This piece was originally written for a forum on Newsvine on the use of the phrase “In God we trust” on money in the United States as recently approved by a Federal District Court 2 to 1.
In this forum, there were many comments by Christian bigots supporting their right to force their religion down our throats through state sponsorship.
The usual right wing Christian lies are apparent here: Our country was NOT founded as a Christian nation, it was founded by a group of men, some of whom were indeed Christian, but most of whom were deists. They were fully cognizant of the role of different Christian sects fleeing other countries to practice their faith in America, not that at the beginning these sects were any more tolerant than the established religions they fled from. But from that mix, it was clear to the founding fathers that established religions were the problem and that a truly free country should not have a state religion. Since many were deists of varying degrees of belief, they also recognized that not having a state religion means freedom from religion if one so chose.
“In God we trust” and “Under God” essentially support a state religion, ignoring a significant and rapidly growing minority who either don’t believe in any god, or at the very least reject the organized religion of a personal god.
Our growing minority may someday be the majority, but don’t worry your little Christian bigoted heads, we won’t take away your right to believe in whatever you want. Since we don’t have to defend bullshit, we don’t have to try to force anybody to think as we do. We don’t have your burden of having to defend your silly, illogical mythology for which there’s no evidence; religions will change, new religions will come, old religions will die as many have already, but there will always be a significant number of people who see the ridiculousness of belief in things for which there’s no evidence, who have no unsupported dogma and they are we, the atheists.
