FaithFighter : I never said anything of the sort about you. Don't know why you are acting like I did. Also, I tire of hearing people try to make the argument that America was founded upon any branch of Christianity. America being founded upon ANY religion is the opposite of the truth. Big reason why our founding fathers fled to this continent was for religious freedom. To no longer have a religion that is not your own be forced upon you. The fact that it seems so many people have convinced themselves that the country was founded upon their religious principals means that the country is turning into the very thing that the early settlers wanted to escape when they left Europe.

It's in the pledge because it meant something. It still means something to me. You should not be offended because it's in there. If you don't care to say "under God", then don't say it. No one is twisting anyone's arm to do so. 

That being said, IMHO as Americans, we are too damn sensitive. I have heard people whine and kvetch about such little things lately. Jeez. Do you think complaints like this happened during the great depression or the early 1940's? No, sir, they just charlie miked and prevailed. 

Sassy has brought up good topics. Keep it up!

I feel like there's this belief among the very devout that one must support religion no matter the context. If you are extremely devout, It's almost as if you're compelled to do it to show that your at that level of devoutness.

I feel like that's what happening here. If you're religious, you're -compelled- to say that you support having "under God" in the pledge, or perhaps that you don't care.

But it's pretty easy to see (at least for me), that the pledge is about patriotism towards one's country. You can be patriotic no matter your belief or lack thereof. It's a secular matter.

With this in mind, the exclusivity of having "under God" in the pledge is clearly wrong. It's making certain groups feel excluded on the basis of religion, in a secular matter dealing with patriotism.

It's clearly wrong.

And by clearly wrong, I mean clearly wrong. I can't emphasize that enough.

So my point is that no matter how religious you are, you should be able to see how having "under God" in the pledge is wrong.

"Waaaaaaaah I'm left out!"





That's what it sounds like to me...


Clearly.

Leave it alone. Stop demanding hugs and acceptance from everyone. It won't happen. 

edited out. Decided what I said was a little harsh.

Agree to disagree. 

Opinions are like rear ends.... everyone has one at they usually stink. 

I don't want you to hold back you opinions, because that's what these discussion boards are about. 

Nothing said here is taken personally. At least on my end. 

The "Waaah" stuff was not directed personally. It was my interpretation of what people in America sound like as of late. It sickens me. 

My 2 cents.

If I'm honest, I think that when America was founded, it was founded on Christian principals, and values, I also believe that Christianity is strong in the base because many of the early people involved in it's creation, (including countless rebel soldiers who were Christian in some form). 

But I believe that it also had atheistic people involved at the same time, and even had atheists in mind when this country was founded.

I'm tired of hearing all the "No Christianity was not a part of America's founding" stuff, uh, cause it was there actually.

The worst thing is that in the declaration of independence, we stated that all men are equal and that our rights come from our creator, yet we deny this principal pretty much daily nowadays in our government. Even though it was this document that soldiers gave up their lives on such accord. My question is, why is this document ignored? Was it null when it was created? Or do we fight for one reason? And then change it after thousands of people have died to uphold and after a long and bloody war?

Oh.

As for the pledge of allegiance, I don't really trust our own government in the first place.

I don't really mind it, I think that it's only logical to say that there is a God. Besides, Evolution is taught in class because it is presumably correct, in spite of personal opinion. Why not have our government state that there is a God as well? No, not as a religious concept, as a logical one. Seems unfair to me, but honestly, I don't really care for the United States Government. It's flawed, though one of the best.



rcarter2 :

Not in the way that it is used. Yes, you could use the word Allah that way, but most of the time, no.

Allah, (may) mean God in Arabic. But we already have an English word for God. It's God.

If it were to change, it obviously would be in favor of Muslims, I would say. Certainly if a political movement came up to change the word God to Allah in government texts, I wouldn't be that gullible to believe that they didn't mean their Muslim deity when the English word God works just fine already, I mean, if God and Allah are the same word, why change it in the first place?


"Allah is Greatest."

Honestly, I think they should be in the Pledge of Allegiance, no if's, and's, or but's. However, I do think that is should optional on whether or not you should have to say it. 

As a person who finds nationalism just as destructive as indoctrinating religion, I think the pledge should be thrown out altogether. really, a pledge just reeks of indoctrination, having kids who don't yet have the capability to truly think for themselves reciting a pledge of allegiance to concepts they don't yet understand is ridiculous.

FaithFighter :  This post was rather rude and very argumentative and almost offended me. I'm an Atheist and your general and sweeping views of Atheists could be considered as racist if it was towards blacks. 

This is pretty easy to figure out actually. As a pledge of allegiance that is official and must come from everyone if that is what they wish it should reflect the governing nature of said country. church and state are separated in this nation with state being the highest authority (as we are a democratic nation). churches and religion are protected entities  in the united states and we are allowed or have the right to anyways believe in religion as in a way of whatever religion we so choose. really placing the terminology of under god on any government form goes against one of the main reasons this country was founded which was for people to have freedom of religion and also violates separation of church and state as it was implemented. That is my analysis of the situation.

It's interesting that you word this question should the words "under God" be in the Pledge. What is the moral reference for this question? Several of the posts put the Pledge in conversation with the purported values of the nation as encapsulated in the Constitution and, to a lesser extent, the Declaration of Independence. But that assumes that these values are 1) static, and 2) the values that people in America should be judging the Pledge by. I think that is a legitimate exercise, and in that vein I think that "under God" should be removed. This nation was founded by Christians, but that does not make it a Christian nation, and the idea of a nation that is a land of freedom means negotiating what words are appropriate for a pluralistic nation.

However, the more interesting question here is not the ethical one, but the functional one. Why do we have a pledge and why do we say it? I'm glad that the original poster included some of the history of the flag, but it appears important to also point out that the 1950s was right in the middle of a heating up Cold War. The addition of "under God" was a direct response to communism, an attempt to define democracy and freedom over and against Communism. It was meant as a signifier of difference, a symbol that would serve to unite against a common enemy. The Cold War is over, but the phrase is left over. It appears that now, from a functionalist point of view it is dividing rather than unifying, at least as evinced in this board discussion. 

Citing this board is a bit of a bias, though. The use of the Pledge as a rallying symbol which mediates a shared common "American" identity still holds both power and importance. By requiring it in schools and because it is used at the most important cultural events (i.e. before sporting events), it is ubiquitous. Even if one doesn't say it, one knows it, and knows it, then, as a sign of the nation. Moreover, I would argue that it is still important in that way - as a sign of the nation. One of the most persistent themes in American history has been the attempt to create, negotiate, and maintain a common identity in the face of increasing plurality and diversity, as well as increasing land mass. Symbols such as the Pledge of Allegiance, the American flag, and the White House serve as mediators of these narratives of identity. 

In this case the Pledge is a symbol insofar as it is a ritual, and as Eliade might argue, all rituals found their worlds, orienting the practitioner in the homogeneity of the profane world. The Pledge does this by articulating and forcing us to rearticulate our founding myths - of America as free, many but one, as a democracy, and, as of the Cold War era, as Christian (although people have been calling America a Christian nation since its founding) - and thus via repetition bringing us into the actual act of founding and refounding the cosmogony. This is an important part of how humans work: we want to belong, we want to be active participants in our group, and we enter into the sacred via symbols and rituals like the Pledge. Switching away from Eliade for a moment, we might also see this as a Durkheimian ritual which allows participants to effectively enter into the soul of the society (what Durkheim argues is actually the source of all religious feeling, but I digress). The ritual codifies the heart of the collective, orienting those who say it towards the American collective story, which if one desires a unified nation can be quite important. 

Of course, whether we say the Pledge or not is not the question, but whether the words "under God" should be in there. Changing the words of a ritual is not easy to do. On one level, just getting support from the public (I'm assuming that 80% of people support is a true statistic) would be difficult. On another level, to change the Pledge, even if it is just reverting it to an older form, threatens the integrity of the ritual. The only reason they could change it in the first place was because of the overwhelming fear that came out of the Cold War and the Red Scare. An adaptation of a ritual in a context where the Pledge is needed as an efficacious weapon is quite different from what is effectively a debate over the identity of a nation. This last point is I think the real heart of all of this, and why it is not an easy discussion. Like debates over many American symbols, the Pledge is a proxy for - because it is a symbol and articulation of - broader debates about "who are we as a nation?" "What does it mean to be American?" "What is America?" (Colbert has a book if I recall that lampoons this, I Am American and So Can You, I believe is the title). These are questions that are not answered: they are argued over, fought over, and debated, not just in words but by symbols. In the end they are answered by the narratives we create about ourselves and where we have been, the constant affirmation of our heroes and our villains, and in the end the voices of the multitude that make up this nation our the ones who shape it, who make it what it is. This reality indicates too, that these discussions are important because freedom is not an a priori concept; rather, it is shaped by what we make of it, how we practice it both on a macro level, like the official wording of the pledge, but also in our day to day interactions with one another as we pull on these grand narratives and make them our own, thus reflecting and changing what they mean as we inflect them with out own values. We should think seriously, then of what it means, not only to be a nation and a good nation, but what it means to be a human and a good human.

I don't think any religious symbols or references have a place in government. With that said, we have much bigger problems to worry about than easily upset people getting offended by religion.

Religion doesn't matter to me. I'm not going to go too in-depth with this post, for the sake of controversy and arguments. I'm an agnostic, so I could care nonetheless whether they take it our or not.

I personally have no problem with the Pledge of Allegiance it's been around for so long and it's not changed yet so I think it should stay the same. There are far more important issues we should be more focused on such as poverty and hunger...

I know I have heard about this for a really long time, and for my thoughts on this situation, here's what I think.

The reason why they bring this up about removing "Under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance because a lot of people that has to say it all have different faith in another religion and think saying "God" is highly offensive to their religion. How I look at it, I know I really ain't must of a religion guy, but I will put my 2 cents on this. I don't think they should remove it at all, because the person that wrote the Pledge of Allegiance wanted to be said the way it's written, and people have been saying for days, months, years, and decades, and I personally think it don't really need changed at all. But here is the crazy thing. I did a little bit of research, basically, they want to revert to the original Pledge because the quote "Under God" was added in 1954, altering the Pledge just a tiny bit and a lot of people think they should have what was written, and others think that it doesn't need changed.

I know I said they shouldn't, but it really doesn't matter too much to me though, since I wasn't in school anymore, I don't say it, so it don't affect me in any way if they do change it to the original.

Should the pledge even exist? Sorry if it offends anyone, but pledging allegiance to a piece of rag is beyond insanity. It merely exists to fool people into believing that their arbitrary set of borders are better than other peoples'.

True, there are many things US citizens can be proud of. Their country was the first one to be founded using such novel ideas as constitutional government, separation of powers and enumerated powers. What their countrymen achieved wouldn't have been possible without such revolutionary ideas.

However, this pride is transformed into indoctrination with the Pledge. I saw its recitation once for a (supposed) libertarian meeting in Idaho. I felt like I was seeing mindless robots repeating mindless words.

Beside, the earlier pledges had an... eerie way of acting.

janus : Wow wow wow, hold on there for a second!
Pledging to a piece of rag? Have you any respect?! I don't care if you're an American or a European or even a Russian. The concept is not hard to grasp at all. The flag represents this country.
"I pledge allegiance, to the flag, of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty, and justice for all."
Yes, we say the words, "To the flag," but anyone who thinks we're actually pledging to millions of red, white, and blue pieces of fabric, despite their representing freedom and liberty and whatnot, has even less logic in them than I do. What does that flag represent?
Exactly what I just said. Freedom. Liberty. Independence. And many other things to the individual who has any pride in this great nation, but most if all, it represents the United States of America.
To call it a rag is sickening to me. Now think over what I've just said.
As for the subject at hand, no, it shouldn't. This country was founded on the ideals of Christianity, no matter what anyone said.
When Christopher Columbus stepped off his boats he prayed. When the first settlers for each individual colony, and each boatload of settlers, came here, they said a prayer.
So no, ''Under God'' Shouldn't be removed, not under any circumstances.

What do you want it to be, "Under Barrack Obama"? Guys, this country was founded UNDER GOD. It's really as simple as that.