State V$. Religion: In God We Trust

[thelivingphoenix]

I'm afraid there is no such thing as separation of church and state.

The first amendment states,

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

This is not legal separation of church and state any more than it is separation of press and state or assembly and state.  In fact, if you do some research, the top 25 newspapers in the United States are owned by members of the Council on Foreign Relations.  The press is carefully controlled by the state.

What the First Amendment to the United States Constitution means in those first 16 words is that in absolutely no instance does the United States government or MAY the United States government force you to follow a religion that you do not wish to follow.  They may not force you to go into a house of worship and worship a god you do not want to worship.  Printing "In God We Trust" on our money is hardly forcing you to worship, only to recognize what our nation was founded upon: trust in God. 

The problem is that people misinterpret what those first 16 words of the First Amendment mean.  They don't mean that you can't pray in school; it means that the teacher or principal can't force you to pray.  According to the First Amendment, your RIGHT to pray is protected, not the government's "right" to tell you that you can't pray on federal or state property.  The government has no right to tell you that you cannot pray because that's not what the First Amendment boils down to.

The First Amendment has absolutely nothing to do with "separation of church and state".  It is an amendment which protects the religion from the state, not the state and the public from religion.  The First Amendment protects your right to worship what you choose instead of allowing the government to force you to worship in the religion that they choose for you.  It is to protect religions from government, not government from religions.

And Marcus (no offense intended, by the way, just a correction), if you're referring to the Biblical statement that money is the root of all evil, that isn't what it says.  It says that the love of money is the root of all evil, not that money itself is the root of all evil.

"For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows."--1 Timothy 6:10

This is one of the reasons that there are so many people who turn away from the Bible.  So many people are going around and misquoting scripture without looking it up or just going on what they've always been taught or what they've always heard that scripture says.  I used to think that money was the root of all evil, as well, but it's amazing what the addition of 3 words, "the love of", can do to change the meaning of a sentence.

And as many people here have already said, there are more important things to worry about than 4 words on a piece of currency.  I'm Christian, but whether they are on our money does not really matter to me. 

Since someone else brought it up on this topic, gay marriage doesn't really matter to me as a Christian, because if you read scripture and interpret it correctly, God gave human beings the free will to do as they please.  There is only a certain extent to which you can legislate morality and expect it to work.  I don't believe in gay marriage, but two gay people marrying isn't hurting me and if God doesn't impose His will on others (since He gave us free will to follow or reject Him), then who am I to tell those people that they can't marry?  I am no one.  Stealing has been illegal for thousands of years, but it still happens and so does murder.  Christian people trying to outlaw gay marriage are wasting their time.  In order to cease an objectionable behavior, the heart of the person committing that behavior needs to be changed.  I don't go around telling gay people they're going to hell, because I don't believe they are going to hell for being gay, but I know a lot of "Christian" people who do go around and tell gay people they're going to hell.  This doesn't do the Christian religion any good and sets an extremely bad example for those Christians who do respect the beliefs of others; in fact, most people who call themselves "Christian" are not.  Legislating morality is ineffective in most instances and unless it's hurting someone else, such as stealing or killing, then it doesn't need to be legislated. 

More laws create more criminals.  I can just about guarantee that you cannot go through the day without breaking some sort of law, be it local, state, or federal.  On some level, each and every one of us is a criminal.  It is the end of frivolous laws that needs to be worked toward and there are a large number of them on the books that are completely ridiculous.  Outlawing gay marriage (gay marriage doesn't hurt anyone) and pushing to remove a law that isn't hurting anyone, such as the one that states that "In God We Trust" has to be printed on our money, is wasting time that we could be using to combat much more important issues.

Stay distracted with frivolous things like "In God We Trust" being printed on our money while the economy and the rest of the country falls down around your ears, then you won't have any money to complain about having to use.

 

[___]

The council on foreign relations is not a government entity, it's more like a lobbying group ><  Anyway I do agree that Big Media is pretty tightly controlled by a very narrow interest group, and that this is a Bad Thing, however it's not quite as bad as a state run media, if the distinction is valuable.

Back to the first amendment,

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

Whether you interpret "respecting" as "showing respect to" or as "regarding" the clause is very clear.  The government cannot create any law which mandates, interferes with, prohibits, or otherwise has any relationship to the practice of religion.  Personally I don't think having God on the dollar or in the pledge is a huge deal - more a thing for busibodies to stir trouble about - but if we can show it's causing offense to a significant margin of the population it's fair to make a constitutional argument that it should be removed.

 

[thelivingphoenix]

I know the CFR isn't a government entity, but there are enough members of government that are members of the CFR for it to be a concern.  And unfortunately, whether we like it or not, the media is run by the state, just not openly.  Dick Cheney's name was found to be on the DC Madam's list when she gave it to some people at ABC who were going to run a special, but as soon as his name popped up on the list, it was canceled without any explanation at all from ABC.


Merriam-Webster's dictionary defines "respect" as:

Main Entry:
    2respect
Function:
    transitive verb
Date:
    1560

1 a: to consider worthy of high regard : esteem b: to refrain from interfering with <please respect their privacy>
2: to have reference to : concern


This seems very clear to me.  Congress shall make no law which interferes with or concerning religion, which also means that they can't restrict people from practicing their religion in public as long as they're not "disturbing the peace".  It doesn't mean you can't pray in school or have prayer around the flag pole before morning classes like a lot of schools do; it just means that a teacher can't lead the prayer because that would be considered state-sponsored religion.

Like I said, I'm Christian, but I could really care less whether "In God We Trust" is on a piece of money or not.  There are really more important things to worry about.

 

[Stardust]

I understand that we are going against our ideas, but I don't really see why it's such a big deal.  Writing has no impact on us, so it shouldn't need to follow the separation of church and state.  Although the money is created by the state, they are not forcing God upon anyone.  At this point, they are keeping it because it is a part of our history and they don't want to, essentially, erase a part of our history.  The separation was created so laws couldn't be passed based on religious beliefs, I think.  I've never actually read the law, so I'm not sure that this is true.

Writing has no impact on us?

The versaille treaty piece of writing but obviously had no impact whatsoever didn't it? I could go on like AMERICAN CONSTITUTION etc. but I find it really hard to understand how you can believe that.
For rest of post please refer to me previous post, so I can avoid repeating myself.

A word, by itself, can mean everything and nothing at the same time.  It is the principles behind the writing that is important.  We just have to write it down because people would otherwise try to bend the rules (more than they already do).  I'm not saying that writing is important, I'm merely saying that the words aren't going to do anything without a meaning behind them.

And as for the first amendment, I would not say that we are "respecting" Christianity or Catholicism by having a phrase on our currency.  Instead, we are honoring our forefathers, who mostly (I think), believe in God, or at least the principles of Christianity/Catholicism.  It is obvious that our constitution follows some of the guidelines of the Ten Commandments, but does that mean we should reject the law that says we shouldn't kill people, just because it relates to a religion?

I may be getting a little ... extreme here, and I apologize if I am.  We really should not be worrying about a few words on our currency when we could be concentrating on more important things.  People who get offended by "In God We Trust" really need to sort out their priorities.