Previously on TheAngryPen:

09-12-2000 2 Parties

08-18-2000 Al’s Acceptance

08-10-2000 Gore’s Choice

08-03-2000 The American Dream

07-20-2000 History and Hollywood

07-13-2000 40 Acres and a Mule

07-06-2000 The God We Trust

06-29-2000 Lyrical Assault

06-15-2000 Bank Fees

06-07-2000 A Mixture Often of Incongruous Elements

05-24-2000 Social Security

05-17-2000 Governmental Good Intentions

05-10-2000 Johnny Reb and Disgusting Fatbodies

05-03-2000 Low Fidelity

04-26-2000 Jackboots and Black Helicopters

04-19-2000 Movie Trailers

04-12-2000 All Things Cuban

04-05-2000 Censorship

03-29-2000 Juries and Tobacco

03-22-2000 Several Things

03-15-2000 Gore the Reformer

03-08-2000 Mission to Mars

03-08-2000 Super Tuesday

03-03-2000 Little Johnny Murderer

03-01-2000 Bob Jones

02-23-2000 The Christian Coalition

02-16-2000 Valentine's Day

02-09-2000 Short-Sighted Political Parties

02-02-2000 Mosh Pits

01-12-2000 Al Gore's Personality

11-17-1999 Playboy

09-02-1999 The Demise of Heavy Metal

	TheAngryPen vs. The God We Trust

The Pen is going to break with tradition. Today, instead of telling you the way things are, He’s going to pose a question that, hopefully, will stimulate some debate about the way things ought to be.

I was sitting in front of the idiot box last night watching Hannity and Colmes on Fox News, and the boys posed a question to their studio audience. “Would posting the words ‘In God We Trust” in a public place like a Courthouse violate the separation of Church and State?” A surprising 91% of those polled answered, “no, it would not.”

The Pen, very nearly, went directly to ramming speed. But something slowed me down. Maybe I was feeling charitable; maybe it was a limited-time desire to gracefully listen to the opinions of others, however silly they may be. Whatever it was, I took a minute to try and see their side. I think you’re going to be very surprised by where The Pen falls on this one.

Follow me through this: The separation of Church and State is an “implied” requirement of the Constitution, not an “expressed” one. The First Amendment provides for Freedom of Religion, which really means, “freedom from persecution of one’s religious views” and which seeks to forbid the adoption of any one religion by Government, the idea being that no people can truly be free if their Government requires that they believe in one particular God, and in one particular way.

But, right there in the Declaration of Independence, the first official document produced by a fledgling nation, it says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.” Endowed by their creator… well, that would be God. The Pen thinks that, as far as our forefathers were concerned, belief in God was a given. Which suggests that, specifically, the Framers of the Constitution were looking to protect each American’s freedom to practice their belief in God in whatever way they desire.

See, for Americans, the First Amendment has come to signify Freedom of Speech, and it is that freedom, more than any of the other four mentioned in the Amendment, which has come to define us as a nation. But The Pen would argue that in the 18th century, it was not Freedom of Speech which was forefront in most citizens’ minds, but Freedom of Religion. Recall that the framers of the Constitution were no more than one generation away from religious persecution themselves, persecution so vicious it inspired their families to risk a dangerous trip across the sea in search of the freedom to worship God in their own way.

“In God We Trust.” The words themselves are telling. Not Jesus Christ, not Allah, but God. That could be anybody. Every Religion believes in a god of some kind. Even Wiccans, as far as The Pen cares to know, consider the Earth, or rocks or something, God. Therefore, The Pen thinks that the words “In God We Trust” can only be truly offensive to one tiny group of people… us atheists. And so, the question we have to ask ourselves is, does freedom of religion also guarantee freedom from religion?

The Pen is not so sure.

It seems clear that the framers of the Constitution would have considered the right not to have one particular religion advocated by agents of their Government to be the point, not the right to have our public lives kept clean of the slightest mention of even a general concept of God. They really are two different issues and I think our forefathers would have treated them as completely separate questions.

So let’s ask it. Does The Pen have a right, as an atheist, to never have to hear the word “God” in a public (meaning: taxpayer owned) place?

I’m not sure that I do. I don’t, for instance, have the right to censor the views of say, Nazis, or any other morally offensive point of view given in public, so why should I be given special dispensation to censor a religious point of view? Either way, I certainly wouldn’t want the question decided one way or the other without a serious discussion in front of the Supreme Court, because I promise you that for the men who signed the Constitution, belief in God was a major motivation for what they did that day, and the idea that they would also need to protect those who did not believe in God from even being aware that others might, would’ve been a completely foreign concept to them.

Furthermore, the atheist occupies a very special place on the political spectrum. If you want to believe in Jesus Christ, and if that belief gives you comfort in some way, I got no problem with that. In other words, my soul is not at stake. By contrast, were I Jewish, I might be deeply offended by your belief that I will go to Hell because of the details of my faith. As an Atheist, however, I couldn’t care less where you think I’m going, and so I don’t necessarily need to be protected from hearing about god… as long as, and this is a very big “if”, my choice not to listen does not subject me to persecution.

I can handle being confronted by the realities of your faith… just like I can handle an argument about whether I have the right to own a gun. It’s a conceptual discussion that doesn’t involve the disposition of my immortal soul, and that’s all.

The problem is that there has never been a fundamental anybody who could handle the concept of live and let live (except for the Jews, God bless ‘em… if you wanna convert, fine, but they ain’t gonna recruit you). No, the real problem with Fundamentalists (Christians in particular) is that they hate that you don’t believe. Worse, they fear it. In fact, their God requires that they try to convince you of the error of your ways.

Which is why The Pen’s first reaction was to flame these 91% of Americans out, because, while the concept of acknowledging a general God in a conceptual sense doesn’t bother me, it’s the mental image of vast groups of religious nutcases, lurking somewhere out there in the darkness, watching these kinds of polls with greedy, malevolent intent for the moment they can pounce on even a perceived weakness in our resolve to protect ourselves from them, and strike with all the force of their God’s flaming sword of justice…

… and then there’s the less flamboyantly hyperbolic point that, in a perfect world, it really doesn’t hurt or inconvenience an atheist if a majority of Americans want to acknowledge the existence of a higher power on our public edifices, so long as, and again this is one mighty “if”, no one particular religion uses it as an opportunity to push their own specific conversion agenda.

And so, in order to answer the question posed on Hannity and Colmes, we must first ask ourselves if posting the words “In God We Trust” violates the intent of the First Amendment, which was written with the understanding that a higher being exists, but which sought to guarantee that no singular view of that being would be forced on any one American. And so, reluctantly, The Pen thinks he has to come down on the side of the “no’s” on this one.

Ugh, I feel so dirty.