copernicus

Thank you for that encouragement, wildernesse. This is a time for all Americans to oppose discrimination based on religion. This court case is going to do some short term damage, and it could even lead to a movement to repeal the establishment clause. So I agree with you. Now is the time to stand up for our beliefs, not when things are quiet.

Jamie_L

The civil rights movement started with attack dogs and lynchings. Bad press and a step backwards in church-state separation may be a small price to pay. If nothing else, this sets the stage for the Godless March in November.

Jamie

David Bowden

From the NY Times article above:

"We wish the words had not been added back in 1954. But just the way removing a well-lodged foreign body from an organism may sometimes be more damaging than letting it stay put, removing those words would cause more harm than leaving them in."

Is the "foreign body" simile really appropriate in this case? Isn't the Times just admitting that it wishes that some rough public discussions won't have to take place, and some difficult legislative decisions won't have to be made?

How can it be "more damaging" to the Republic to restore the original Pledge, one we all can recite with integrity? It might upset some theists, but is that enough to justify surrendering this whole debate to the status quo?

If the "more damaging" thing only amounts to this type of short-term difficulties, and if those difficulties are always to be avoided, then we probably ought not to have committed the "more damaging" act of (for instance) abolishing slavery in Lincoln's day. The short term fallout of abolition was more damaging to Southern heritage and economics; allowing slavery to continue would have saved us from a civil war and preserved tradition. Or so that reasoning would seem to go.

But we do not make decisions based on those criteria. Wrongs need to be corrected when they are identified. Apparently the Times recognizes that "under God" is wrong. And? Do nothing about it, they say. But I fail to see any reason to allow this particular cancer to continue to exist, especially now that the country is beginning to realize what led to this state of affairs.

By the reasoning of the Times, any "difficult" issue just becomes taboo, rather than resolvable. Replace any civil rights issue over the Pledge issue in the paragraph above, and see how it rolls of the tongue. I think they're just sticking their heads in the sand on this one.

I agree that Newdow is not the ideal frontline spokesperson for nontheism in this case. But my question would be, is it really true that society needs to maintain such a fiction?

[edited to add: Toto, perhaps I'm reading too much into your use of that word; if so, please pardon the following verbiage and understand it to be rhetorical and not directed at you.]

We cannot help it that a less-than-ideal person has been the first to call the emperor naked in such a publicized way. But we can show solidarity with him, and keep put pressure on said emperor until he at least starts wearing a pair of Speedos. I cannot see why society needs to see a naked man but pretend he's well-appareled. If a crude person commented on how wrong it was for children to be locked in factories for 12 hours each day, would we say that society needs those children to be locked away like that?

Regardless of whether this can of worms concerning the Pledge should or shouldn't have been opened just now, it's wide open and we can't change that. People will form opinions now that the issue's been broached, and if we're able, we ought to try to mold those opinions in favor of more neutral and inclusive Pledge wording.

If this decision is overruled, Americans will know that their government engages in hypocrisy at the highest levels, but they won't naively think that everyone agrees with God in government.

And in any case, I don't think society needs God-references in its documents. It needs, I believe, a better grasp on the facts.

-Wanderer

[ June 27, 2002: Message edited by: wide-eyed wanderer ]</p>

Spazmatic

It's not really the best time (after the march would have been good), but nothing to be done now. I think everyone should throw everything they have behind it... I've been writing Letters to the Editor, letters to my reps and senate, calling up talkshows, emailing talkshows... Sink or swim, as someone said.

Buffman

For longer than I care to admit, I have been stating that the fundamentalist Christians have been using the identical techniques employed by the pragmatic communists that allowed them to successfully take-over organizations and countries with only a small minority of dedicated adherents.

During the Cold War, no group was more anti-communist than the fundamentalist Christians. Why? What did they see and learn that has allowed them to take-over the political, administrative, and, to an ever increasing degree, the judicial, governance of our country? The parallels between communist take-overs and fundamentalist Christian take-overs are all there for us to see if we are only willing to take the time and effort to do so.

Fundamentalist spokespersons have made no secret about what it is that they desire and how they plan to achieve it. There is only one, well defined, goal...an America that is the fulfillment of "their" biblical prophesy...One Nation under Jesus Christ. Thus, non-fundamentalist Christians are hoisted on their own supernatural petards. What does it matter to which of the two major political parties they belong? (Just look at these latest religious, not constitutional, votes in Congress and their obscene, public, deceptively patriotic, actions on the Capital steps. They swore to uphold the Constitution, not the Judeo-Christian Bible. They all lied...some knowingly, but most through ignorance.)

In my personal opinion, non-theists don't have a chance of achieving change in this country without the whole hearted support of the non-fundamentalist theists. It's just that simple! Non-theists aren't organized, trained, funded, sufficiently motivated or competently led to achieve squat.

The forecast withering away of superstition, myth and human ignorance by the Enlightenment and the rapid advances in scientific understanding of ourselves and the universe that spawned us, has proven to be grossly over-estimated. Just as long as the human mind can be conditioned to accept and support a belief in the supernatural, we can make little claim to being anything more than primitive, upright, beasts capable of the most barbarous and horrendous of omniverous deeds.

When the citizens of the most powerful nation that has ever existed on the face of the earth can select a devout believer in the supernatural to lead them, and elect to representative office people of a similar ilk, we invite a malignant psychosis to pervade every aspect of our lives...and for history to repeat itself until our species either evolves or extinguishes itself.

The challenge is to find some way to teach the critical thinking processes/techniques to every child (and willing adult), in every school/home, throughout the country/world. Only then will mental conditioning, and its incumbant human "evils," begin to recede into the truly Dark Ages of humanity's history. I am not holding my breath for that day....especially after the developments of the last two days in this, supposedly, though falsely conditioned to believe, enlightened nation.

Bill

OK, I'm correcting you, at your request. <a href="http://www.restorethepledge.com/litigation" target="_blank">The case timeline</a> states that the case was filed on March 8, 2000.

== Bill