does little to deal with those verified and basic realities.

For our elected government to create any law/act/resolution that provides preferential treatment for one religious belief over another religious "or non-religious" belief is unconstitutional. Our legal system has been, and continues to be, simply unwilling to chance the magnitude of civil unrest that could come from declaring government support of a monotheistic God unconstitutional. They are intimidated by the same kinds of religious fanatics that threatened Newdow.

enfant terrible

Entirely off-topic, but very illustrative of Leviathan's style:

Nope. You may be a relativist, but I am not, and the score w.r.t. this name is that you were wrong twice, and I not at all.

It is not "Soren" but S - (o with a slash through it) - r - e - n.

Since we don't have that slashed "o" in English, we normally transliterate it as "oe", just like the German umlaut o (which is pronounced the same). We write Goethe, Goering, Goebbels rather than Gothe, Goring, Gobbels (according to Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, 2nd ed., among others).

No such thing as an existentialist before Heidegger. K. was indeed the dominant precursor of existentialism, but that makes him as much of an existentialist as Hegel is a Marxist.

I'll get to issues next week, but in the meantime think about this: if there is no objective reality, can you prove to me (not to yourself) that you exist?

Sharif

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Worldtraveller

Originally posted by Leviathan
Once again, if the "under God" is just so much ceremonial deism, why is it that all the theists are so up in arms over the non theists, who clearly feel it is more than just ceremonial, wanting it removed? This very fact, regardless of all the legal issues with Newdow's standing, etc. seems to point to having it removed.

The only implication here is that everyone thinks it is more than ceremonial deism, but the judges are more afraid of the public reaction (why???, thier jobs are made lifetime just to avoid that very thing!?!) and making what seems to be the only common sense ruling by overturning the 1954 statute.


Lane

ohwilleke

This is certainly a much more plausible argument than it was when the action was commenced (or even than when I posted), although currently bickering between the parents could certainly be easily dismissed if the Court wished to do so. ("Not raised below, new evidence will not be considered on appeal"). Still this provides an attractive easy out for the moderates which I imagine they would like to have.

Leviathan

I have so "faced" the Lemon test.
1. Lemon is highly criticized, you concede, yet you state lower inferior courts are bound by "precedent." That's fine: if you will note even the Newdow court stated it was not bound to follow all of the 3 tests it analyzed, Lemon, coercion, establishment, and thus, since Lemon is highly criticized, Sherman did not have to use it.
2. If you will note, the trial court level of Sherman analyzed the Lemon test, and found the pledge did not violate the Lemon test. Of course, you also know that trial court findings usually are not overturned absent an abuse of discretion.
3. Additionally, you later state that "four judges have signed on to Lemon." Not in my reading of SHerman. If you'll read SHerman, you'll note the 7th Circuit makes special note of: a) Lemon being criticized, b) Lemon not being reaffirmed in Lee, and most of all, c) the justices that even "signed on to Lemon" in Lee, have since questioned its authority. Thats all from Sherman, so I'd say either your understanding is incorrect, or I'd like to see your sources that 4 justices have signed on to Lemon.

Oh very nice. Then you go on to elaborate, pedantically, about the spelling of Kierkeegard's name. Go look it up on google. All the websites I found spelled it "Soren."

Maybe to you. I took a class on existentialism: who did we read? Sartre, Nietzche, Hied., and guess who? S.K.

It's nice you want to side track this thread even more, asking me about objective realities. Maybe we should tackle that when I'm not having to answer the swarm.

This assumes it was only the "theists" who were up in arms about Newdow. The vote was so overwhelming, I'd say its plausible to argue it was more than theists who were shocked at the decision.

Buffman

You seem to ignore the following historical wisdom by masking it in legal references.

Here is what James Madison had to say about Religion and Government relationships in Item # 3 of his "Memorial and Remonstrance":

"...Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects? that the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever? "

http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/jm4/writings/memor.htm

Just substitute "Monotheism" for "Christianity" and "individual expressions of conscience" for "Religions."

Toto

Plausible? That a non-theist would be shocked at taking God out of the pledge? Please find one before you make that claim.

I gather that the vote you refer to is the Congressional vote, where 99 gutless Senators stood and pledged allegiance, and then voted to support the Pledge. That was not an indication of shock at the decision: that was a deliberate act of political pandering, a decision by some otherwise liberal Senators that they were not going to hand a patriotic election issue to their opponents, so they would not be treated like Michael Dukakis was over the flag issue.

Buffman

How many factual errors, inaccuracies, misstatements, misquotes or manufactured quotes, omissions of basic causes or contrary opinions, and general propaganda efforts can you identify in this 16 item "Findings of the Congress of the U.S. Government" which was used to help obtain the 99-0 Senate and "yeas 401, nays 5, answered ``present'' 4, not voting 21" House vote to reaffirm the reference to one Nation under God in the Pledge of Allegiance...et al? Who wrote and presented this list to these historically ignorant and cowardly legislative bodies? How many Senate and House offices actually read and verified the contents before the office holders voted in favor of the Bill? How many Americans know or care about the accurate facts? Why not?

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/.../~c107yEECZ4::

(Added)

Sorry! It looks as though one must use Thomas, the 107th Congress, and "2690" in order to view the entire document.

http://thomas.loc.gov/

Toto

Previous thread with research on that resolution:

Scary actual text of Senate "Under God" Resolution